Color Falls was great.  They set me up with some people to help, young people, and we had all kinds of adventures.

For example, the water shut itself off unexpectedly because it was having problems, the fountain.  I actually wanted the water on, because the water in fact did hold the fiber. It was crucial.  Without the motion of the water, the fiber blew around in the wind, tying itself up into tangled knots.  It was a disaster. It was really a disaster.

The fountain was faulty, no one could figure out… the fountain repair people couldn’t be reached, and then they would show up, and then it would do it again, on and off… meanwhile, the fiber is either this beautiful vertical being held or it’s this tangling mess.

Of course we got wet.  We had big wader boots.  We had to get in the water.

It’s a tall wall, it’s like ten or twelve feet for sure, so we had a way from the back end to get up there.  I strung a long cable along the back of the wall, and that’s what we hooked to. It was tensioned.  It wrapped the whole back of the curve, and then we would tie that fiber to that cable and throw it over. And then somebody would take it, who was down in the water, and they’d align it. Takes a lot of time, fiber by fiber by fiber, right? And it only works if that water’s on. So the water would turn off all of the sudden, and we didn’t know who to call, it was the weekend…

And I could see that it was advantageous to do multiple spools.  There were fibers all on these spools. To make a big spindle and have four spools on it, so you can do it multi-pronged.  But I had to build this thing, this wood platform with these eye hooks that had a threaded rod, so I needed materials. I had no car. And the guy I was with, who was helping me, had no car. So we took the transit line to an outlying Home Depot to buy these materials, but we also needed a drill, and there wasn’t one.  We had no drill, and we needed it now, it couldn’t wait until Monday or whenever it was. But we only needed two holes, really, to drill in the piece of wood that we bought. And at Home Depot you can get wood cut, so we took advantage of that.  And then I’m like, we’ve gotta be able to get these drilled. So there’s a guy demo-ing drills at Home Depot. And he’s got a board out there, and the idea is, you come by and test out the drill and see how great it is. My goal was to get this board drilled with the right bit.  So I was like, wow, can I try it with this size bit? I’m concerned that it will get through this wood, can I just test it out? He’s like, oh yeah, fine. So I got my two holes drilled. He thought I was going to buy the drill. I said, well, I’m gonna have to think on it!

Anyway, we walked out of there with the holes we needed in the board and we never even had to use someone else’s drill.  So that was good. And then we rode with all this stuff back on the transit system down to downtown. 

Atlanta, color falls, fiber, installation