Thursday
Four days before the wedding Jen got a call from the Wadsworth. The wedding planned for the night before ours had purchased a pergola for use.
Pergola: noun An archway in a garden or park consisting of a framework covered with trained climbing or trailing plants.
As the structure would take some time to deconstruct, and they really didn’t want to have to take it apart Sunday morning, they asked us if we’d like to use it. It was a good looking structure.
Jen and I agreed that it’d be nice to use, though the offer came with a warning. The structure was setup about 100 feet further away from the mansion than we wanted. That means we’d have to move it.
Saturday
Once the pergola was set up by the preceding wedding, Pat, T, and I went to the mansion to check out the structure and see how hard it would be to move. That pergola? 12 feet tall, ~8feet long. i.e. HUGE. I admitted that this would be too challenging to move, but Theresa, perhaps enamored by its beauty, encouraged us to reconsider. After a brief discussion, we agreed to give it a go.
I didn’t want to take any chances, so I asked that our Pergola team report to the Mansion at 9am on the day of the wedding.
The Pergola Team:
Mike D
Steve
Tree
Pat
Dad D
Jay
Sunday
Sunday morning, after an episode of star trek, I loaded up the car with some tools. Steve stopped by and we headed to the mansion. T brought coffee and doughnuts.
First task: remove the ornamentation
Second task: we had no idea.
We had two guesses for moving this thing. The columns were hollow, so the first idea was to lift the columns up and carry the structure as a whole. This didn’t work as there were significant stakes in the ground beneath the columns.
Our second idea was to lift the top structure off the columns, and then move the columns individually. We had four ladders, and at their highest A frame height we were able to just barely lift the structure. The problem here was that we were extremely unstable on the ladders. There was high risk for disfigurement.
We struggled with this for about an hour before Dad D recommended we remove the top cross members to lighten the burden. The annoying part, and why we didn’t try this out of the gate, was that the pieces were secured with torx head screws and we didn’t have the right tools.
After discussion, we agreed with Dad D and Steve and I went off to Home Depot to buy the a set of Torx head screw drivers. This was much quicker than driving home.
Once we’d decided on this method, the deconstruction went pretty quick.
Please note the extremely large stakes that were used to secure the pergola columns.
Repositioning and Rebuilding begins
Yes, once we figured out what to do it was a quick process but with so many failed attempts, the process ended up taking 4 hours for 6 people. What an endeavor!
We were extremely glad to have taken on the task. The Pergola was a beautiful structure and in retrospect was a very fun distraction from pre-wedding stresses.
“As the structure would take some time to deconstruct, and they really didn’t want to have to take it apart Sunday morning, they asked us if we’d like to use it.”
So, you chose to disassemble and reassemble it Sunday morning. Good choice!
Woah woah woah…slow down there buddy. What episode of Star Trek did you watch?
Season 5, Episode 5: Disaster.
This is the one where Picard is stuck in a compromised turbo lift with three science fair award winning kids after the enterprise hits a quantum field. Meanwhile Jordi and Crusher have to successfully decompress a cargo bay to launch radioactive material into space and Troi has to trust that a Riker, carrying the head of Data, can stabilize the warp core before Ro convinces her to separate the saucer! Further, Worf is helping Kieko give birth in ten forward (WHERE WAS GUINAN?!?!)
It’s an excellent episode where we learn how critical trust is to the survival of the Enterprise. Except for Klingons. We learn never to trust a Klingon as a midwife.
One thing that annoyed me with this episode… we never learn what the girl did for her science fair project. The little guy did work with Radishes and the middle kid did something with moths. But we didn’t learn what Marissa did. I think this would have been a nice addition to the story that could have foreshadowed her leadership role in the tubo lift shaft. And Frankly, assigning her ‘number one’ status based solely off age (or height) was a rather prejudiced moment for the Capt.
Guinan was listening.
Maybe she reminded him of Riker? Willing to go on all away missions to keep the capatain safe, or sleep with all compatible alien species. Either he sees her as a leader or as promiscuous.
Oh that episode! I always thought it was pretty badass that Troi had the rank of Lt. Commander. Then she actually gets put in charge and is totally incompetent, which let me down a little bit.
Yeah, a little disappointing right? How sweet would it have been if she’d stepped up and just OWNED the situation Picard style.