Life experience mash-up: Roof this.

We installed a ridge vent in our roof the other day.

Because, blah blah blah, air flow, yadda yadda yadda, ventilation efficiency...

It's that thing at the top.
Basically we don't want our attic to double as a sauna.

Anyway, the "why" doesn't matter. What is significant, is that before this little adventure I probably gave as much thought to roofing as I do to why Bill Murray doesn't get his fair share of marshmallow slime in Ghostbusters.

Although now that I think about it...
Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson look like they rolled around in a middle school prank's worth of shaving cream.
Yet Bill Murray barely gets a dollop?
What the hell?!

At any rate, roofs and roofing in general have now gone from being an unknown quantity to one of my top five fears.

Mainly because of this:

Wow.
There's really nothing between me and death right now, huh?

I've never considered myself as being afraid of heights. I mean, I love roller coasters, I've stood on the glass floor at Toronto's CN Tower without fear, and I have absolutely no qualms about clambering up ladders. But there's just something about scrambling over a roof that terrifies me.

Of course I didn't realize this until I was actually on said roof.

T: "Today would be a good day to install that ridge vent."
B: "Okay, I'll help you!"

..... ..... .....

And this is what reckless confidence gets you:

Oh my God.
I am going to die.

Of course, having done this many times before, Troy is climbing all over like a damn spider monkey.

Weeee!

So while he's doing his "look-Ma-no-hands" bullshit, I'm hunched over like Igor with a pry bar in one hand while the other claws desperately at the asphalt shingles.

However, during this time of pants shitting terror I did learn some valuable lessons.

- Thank goodness for crab soccer.

Remember this?

The lame offspring of soccer and limbo.

You know, that "wacky" game you'd play in gym class that usually resulted in severely scraped knuckles and finally ended when someone got kicked in the face.

Smell my foot!

Well, if it wasn't for crab soccer teaching me the intricacies of walking backwards on my hands and feet, someone probably would have had to call the fire department.
Going up the slope of a roof is one thing, it's getting back down without gravity making you it's bitch; that's tricky...

Pictured: Gravity's bitches.

- Sawdust is slippery.

There's an old trick that involves using sawdust on snow paths to increase traction. Unfortunately, the same does not apply for asphalt roofs.

Sawdust sucks when you're thirty feet in the air.

Asphalt shingles are covered in granules. And when sawdust and shingle granules combine, it makes for an unholy union of too much loose surface area.
In other words, the chances of falling to your death increase significantly.

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

Why did we even have sawdust on the roof? Well, part of installing a ridge vent involves making a gap in the apex of the roof so air can escape.
So, in our case, part of the roof had to be cut out to provide for the vent.

Mind the gap.

Here's Troy being a badass with a circular saw and just daring sawdust to fuck up his afternoon.

I believe the term is "bear".

- Stubbornness > Fear

I have a "healthy fear" of a lot of things. Death, dismemberment, spiders, needles, lack of internet connectivity...

Router panic!

And now scaling roofs has been added to the list.

In the days following the ridge vent episode, I found myself evaluating the slope of neighborhood roofs and imagining climbing them. Occasionally experiencing fits of anxiety when the slant was too steep.