# That time I almost fell to my death. ![[almost fell diagrams.png]] When I was a little kid, my father's friend had an audio-visual business. One of his projects involved providing an industrial-sized projector, sound system, and screen for a conference of some kind being held at the Municipal Auditorium. When the conference was over, my father and I were invited to go and watch behind the scenes as the team broke down the installation. I've always had a thing for large indoor spaces, and stepping into the (largely empty) auditorium left me awestruck. We spent a half hour or so watching as workmen tore down the stage and packed the projector and speakers into large black shipping crates. After a while, our friend invited us to go out onto the roof of the auditorium to take in the view of downtown. A maintenance man opened a service stairwell for us, and we climbed some 8-9 stories until we reached the top. ![[almost fell walkways.jpg]] Rather than going directly to the roof, the stairwell let out into a massive room that sat above the false ceiling of the auditorium. It was a dark and hazy space, full of structural beams, dirty industrial skylights, a maze of catwalks, and - off in the distance - a door that led out to the roof of the building. In order to traverse the ceiling of the auditorium, we had to walk across several hundred feet of catwalks, each about 4’ wide and only having a single railing along one side. Other than that, the 'floor' was just a thin layer of acoustic material hanging from the framework. Partway across the ceiling, we needed to pass a group of 10-some workers pulling the movie screen up through a giant slot in the false ceiling. Each of them held taught a long rope that cascaded through the slot and down to the bottom of the screen; as they pulled in unison, they brought the screen up bit by bit. To pass by them, we had to time our steps to coincide with when they had stepped forward for the next pull of the rope, one by one, past each worker. However, when I stepped past one of the workmen, he lost his grip on the rope and fell backwards onto the catwalk - bumping into me and knocking me off the walkway. I managed to grab a pair of small crossbeams, and the workman grabbed my ankles, stopping me from punching through the thin ceiling and plummeting some 90' to my death. I did manage to get onto the roof to see the city, but for some reason, I don’t recall much of the rest of that afternoon. ∎