Chair #65 Arapahoe Basin - Exhibition Lift

What started out as an innocent email by the Consigliere about possibly buying a ski chair has come to it's artful fruition.

Purchased in May of 2010 and picked up that June at the 11,000 foot base of Arapahoe Basin Ski Resort while it snowed, yes it was snowing in June when we picked the chair up, the triple person ski chair from the recently decommissioned Exhibition Lift has become a permanent usable work of art in my backyard.

It did not come easy as I had to be very creative to figure this construction project out. The major problem was to somehow attach the chair to a structure with the ability to swing. After an endless search of the Internet I came across a pipe scaffolding clamp that looked like it would work, they are the blue pieces in the 6th picture. I consulted with the scaffolding company about the usability of such a clamp and they had no idea if it would work and had never heard of it being used in such a manner and quite possibly thought I was nuts. We still don't know if it will work but as soon as the bracing comes down we will give it the old college try and hopefully not end up on our collective asses.

The structure to attach the chair to, the large rusting tubes, came courtesy of my companies excess pipe pile. I found a suitable location overlooking the stinking cesspool pit  hot tub, "The Godfather Forest" and the "Frog Kingdom".

The Godfather and the Consigliere started to dig the holes so we could place the nicely formed rebar column cylinders that I hand bent and built, tip of the hat to the Old Man who worked the iron in his younger days, see picture #1 & #3, and soon discovered that I had mistaken where the patio electrical and hot tub speaker lines were buried thusly causing the holes to be slightly oblong instead of round. The electrical lines were suppose to be in the concrete but due to an issue with the first pour of the patio filling in one of the main conduits with concrete the electrical lines had to be reworked, thank you lesbian electricians, not that there is anything wrong with that. This caused the chair to have to be moved further from the hot tub and hence the covering of my face to keep the inspectors guessing as I had told them the lines where in the concrete per code and shooting of a bird at the offending lines, pictures #18 and #20.

We used 9 - 80# bags of quikcrete to fill the foot and half wide by two foot deep holes and in one of the holes we encountered water, see picture #11, I mean we are at 6,000 ft and the water table is 2 feet below the surface, Come on Man!, well at least when the Apocalypse happens I'll have fresh water.

The wheelbarrow's tire finally gave out after 6 years of service and I replaced it with a solid rubber tire that had the added benefit of being a mag wheel, that's right.....I just pimped my wheelbarrow.

Thank you to the Consigliere(Black Shirt), JF(Red Shirt) and Oreo, the dog(Black Furry Coat). I(Blue Shirt) would also like to thank our very own Wilson the next door neighbor(See Home Improvement for the reference) with his sage advice over the fence, see him as he peeks over the fence in the second mag wheelbarrow picture.