This year’s staining project has been going on for several weeks. The challenge is the more-than-three-stories-tall backside of the house, which provides difficult access for equipment that can reach that high. Ultimately, a crane came in to lift a cherry picker (man lift) around to the backside.
Yesterday, the crane returned to lift the cherry picker back around to the front of the house, and after that, our contractor was going to return the cherry picker to the rental facility. With the cherry picker soon to leave, I took the opportunity to go on my first cherry picker ride.
I called into the house to see if Deb wanted to join me, and she said yes. Since the cherry picker couldn’t support the weight of three people, our contractor gave me a quick driving lesson, and Deb and I took off for the sky!
Cherry pickers are more complicated to maneuver than you might expect. And while I’m normally the one that is scared of heights, it was Deb who demanded that I not take us as high as the machine was capable of taking us. And yes, it was shaky and scary. For me, it was the constant creaking of the lift arm and the unresponsiveness of the controls. What if we got stuck up in the air?
So anyway, this is one of the photos I took while up there. I was hoping for a grand view of the mountains, but the cherry picker wasn’t in the correct spot. And in reality, I have a perfect view of the mountains anyway—peeking through a gap in the trees—looking out my writing room window on the back side of the house.
I guess this is just one of those photos that has a better story behind it than visual image.