Weblog Entry - 11/02/2003: "on top of the world... or at least the roof"

What an absolutely perfect autumn day! Yesterday was sunny and warm, just a slight covering of light clouds in a blue sky. Wonderful weather for gathering the camera toys and wandering on a photo expedition. Or a perfect day to play diligent homeowner and trade a day of possible play against some much needed roof repairs.

It hurt to leave the cameras in their bags and head off to Home Depot for the materials needed for one of my least favorite jobs. Builtup roofing needs a little TLC every few years, a new application of asphalt and filling of cracks with roof cement. Climbing a shaky ladder with 5 gallon drums of nasty sticky black gunk isn't fun but doing it on a fine fall day beats all hell out of trying to find and fix a leak in the dead of winter. A little preparation now will let me sleep soundly during the worst of the upcoming winter's storms.

It's kind of funny that for years my idea of a good time was to scale steep rock cliffs, standing on quarter inch projections from a smooth sandstone face or slipping the very tips of my fingers into tiny cracks, depending on strength and friction to keep me suspended hundreds of feet in the air. Climbing rock seemed natural, almost secure, with little thought of plummeting through the air. Asking me to climb sixteen feet up a shaky aluminum ladder is an entirely different story. Ladders scare the crap out of me. I hate them and mistrust them, always fearing that they're just waiting to slip away at the foot or slide sideways across the wall. The worst part has always been the transition from ladder to roof or back again. You've never seen anyone move with more trepidation than I exhibited yesterday.

I'd contemplated carrying some camera toys up with me, to perhaps get a pinhole view of the city's skyline. After my second trip up the ladder with heavy buckets of tar, the idea of camera play faded away. Any contemplation of photography disppeared completely with the opening of the can of roof cement. No way was this yucky black goo getting anywhere near my cameras, not with the way it had of spreading to any nearby surface.

With the worst parts of the roof repaired with cement and patches, I opened the first can of asphalt and began slopping it across the roof with a brush. The job felt like it was going quickly and the second can went on as I proceeded across the flat rooftop. Maybe it was the fumes from the goop, maybe a bit of dehydration from four hours in the hot sun with no water but it seemed to take me forever to figure out a way to get myself and all the tools back down the ladder while having enough left at the top to finish coating the two square foot patch I'd painted myself into at the head of the ladder. I finally figured it out and headed slowly and shakily down to finish the job with a coating of the lower roof section.

Cleanup from this job is a real treat. Fortunately, I'd done it before and was as ready as I could be. Plenty of thick trash bags to cover the sticky black buckets and tools, a gallon of mineral spirits and an old coffee can for cleaning the tar from the tools I didn't want to lose to the job, old jeans and shoes too far gone for any other use, and a cold beer to round it all off. The tingling feeling in my skin's finally fading from a brief scrub with a mineral spirit soaked paper towel and most of the big chunks have been scraped away. The only reminders of the nastiness are stiff muscles and a smooth shiny roof.

I wasn't entirely the responsible homeowner at Home Depot. I figured I owed myself a treat for taking on such an unpleasant task, so I found some toys in the lighting department. I'd looked through there previously for some UV lamps and never found the size and wattage I need to construct a UV printer for my cyanotype and Van Dyke printing. Must have been some leftovers from a Halloweeen lighting special, but yesterday they had 20 watt blacklight fixtures and bulbs on sale for $12.97. The lamps were the BLB variety, not as nice as the BL for alt-process printing but certainly usable. I scored enough for constructing a UV printer big enough to handle 11x14 prints with no trouble. As soon as aching muscles allow, I hope to put one together so I can print during winter's darkness. It'll be nice having a constant output UV light source. No more need to guess about exposure times or curse a cloud crossing the sun, no need to confine my alt-process work to weekends. I may even get brave enough to give gum printing another try, and who knows... platinum?