After last weekend this weekend was going to be a peaceful one with the family and new puppy- so naturally I jumped at the chance to get away from them to help out with the RX youth team camp and volunteered to be a patient in a mock car crash for sunday.
Except in the end Sunday never happened but instead they needed a hand setting up an abseil for the YEPPs on Sat. Off the Dunedin Central City firetower. All 30m of it. In the wind (and occasional rain)
I decided to be nice to Bill and take brat daughter with me and leave him with just the puppy to cope with.
Access to the top of the tower is through the pitch black smoke hole at the bottom followed by five or is it six vertical ladders. Of course the fireguys probably do it carrying a 17 stone dummy so not being daft I let Aaron carry the ropes and I took the hardware (actually 6 steel crabs and a couple of fig 8s are probably nearly the same weight!). And aron- aren't you glad I pursuaded you that we didn't need the 100m ropes and the 40s would do eh mate!
It was pretty windy up there (brr!) but at least the wind was only coming from one direction- cos at the bottom it was coming from all angles, we walked all around a four sided tower and there was no shelter anywhere.
Anchors were easy enough but the take off was more of a problem with windows and bloody great searchlights in the way and the railing was so high I decided I would set up so the kids could squeeze through it rather than make them climb over cos I reckoned that would be less scary for them. And they didn't look that tall (hint to self no one looks tall when viewed from 100feet above!) Oh yeh and why is it that something which doesn't look too bad when viewed from below grows another 300feet higher when you're standing on it?
And of course the first one up was enormously tall and the poor lad had to bend himself in half to get through the gap. But it was all good- if cold.
After I'd put 8 or so over (sloowwly they weren't real quick but for a second ab for most of them they did really well on a very exposed site) I zoomed down and collected her ladyship. She was more than happy to climb the two ladders to the first window and the started howling that she wa scared and didn't want to ab. Lucky for her she had an admiring crowd of followers by now or her evil mother would have chucked her over anyway given that she's climbed higher on climbing walls, but with a bit of assistance from Juliet she did eventually get lowered through the hatch of the lower ladder and loved it.
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