I shot this with my GoPro Helmet Hero camera a couple of months ago on a winter evening. You climb up 30 feet to a platform, hook a bosun’s chair on to the cable, and let gravity zing you across the river to Louie’s house in Northern California It’s an ingenious device and Louie has been using it for over 40 years. The first time I did it, I was petrified, but I’ve become accustomed to it and look forward to each trip. Way fun! To get back, there’s another platform and another cable on the other side.
Louie’s a good cook and was making us clam pasta when I arrived. After dinner, along with his home-made Zinfandel, I rode the other cable back across the river in the foggy blackness of night, with a headlight. Hurtling out into the foggy darkness, scary, but coming into the landing platform on the other side, what a relief!
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
i love it!
What a beautiful life you lead, and Louie too!
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing this with us.
very cool, better than any concrete driveway! 🙂
i'm sitting in my windowless office doing paperwork. with sweaty palms…that was lovely though!
Perfect accompaniment to "clam pasta … along with his home-made Zinfandel"!