climbing the ladder of failure

My neighborhood at the HI Jolly boondocking area. it's still not crowded, but it's twice as many people as when I got here.

Since the weather warmed up I finally came out of hibernation and started on installing my rearview cameras.

 I didn't get a whole lot done, in fact all I did was take off the wireless cameras and patch up the holes I made to install them. But I figured those 15 minutes were well spent and didn't tire me out to the point that I might have to take a day off tomorrow to rest up. I'm a firm believer in pacing yourself so I don't get so tired I start making mistakes, but by 15 minutes into the job I found out I had already made the mistake of not stopping after 10 minutes.

Since I have to use my telescoping ladder to do this rearview camera project I was again reminded how difficult it is to open and close my very old and well used aluminum telescoping ladder. I consider this ladder absolutely essential for my full-time life and use it pretty regular but the difficulty of opening and closing it is causing me to revisit the thought of getting a new one.

Last year I thought about getting a new one and found out there were so many different ones on the market that I became overwhelmed with choices and couldn't make up my mind which one was best so I gave up on the whole thing. I told you I was indecisive.

But its not just being hard to open and close that's the problem, it's a safety issue that if it's not opened properly the different sections don't lock into place right and parts of it can collapse when you step on them, and this can result in everything from embarrassing to downright life-threatening. Now if there's anything more ridiculous and downright stupid than an old geezer climbing up on a roof, it's an old geezer climbing up on a roof using a ladder that he knows may collapse at any minute.

I went poking around at some of the vendors looking for telescoping ladders and so far only found one place that had them. The ladder was just what I was looking for, 12 1/2 feet tall, will hold 330 pounds, if I ever weighed that much I don't think I would be climbing around on a telescoping ladder. He wanted $130 for it which is a bit on the high side but the problem was there was no brand name on the ladder or the box it was in. He assured me that all Chinese ladders are made by the same company and they put whatever name on them you want and this one just didn't have a name.

Now I may be lazy, unmotivated, and unambitious, but I'm not a fool... That's just my opinion, other people in my life have expressed different opinions, but not having a brand name on it sounded like some kind of factory second or something nobody wanted to be associated with.That was enough to scare me off so I guess I will have to keep looking.

                             theboondork

The wireless cameras have been removed and are now just an expensive bad dream. I was thinking of getting a monkey and training him to climb the ladder first to see if It's going to collapse. But PETA said that was monkey cruelty and I should get a neighbor to test it.