Money's been so tight for so long, a lot of things have been put off around the house, including our rather large redwood deck behind our house. It has needed a major rebuild for some time. Yesterday, I was running the electric hedge trimmer on some bushes next to the deck and a board gave way. My left leg went through the hole all the way down to my mid-thigh. It was one of those moments when you just take inventory of what might be broken and mentally prepare for the emergency room. Somehow, all I got was a scrape along the outside of my thigh and it feels like I have a deep bruise in that area. How I got into that position without breaking or tweaking something really badly I have no idea.
Be grateful that you didn't manage to hedge trim an ear or a finger or something else off....
Stephen
> Somehow, all I got was a scrape along the outside of my thigh and it feels like I have a deep bruise in that area.
Glad to hear you weren't badly hurt; sometimes it doesn't take much. Last night a local kid -- a former UCD baseball player who was also the Davis High pitching coach -- was goofing around with friends at a party. He fell, hit his head, and died this afternoon from the injury.
You were very fortunate, Old Timer, to only come away with minor injuries. Being of a similar age, I have made myself avoid situations that could lead to very expensive results if things go bad. I haven't been on a ladder in years, for instance. As the key employee of my little business, when I'm laid up no one is going to be making money. Suffering in pain is bad enough without adding stress from loss of income plus medical expenses.
BTW, hire someone do do the deck repair job while you are making money the way you know best.
Holy - Yeah, I agree. I don't need to lose any fingers sawing boards while I could be doing something I halfway know how to do. I've actually been thinking about buying a new ladder, though. Maybe that's a bad idea. The one I have now is not tall enough to get on the roof and our old TV antenna fell down a couple months ago and it is still sitting there prominently above the front door of our house. That wouldn't be too good for me to get up there wrestling a worthless TV antenna and fall off and break my neck would it?
Excellent example.
A few years ago, the father of one of my helpers climbed on his roof to seal down some shingles that had blown up. He was dabbing sealant, pressing the errant shingle, then moving to his right to get the next one. This worked fine until he moved right one too many times and simply fell off the end of the roof. He was totally sober and a talented blue-collar worker who merely got so involved in what he was doing that he lost track of where he was on the roof. That one second of error-making resulted in a very solid THUD when he hit the ground. Miraculously, nothing was broken, but, he was extremely sore for over a month. Had he been severely injured he might have laid there for a very long time before anyone would have found him, behind the house, non-visible from the highway with no one regularly driving into his driveway far enough to see him there. He was 55 at the time.
Was up on the roof a month ago replacing shingles that had blown off during a wind storm, new roof due this summer. It's been about 30 years when I was having trouble with the bearings on a roof vent on this same roof that I had installed to vent the attic, the seals for the bearings failed and the bearings got dry, they began to shriek when the cover I had placed over it blew off during a windy ice storm. I did not want to go up there on that ice and in the wind at night but could not get any sleep from the noise. Shot a target arrow through the thing to stop the spinning. Went through louvers on both sides and did no damage. Never did feel comfortable on roofs and now at 67, with one eye and no depth perception, it is worse.
jud
