The tale of Death Pipe

In the history of stupid ideas, this one wasn't too bad off the bat.

"Hey, grab your camera and we'll head over to my office," Danny said. "There's an old smokestack there that has some scaffolding we can climb. The view will be really worth it."

OK, here it's important to replace the word "some scaffolding" with "most of the scaffolding in the city at this time" and "we can climb" with the addendum "for hours and hours on end."

He was right about the big ticket - it was totally worth it.

Here's the link to the Flickr page with a bunch of pictures - including Dan looking like he'd just filmed the redneck version of Indiana Jones and then kicked back with a case of Busch Light.

So the punchline to the story?

We climb all the way up 250 feet of staircase - some missing landings - and there's no light the final 50 feet - "That's how we know there's only 50 feet left!" chirped Danny, the optimist - and get to the top. We tried very hard to make sure not to fall to our deaths - which I was writing in my head because I used to have to deal with people like us dying like that all the time and it's a hard switch to turn off - and we were very successful little pandas in that regard.

We hit the final platform, can see freedom, sunshine, fresh air and the big finish and realize that the key Danny had been given was not the same one that fit the padlock keeping the top of the stack closed.

Son of a bitch.

I think anyone who goes through the effort to get all the way to the top shouldn't have to worry about a lock, but I could be wrong.

Maybe they had a Mary Poppins problem and needed to keep her out. I hear it's hard to get them to move along once they've nested.