Wow, that is nifty that you put up a Christmas star. My kids love the Christmas decorations people are putting up around their houses and such. It's a fun time of year for them, that's for sure. But you won't catch me climbing a tower. No thanks. Heights and, more to the point, falling from a height scares me.
Mel -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Martin G. McCormick Sent: Monday, December 02, 2013 12:24 PM To: Just Chat; Where Anything Goes ... Almost! Subject: Christmas Star Back Up Again On Friday, I went up the radio tower and put the Christmas star up for another year. You couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. The temperatures were around 52 degrees Fahrenheit or 11 Celsius and the Sun was fully out. One side of the tower faces South and that is the side I usually climb so the warm Sun is on one's back and it also heats up the metal legs of the tower. When there is no Sun and it is about that temperature or cooler, the metal is just cold enough to slowly numb one's hands. That makes it hard to work with tools and more likely for a person to have an accident so Friday was perfect and I clamped the star facing firmly South. As I went back down, I got rid of a giant weed that had climbed up inside the tower through the Summer. That stupid weed climbed about 25 feet over those months. It took me about 30 minutes to carefully untangle it from the several cables plus a length of rope and I had to be very careful because the plant's stem was almost exactly the same diameter as some of the cables so I had to make sure I wasn't yanking on the cables and making more work for myself. The star made it safely to about the 40-foot or almost 11-meter level and it shines forth at night again until New year's Eve. I usually go up and retrieve it on the first good-weather day after December 31. We frequently have at least one or two nice days around New year's Day and that's a good time to get it. In case anyone is wondering, I always use a safety belt made for tower climbing. It is beyond dumb to not do so because one never knows when your foot might slip on a rung of the tower or a freak gust of wind could make you try to keep dropping a wrench or a bolt which is a classic route to disaster. With a belt, about all that will happen is it presses hard on one's stomach and you might get a bruise if you fall against the tower but you sure don't fall to your death. There's actually one thing worse than falling to your death and that's falling and not quite getting killed. Martin ======================================== The Just-chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/just-chat> You can find an archive of all messages posted to the just-chat group at either of the following: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/just-chat/index.html> or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> You may subscribe with your RSS reader at the following URL: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> --------------------------------------- ======================================== The Just-chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/just-chat> You can find an archive of all messages posted to the just-chat group at either of the following: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/just-chat/index.html> or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> You may subscribe with your RSS reader at the following URL: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
