[geeks] TCF

[Caleb Shay]

On Sun, 2004-05-02 at 06:07, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> 
> After "dinner" I followed Caleb++ home, and we got his (new to him) Crimson up to the second floor... In a most unusual way ;^) Caleb lives in a second floor apt, and we managed to get the Crimson up to the second floor by using his patio stairs. After we finished we said things like:
> 
> "That shouldn't have worked - we should have gotten crushed"
> 
> "I wish we took pictures"
> 
> I'll let Caleb describe how we did it...

1st staircase:

Only 5 stairs.  We tried to use a handcart and the handcart bent and the
Crimson almost went sliding into the pavement.  We managed to catch it
and manhandle it up onto the first landing.

2nd startcase:

15 stairs, ~45 degree angle, not quite wide enough for two people to
stand next to each other and the space between the bottom of the stairs
and the railing was too small to be able to turn the Crimson around.  If
you've never moved a Crimson, be aware of a few things.  They weigh
probably about 150 lbs, they DO have wheels but they only go in a
straight line (no casters) and only extend about a quarter of an inch
below the case, so any angle at all on the  case means that now the
metal case is dragging and the wheels aren't doing you any good, and you
are probably destroying the skins as well.  They also only have one
handle (under the power supply).

After standing there for a few minutes looking at the stairs, then
looking at the Crimson, then looking at the stairs again we noticed a
couple of long (20-25 foot?) rotting 2x8s in my neighbor's yard.  We
carried those over to the stairs and laid them down.  They turned out to
be almost exactly the length of the staircase.  But, there were two
problems.  They couldn't be laid out against the edges of the stairs
since then they were just a few inches too far apart for the wheels, and
they kept sliding back down the staircase.  So, we slid one of them in
enough that it would be close enough to the other to support the machine
and then we had to lift machine up high enough onto the "tracks" that we
could actually get behind it to push while keeping our feet clamped to
the bottom of the boards to keep them from sliding down.  All of this in
a space that was barely big enough for the Crimson by itsself, never
mind the two of us.  Then we started pushing.  As I mention earlier, the
staircase isn't wide enough for us to stand side-by-side, and now we had
two planks covering the stairs with maybe a 1.5 foot gap between them
where you can actually stand.  So I stood a few steps below Ken pushing
on the lower part of the machine while he pushed on the upper part.  We
had the additional excitement in that the Crimson kept pulling to one
side so the wheels would almost come off the boards and we would have to
adjust it.  When we reached the top somebody needed to get to the other
side of the machine to help it clear the top of the boards, so I left
Ken keeping the machine from sliding back down while I dragged myself up
the side of the staircase by my arms since the boards were covered in
mud and mold and were too slippery to actually stand on.  Once I got to
the other side we cleared the top, my wife came out with drinks and we
looked at the staircase and said "That shouldn't have worked.  It should
have gone sliding back down, crushed us, and kept going right through
the railing of the deck."

The real tragedy here is that in 2 weeks I'm moving and I'm going to
have to get it back DOWN the stairs.

Cheers,

Caleb