The first step to fixing a roof is getting onto the roof. If you live in a hobbit hole this poses no problem, but I am not a Baggins, Proudfeet, Sackville-Baggins, Brandybuck or Took. Therefore the roof of my house is rather high above the ground. And so a ladder was required. Now I am not what one would call a climb around on the roof fanatic. The only other time I got up there was when I tried the duct tape and, as is to be expected, there was a ladder laying conveniently in the yard for my use.

This time however the ladder had been moved. Now I could have asked Charlie (my friend and land lord) for it, but then I'd have been subjected to questions like "why are you carrying a ton of gum and a camera up onto my roof?" and when that one was answered, the follow-up question: "Isn't that a bad idea though?" Then he'd have said that he'd fix it. Then in about three years the water dripping in through the hole would eat a hole into the floor and I'd have to put in one of those fireman poles, which would actually be kind of cool now that I think about it since it would lead down to the kitchen and bathroom areas, the only places I really go to besides my computer desk.

In fact if that were to occur and I gained a flow of steady income I'd probably never leave those three rooms. Now that I think about it maybe I should have just let it happen so I could slide down my fireman type pole and then shimmy my way up it with a plate of dinner in my teeth like some sort of pirate-waiter.

But hindsight is twenty twenty. The roof is patched now and I don't think I want to go back up there. You're about to find out why. You see, I had to quietely find a ladder. The one I found was under six feet tall and the roof was perhaps ten feet tall or more with a one foot overhang. I'm six feet tall and a ladder should get you at least half your height from the surface you want to get onto. Another major problem was that there was a nearly one foot awning that made it incredibly difficult to get up and onto the roof.

So you see, it was a daunting task, and I knew it would be even harder to get down than to get up. I couldn't even get up with the ladder as it was and so I had to augment it. Luckily there was plenty of junk around. I considered an old table but figured it would be too rickety. I finally found an ancient cooler that the latters twisted legs barely fit on. The problem with this was it slid around on the plastic cooler top. I fixed this by finding a rubber mudflap that goes behind the wheels of tractor trailors, you know the ones that always have women or truck names on them.

                                       The title of this image is "J. M.'s suicide machine"

So finally I had my finished product and I tested it a bit. A ladder made of a cooler, a mat, and a ladder with a twisted leg is not a very good idea, especially since I had to turn the cooler and rest the ladder on the bottom right and top left corners just to ensure that each leg of the ladder was actually on something. With the mat inbetween ladder and cooler this was a bit of a feat but I eventually tested it out and made sure that it would be steady. I looked up at my goal high above my head and crossed myself, wondering if I'd updated my will recently. Then I steped onto the mat atop the cooler, and then... I began to ascend.