[TowerTalk] Never Free Climb

[Roger (K8RI)]

Back in the old days, there was a lot of free climbing and I'm sure the 
stastics shoe it.  Not just tower work, but bridges and buildings.
Looking at photos of that construction sends chills up and down my spine

Well over 50 years ago I worked along with my dad as part time linemen 
on a country telephone line.  The old kind with the two plated, steel 
wires on the green glass insulators.  No training, climbing poles 
although they were only about 25 feet high and old. they were like a 
cactus with all the thorns pointing up If your climbers slipped and you 
"hugged a pole" you spent a very painful time pulling splinters as they 
"stapled your clothes to you.

I climbed my own 40 ft tower free, but it dawned on me that a safety 
belt would be a good idea that would be safer and make work up there a 
lot easier.  No one knew what a full body harness and fall arrest gear 
was in those days.

Some years later I read about the new safety gear. Being older and 
hopefully a bit smarter I ordered a harness and fall arrest gear. I've 
since gone through two harnesses and fall arrest with their 
certification expiring.  I've never climbed free since those early days 
and I'd never purchase used climbing gear.  If it's still in 
certification, you don't know what it's been through.

Where I worked as an instrument tech, we each had our own gear( if you 
climbed you had gear) which was replaced "every year" Certification was 
much longer than that, but we worked in chlorides and that nylon gear 
suffered greatly because of that.  They looked fine, but at the end of a 
year the gear had lost considerable strength and was replaced with the 
old gear being destroyed.

I enjoyed climbing, but health issues have ended my climbing, flying, 
and touch typing ... or most things requiring two hands although the 
left hand is slowly coming back.  They still let me renew my drivers 
license with a doctor's slip.
I miss the climbing and flying, but after the second stroke I made the 
decision not to renew my medical.  I actually was able to renew it after 
the first one after a two year wait. They tell me they now know what 
caused it and I shouldn't have to worry about another, but I'll pass.