The Great Shoe-Picking Adventure

Wandering in a sunny morning around the Melbourne suburbs, I suddenly spotted what I've been looking for the last couple of months: a pretty rad pair of shoes.

Around Australia (and all western countries, sounds like a trend) young folks use to throw their shoes up the aerial wires of electrical poles, reaching impressive shoe-per-meter concentrations, sometimes. But those were perfect. I had time, nothing urgent to do, and they looked like my size, great, high shoes. 

Presently I started to shoot at it with my slingshot. Pretty useless, especially given the scanty amount of rocks around and the reasonable possibility a lost rock ends up in somebody's car. Then I tried to fish them. But after a fair hour of failing miserably, one guy came at me telling me fishing string is conductive. I was quite sceptical, but I stopped my attempt. Then I assembled my fishing rod, my walking stick, the two parts of my woomera (that I changed for a boomerang, by the way - somebody offered one to me, and though I can make it come back, I won't catch it, so far) my telescopic handnet with strings and sticky tape, obtaining a 4 meters pole that ended with my knife. But the thingwas so swingy there was no way that was gonna work. Then this awesome bloke came:

His name's Andrew, and he wants to be engineer. Well, I bet he will, and here's why:

He came back with a pair of scissors, a rope, and a few additional sticks. We stitched the scissors up the pole we reinforced with the sticks; then we attached a branch of the scissors to an upper pole with spare rubber I use to stitch up my slingshot so it'll spring back in open position - thereon we also attached the rope that was wriggling all the way down the pole to us. It looked like that at the top (less bright, though - thanks to my webcam)

So when you pulled the rope, the scissors would close... And snape the shoe string. And when it did happen, when they fell down the floor after a fair 4 hours attempt, I rushed to hug my co-worker in this wonderful endeavour. Andrew, you're the man.

Here are the shoes:

 

They're safety shoes, reinforced with iron at the top. After that, I nailed my shoes to the electrical pole, carved "Heading For Antarctica" on the front, and took this pic:

One entire fucking year of the most intense bit of life I ever had. Miss ya.

Reminds me of the ceremony of the old shoes with Francois... Remember this cold Turkish night, bro ?

Now, a few additional pics:

My new look (it's godamn windy here, and the fishermen I unloaded some sharks with gave me the hat):

^^

When I was at the salt lake, I picked up a chuck of salt - damn useful to cook mussels down here !

Follow me on Google: 

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Comments

[Céline]

Salut Antoine!



Nous venons de réviser notre anglais en parcourant ton blog... Contents de voir que tout se passe bien pour toi. JF est admiratif à la vue de ton long périple, il est presque un peu jaloux. Nous t'embrassons et te souhaitons bonne route à la poursuite de ton rêve.



Céline et JF

[lou]

j ai pas eu le temps de lire l article mais à la vue des photos je crois comprendre que tu as abandonnées tes shoes pour de nouvelles bien DURS!!! je suis ravie de te savoir les pieds au chaud, le corps au chaud !

pleins de pensées cher ami je tembrasse !!!!!

Louuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu