My job is to let out the ‘tag line’ as the painter goes up. The winds here are pretty consistent – about 15-20 miles per hour from the east. So the painter is blown away from the tower. The job of the guy running the tag line down below is to control the position of the painter as he goes up. He has to not bang into the tower, but also not get blown out too far or catch in the guy wires that hold the tower up, and this is done by controlling how much of the tag line is let out. I’m basically handed the rope as one of the painters goes sailing into the air. There is quite a bit of pull to the rope, because the 20mph winds blow the rope like a kite. The rope is maybe 5/8” thick, but it’s over 400 feet high, so it acts like a large sail. It takes some technique to use the sail-like pull of the rope to control the ascent of the painter. The first couple ascents were rough. I had a hard time controlling the rope, and got blisters on both hands from the rope burning me as it slipped through my gloves.

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of the painters going up, but my two hands had to be on the tag line.