The Sign Monkey

Last week we were walking home and saw a man starting to wrap something around a square metal pole. It looked like he was getting ready to climb the pole, so we watched as he spent a lot of time getting ready. Then he did start to climb. It was amazing to watch. He had two straps wrapped around him and the pole. First he lifted the top one as high as he could reach and put the second strap about chest high and leaned back. He stuck the toe of his sneakers against the pole and pulled himself up, adjusted the straps and repeated the process, over and over until he got to the top and pulled himself up, next to the sign that was sticking out over the road. The amazing thing was that we had been wearing cleats over our boots because the sidewalks were so slippery, but he didn't have any problems climbing a vertical pole. Much of the time he didn't have a safety strap that we could see. He worked all by himself. We stood out in freezing weather with snow falling, just amazed by this. None of the other people walking by seemed to think it was anything unusual.

We hope you can make out the details in the pictures. It was night and snowing, so these are the best we could get of him in action.

Here he is at the top of the pole, using only one harness strap at this point. You can see his shoes aren't anything special. We couldn't figure out how he climbed that cold, slippery metal pole.

Climbing up to the top of the sign with electrical wires (220 voltage) running close to where he was working

He pulled the new vinyl sign up behind him and hung it over a light pole (far right of picture). Then he kicked the snow off the top of the sign before he started working

Sometimes he worked from the top of the sign, but sometimes he used a little seat when he had to lower himself to work at the sides or bottom of the sign. The seat had two settings, one for working higher and one for at the bottom. He climbed up and down the rope.

Off with the old sign

Some spots were nailed down better than others

Rolling out the new . . .

. . . and dropping down

He knows his stuff--it was perfectly centered, first try!

One last time down the far side to tack it all down

and almost done

We were too cold to stay around and watch him wrap things up and climb down. Here's the sign in daylight so you can get a better idea of what he had to go through. He was on top of that sign over a busy road while it was snowing! We've seen them use cherry pickers on other signs, so we were very surprised to see him doing it this way. (The pole looked yellow in the other pictures because of the lighting, but it's really white.)
This week in Russia:
Things have turned a little chilly here. We have icicles hanging from the light right outside our window. So far it hasn't dropped below zero F, although it has gotten to about 10 (-12 C). Then the next day warms up to a little above freezing and the day after that gets colder, then it warms up to just barely above freezing and then it gets colder again . . . Winter has definitely hit.