See the white line on the Mountain? That’s where we’ll be heading today. Naturally, without helmets, my only somewhat professional looking piece of gear being my hiking boots.
Yup, it’s getting serious.
Off to an intimidating start.
First, Silas was mocking me for wearing boots in the hot sun, but…
That’s more or less the last photo I’ve got of him, shortly after that he decided to go back down because it seemed too risky for him to go on. I’m gonna say that his sneakers were to blame and not his common sense kicking in.
Because, well, this mountain might not be particularily hard to scale, but one mistake and they gotta pluck your mangled corpse out of the treetops.
But damn, that was worth it. On this day, there weren’t many other climbers, so the risk of rocks hitting me was rather slim. Silas had been stuck on the very last intimidating part, after that it only got easier.
Finally at the Top, took me approximately 1:30hrs.
Small snack break on the way back. It had been cloudy before, but now the midday sun was burning down mercilessly and I had to keep my hands free of sweat for a safe descent.
Just to give you another angle. See the edge on the lower end? It’s only getting steeper down there…
Silas snuck a photo of me on the way down. The first part realIy is the steepest, up top it gets much better. I really need more mountains like those. And someone who is bonkers enough to go with me I guess.
Maybe Silas’ criticism of my shoes may be somewhat valid. My shoes may have the required grip, but ventilation is’nt exactly their strong suit.
On our way back home we got honked at twice, so I decided to do a check on our taillights. Result: Everything electrical inside the tailgate was dead. Hm. Remembering that the central locking for the tailgate had stopped a few weeks ago, I took a look at the suspected weak point at the hinge…
Wow. Couldn’t have gotten much of a cleaner cut myself. Nice job, Tailgate. The rubber hose on the right is not only supposed to protect the wires from rainwater, but also from the metal edge. Somehow, one side wasn’t plugged in correctly, so the tailgate could slowly chop away with every opening and closing. Why did I not see this the last time? Because I took off the other side of that hose, figuring that the cables would look just as good on the other side.
So, right away the next morning I got to the next Bunnings to get some kind of roof over my head and some shrinking tube.
The weather around here seems to be somewhat inconclusive if it wants to kill you by baking or by drowning you.
Literally four hours of standing ducked on the rear step and soldering went into this. I remember days when I had more fun soldering. Like, with a table to work on, with the wires not pulling away from each other and with no hot solder dropping on my safety flipflops and the hands of the poor Silas who had to hold the cables together.
Success! I think we’ve earned our booze this Friday.
And this is an ominous spoiler about another lemon which will surely demand my attention, soon…