17. Pole Position
Uh, pardon the placement of that pole--let's skip the obvious jokes.
I built a suspension harness out of rope and used two steel pulleys to create a proper 3-pass winch. I then suspended all this from the center line that we created back when the project started. Serious doubts whether this one rope would hold all the weight of this hoop and the tension of wedging into the sagging structure. Yet it did!
Sadly, the camera ran out of batteries for a while and we missed a chance at a final photo. In short, things were much better, but not perfect.
Lesson re-learned: you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
I suspect that John and Gaia will be 'tweaking' this monstrous structure for some time to come. But somewhere on that Tipi, there's an imaginary cornerstone with my name on it.
