Monday, May 16, 2005

"That's six kinds of fucked up."

When you go up in a condor you're essentially loading a construction lift platform to it's maximum weight capacity (1,000 lbs if the arm is straight up in the air, 500 lbs if you're 'armed out' to the side much at all) and then going 80 feet up in the air - not what they were designed to do (Rumor has it that the lift manufacturers, when they saw how we use these lifts, were completely horrified - and a LOT of new safety procedures have been implemented in the last year or so). The advantage is that once your light is 'set', there's not much to do, and it's now illegal to 'walk the arm' (climb out of the basket and shimmy down the arm to get on the ground - although we all used to do it), so you get to sleep while all the other poor suckers have to run around all night. So normally, if you know that you're coming in for a 'condor call', you don't bother to sleep that day because you know that you'll be able to catch a good nap during the night.

Last night, on "Material Girls", we had three lifts in the air at the same time, and we had to do a lighting cue (One light dimmed out as the other two came up) , which meant that we had to pay attention all night and none of us got any sleep. That's just wrong - or as one of the guys said after we came down "That's six kinds of fucked up."

In addition, the fog rolled in right after we went up, and we all ended up getting drenched.

Call time: 2pm
Wrap time: 4 am

I'm completely wiped out today. I slept for a few hours when I got home this morning, but I feel like utter crap. My goal is to stay awake until 8pm, and then I'll pass out.

God, I hope I didn't get a cold.

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