I was attaching my Starlink to the top of the gable on the roof of my house this afternoon. This is well over thirty feet from the ground. The job required me to look over the edge of the roof to drill into the gable as we do not have a ladder that goes that high (nor do I think that I would have enjoyed that either). I was not able to reach far enough down to attach the cord to the soffit, and even thinking about my attempt to do so to write it down now is giving me vertigo.
We had a full morning leading up to this time of terror. We had taken care of the trash (which had been piling up due to a couple of busy Saturdays) and the dog yard (which had piles from the winter) and decided to eat lunch before tackling this multi-step project. After finding the pieces and the new cord for the system (since the old one had been crunched in a couple of windows), I drilled a hole in our wall and put the new cord threw it.
We then had to remove the satellite dish from the top of the garage's gable. Connor was overwhelmed by the experience, but Janelle asked to go up before I made my attempt. Although the job was an awkward one, she managed to do it rather easily. Her only issue was that she got a little stuck coming down. Connor thought that she said that her boots were stuck, but she wasn't wearing boots. Thankfully, she was able to get unstuck and come back down without further incident.
I went up and removed the long wall mount, but Connor finished up with removing the anchors that held the cable in place along the garage's soffit. We then moved the ladder to the back of the house (the most level place that can reach the edge of the roof). Connor wanted to see if he could handle it. When he got to the top of the ladder, he declared that we needed to hire someone else to do this for us.
Although I was in full agreement, we had passed the point of no return if I wanted to restore our Internet anytime soon. I took everything I need up and took my first tentative steps onto the roof. For me it was as momentous as Neil Armstrong's steps on the moon; although, I did not handle it nearly as bravely. I was hunched over, ready to drop to my hands and knees, fearful that I would start sliding off the metal roof.
I was able to straighten a bit as I got more comfortable with the broad expanse of our roof and was able to move the cable around from the back of the house (where I climbed up with it on the ladder) to the front where I was going to attach the dish. However, when I got to the edge, terror swept through me. I took steps back and sat down. I then crawled over and peered over the edge. I was trembling so bad that I did not see how I would be able to even hold the drill, let alone drill in pilot holes.
I decided to move back and take some pictures with my phone. I couldn't complete a full panoramic as I was shaking too much (the anti-shake technology on these cameras is amazing) and was too afraid to turn too far around. I then decided to go to the edge again. I noticed that Janelle was taking pictures of me, and I was mortified (scared to death) that she was recording one of my most terrified moments and yelled for her to stop. In retrospect (and no longer having my mind trapped in fear), I'm glad that she took them.
To complete the job, I laid down on the roof and shakily made the attachments needed while looking down that thirty foot drop. I would then shimmy down the roof to the next anchor point--which I did a couple of times. Unfortunately, I was entirely unable to face my fear of two roof edges, so I did not get the cable all the was to the end of the gable.
I was most concerned about getting back onto the ladder from the roof. I deeply wished that there could be a trampoline or pile of matrices that I could just jump down to instead (yeah, right). Surprisingly, I made it onto the ladder almost without a thought. I don't know if I can fully express how happy I was to be on the ground again. I now fully understand the compulsion that some people have to kiss the ground after a traumatic experience.
The underside of the soffit at the end of the roof was still beyond the reach of our fully extended ladder. Still, Connor insisted that he wanted to finish up attaching the cable, which he did after taking the time to calm himself. We then placed the cable covers to each side of the hole in our wall and turned on the system. I doesn't seem markedly improved from its other location, but it is working--which had been a concern.
I don't know if the move to the higher location was the best decision on my part. We needed to exchange the cable before putting it through the wall--which we needed to do if we wanted to open the upstairs window again, and I figured that we might as well move it since we would be up there anyway. However, now I'm not so sure; I certainly don't want to go up there again--ever. I don't know what I will do if it has a problem--especially in the winter.
Well, it's done. I survived. That's already a lot to be grateful for.