Spiral Madness
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As if we don’t have enough to do around here, I’ve come up with yet another project.  It’s not my fault, of course.  Really it’s not.  It’s Katrina’s fault.  We were at her house for dinner one night when she said, “Tammy, why don’t you take that spiral staircase off our hands?”  Her better half chimed in with, “While you’re at it, take the railing that matches it so I don’t have to haul it to the dump.”  Electric Horseman just groaned.

Turns out, I have admired the spiral staircase for about twenty years.  Butterfly had wanted it years earlier to use in their geodesic dome (yes, they were Dome Gnomes).  But at the time, the staircase was still in use, so had we removed it then, it would not have been appreciated.

I tried valiantly to talk them out of it.

“I think you should sell it,” I replied.

“Nah, way too much trouble,” Trina said.

“Seriously, it’s got be worth some real money.  Put it on EBay, or Craig’s List.” I insisted.

“We are not going to do that.  We’d rather you have it and then we can come visit it.”

We went back and forth for a while, and I even called a few days later to argue the case for selling it.  I truly thought they should get some cash for it.  It wasn’t going to happen.  They were adamant that we should take it if we wanted it.

Fine.  Now I had to figure out how to transport a 400lb iron staircase.

One ring dingy.  Two ringy dingies.

“Hi, Psycho Cowboy, what are you doing?”

“What do you want?” he asked, suspicious already.  Why is he like that?

“Do you remember when you were at Trina’s house, bidding concrete, did you see the spiral staircase on the pile of rubble?”

“No, why?”

“She wants me to have it.  I thought maybe you’d have an idea as to how I could haul it.”

“What are you going to do with it?” he asked, snorting with disgust.

“Well, that’s a good question.  There are two possibilities.  First I’m going to try to put it into use as access off our bedroom deck.  If that doesn’t work, it’s going to become yard art for Butterfly to hold flower pots and become her stairway to heaven.  So to speak.  I’m not planning on her using it for that anytime soon.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line.

Finally he asked, “Do you know how long it is?”  Oh, good, he was buying into this.

“No, but I can ask Katrina to measure it.  Why?”

“Because I need to know which flatbed trailer to take.  It’d be a lot easier to take the smaller one down that steep hill.”

SCORE!  Now I had a truck, trailer and driver.  If I could just scare up about 6 able-bodied guys, I’d be in business.

A few weeks later I had my ducks in a row.

truck and trailer in place

Here you see Psycho’s truck and trailer backed as far down the hill to the front of Katrina’s house as he can go.  She has quite a view over the American River canyon.  The staircase is down to the left, where you can’t see it yet.  Psycho took one look at it and said, “No way is that going to fit on my trailer, I should have brought the longer one!” 

A tape measure proved that it would, indeed, fit, but just barely.

making room

Clearly, though, the generator that was in residence on the trailer was going to have to be moved to the back of the truck.

the object of my desire

Here’s the rest of the driveway, which they no longer use as a driveway.  They’ve since built a new garage and access around the lower part of the house, off a different street.  You can see the staircase on the pile of concrete rubble on the other side of the new gate they’ve just put in place.  This will eventually be a patio.

trying to get a handle on it

After we removed a lot of debris that was on top of the staircase, the crew went to work starting to move it.

they're on a roll

Madame Kitty gets some loving

Fifinella was distracted by Madame Kitty, the oldest cat in existence.  She was afraid she was going to blow out her knee lifting this monstrous thing, and she doesn’t want to risk that.  I gave her my camera and told her to make herself useful.

now we had to lift it even higher

Somehow we got the staircase up the hill and to the trailer.

can't believe it's on the trailer

Magically, it seems, it got onto the trailer.  No one blew out their back or their knee and there wasn’t even too much cursing.

it looks at home here

the hill from hell

Here’s another shot of the hill we had to carry the dang thing up to get it to the trailer.  I think that incline made it weigh at least another 100 pounds!

pilot pow-wow

While we were tying things down, Fifinella and Maverick disappeared.  They were with the next-door neighbor, a fellow pilot.  Where was he when all the heavy lifting was going on?

Psycho told me to follow him on the way to our house, so I could call him if I saw anything starting to fall off his trailer.  Call him?  If that thing started to roll, my plan was to floor it and take off like a speeding bullet.  I did not want to be anywhere around to see what kind of damage it would cause.  But what I said was, “Sure, I’ll be right behind you all the way!”

we got a few strange looks

“This,” I told Fifinella as we followed him through town, “is about as redneck as it gets.”

I couldn't have planned this

“Oh, no – wait!  It’s getting better!”

Fifinella was snapping pictures as I drove. 

“No one,” I told her, “is going to believe we didn’t set this up just for the pictures!”

piled high

“How perfect is that?  Psycho next to a truck full of antlers and horns?”  I called him to ask if he knew who was next to him, but he didn’t.  He’s a great collector of antlers and is always on the lookout for shed ones around the ranch.

starting on the back roads

taking the corners gently

finally on our dusty driveway

backing into place

Dino and Lucky "stupidvise"

and they said it couldn't be done ...

The staircase is now resting comfortably next to our pile of gorilla hair (redwood mulch), where it will stay until we start the next phase of this project.  The guy in charge of that has been out to study the situation and thinks he can make it work on the deck where I was hoping to have it installed.  He’s planning to have a crane do the heavy lifting, which is a good thing because I doubt there’s a snowball’s chance in you-know-where that I could round up that crew again.  They left here with spinning tires in such a cloud of dust that I hardly had time to say, “Thanks, don’t be a stranger!”