The Other Side Of Florida

Well I am here. On Sanibel Island, FL. And where is that? If I wanted to know I would use this secret internet site NOBODY knows about. It is called "Google maps".

Anyhow every year I make the trek over to the island for a week. It is always the same exact week too. I have been doing this for some 30 years now. It is a timeshare deal. A pretty good deal too.

But there is one problem. The nemesis. The nemesis is here every year. But I have concocted a way to defeat the nemesis.

And what is this nemesis? Stairs. There is no elevator here, so everything you want to bring must be hauled up the stairs. There are 4 flights of 7 stairs - for a grand total of 28 steps. This may not sound like a lot, and in reality it is not. Unless there is a lot of shit to haul up.

Now you may notice something odd in the stairs photo. There seems to be a rope of some sort in the picture. More on that later.

Now if I am at the top of the stairs and I look over the rail, I can see that it is a long way down. Too far to jump, and too far to throw things up to someone standing at the top.


But there is a solution. The rope you see is a big part of that solution. Using that rope, a pulley, some straps, and some scrap metal parts this device was cobbled together.

I am a big fan of labor saving devices that actually save labor. And this device really saves A LOT of work. No having to go up and down all those steps carrying shit. Someone downstairs simply attaches a bag to a hook, loads shit in the bag, then hauls it up by pulling the rope. Someone at the top of the stairs is there to receive the shit, remove the bag from the hook, take the bag in the apartment, unload the shit, then send the bag back down.

Meanwhile, the person at the bottom of the stairs loads the second bag with shit and waits for the other person to get done so that bag can be sent up.

Doing this, all the crap can be hauled up MUCH faster and with MUCH less effort.

This means that I can hang out here faster. The view from the back porch.

The water in the background is the Gulf Of Mexico.

The beer is Sierra Nevada.