We do have one recent picture that we wanted to share. This picture is dedicated to Dan and Christopher and Thane Co. safety meetings. This picture will fit in well with the reoccurring discussion topic, "Securing Your Load and the Safe Transportation of Materials."
Since early last fall we have had a strong desire to get on top of our roof. The roofs here are all flat, fully exposed to the sun all day long, have better views, and are somewhat removed from the street noise. Unfortunately, ours is not one of the many houses that have a built in roof access ladder. As such our easiest (and only) access point would be from our master bed room balcony. The roof is about 4 meters above the balcony, so when the angle of the ladder lean and extensions above the roof edge are taken into account we needed to find a ~5 Meter ladder. Such metal ladders do exist here, but they were quickly determined to be prohibitively expensive. That left option two, build a ladder.
Finding materials here is not so difficult, but without any French or Arabic skills conveying exactly what you want is a bit challenging. At one the local hardware stores I went in looking to purchase a handful of nails. Unfortunately, none were on display so I found a screw and began miming hammering it into the counter. When my initial desire was correctly interpreted (no I didn't want a hammer, no I didn't want a screw driver) the shop keeper brought me out some very small (1 inch) finish nails. Sending him back he came out with a 3 inch (apparently exterior grade) nail that I thought would do the job. As he and I counted out 100 together I was (and am continually) impressed with the Tunisian penchant for quality control. There was at least a 1/2 inch length variance in the batch of nails and half of them had not been fully filed to a point. Finding the proper wood was a surprisingly easier endeavor... transporting it home was not.
When we had picked out our three 5.1 meter boards in the covered material yard the employee helping us suggested that we pull our car in to load it. As Kaylee backed our tiny VW Polo into view the man looked at me incredulously and simply said "Et impossible?" True the loading of the the lumber was what had made us most apprehensive of the idea of building a ladder in the first place, but with the employees help and a piece thin rope we managed to load the lumber.
As you will see below them only "viable" transportation method would not be even near viable at home. At home I think that there is a good chance that in the , less than 1km, trip home we would have killed a pedestrian, caused and accident, got a ticket, and had to take a sobriety test. As it was here we barely turned heads. In fact, the strangest part wasn't all of the looks we were getting it was all of the looks we weren't getting. Pedestrians and other cars took notice and gave us extra space with the typical nonchalance of an average drive. In reality, the wood itself wasn't even the most unconventional part of the trip home. Leaving the wood store we could either get on the highway or take a more creative way home... Getting on the highway was out of the question. That left a little detour the wrong direction down a one way street and required going through a roundabout the wrong way through a red light. And no one cared. Not one horn or impatient look. This coming from a driving society were waiting a half a second too long on the yellow light (lights up between red and green to tell you to start going) will receive multiple horns on the average day.
All in all a great (or at least different) experience. And as you can see from the picture we made it home safely; without killing anyone, causing an accident, getting a ticket, or making any enemies.
We now have relatively easy access to our roof, but unfortunately I don't have any picture of the completed ladder or the view from our roof yet, because it has been raining a lot since we finished building it.
More to come...hopefully with less delay.
No comments:
Post a Comment