The Best Ladder for Home Projects
January 29, 2012, By Greg Hoard 1 comment
Among those I admire most are people like Sir Edmund Hillary and Reinhold Messner, men who conquered Mt. Everest, climbing over 29,000 feet to the summit of the highest mountain in the world. In 1980, Messner accomplished this feat alone and without supplemental oxygen.
I don’t like heights. Honestly, it goes way beyond that. It borders on neurosis. Heights scare the hell out of me. Anything above, say, 10 feet and I get all wobbly. That’s why I never dunked a basketball (though lack of vertical leap might have played a role there too).
I won’t stand near the edge of tall buildings to admire the scenery. Decks are questionable. I no longer attempt to walk across bridges. That’s when all my neuroses kick in. In each case, I fear that Lucifer—all craggy with horns, claws and cloven feet—will appear, smiling, saying, “Go ahead, do it. Jump! You know you want to.”
Messner climbed over 29,000 feet into thin air. I’m a little sketchy sitting on a barstool.
This illogical and abiding fear of heights has made certain jobs around the house difficult, if not impossible: cleaning the gutters, cleaning the windows, painting the cathedral ceiling in the living room, painting the house, anything that required the use of a ladder. I tried and valiantly, but for any job that demanded more than a stepladder there was just too much knee-knocking going on to do the job properly. All I could think about was getting down.
But now my life has changed. A friend told me about his ladder. He called it “The Skyscraper.”
“Skyscraper, eh? Doesn’t sound like it’s for me,” I said.
“No, no. It’s great. You’ll love it,” Delmond said. “It’s like a giant stepladder, an A-frame. It’s strong and stable. It’s like working on the ground. Very secure—even for people like us.”
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