The Great Phone Adventure!

As Many of you know P.A. and I drove up to Canton, NY for my friend Melissa's wedding the weekend of June 28th. The drive up was uneventful, we got decent gas mileage and made great time. When we arrived we immediately headed over to the hall where the reception would be to help finish setting up.

Melissa arranged for all the bridesmaids to stay on the campus of St. Lawrence University, where the wedding was taking place. Brush Alumni House, where we stayed was in walking distance of town, the Chapel and the reception hall. It was such a cute house. I had been to Canton before and knew I loved it, but P.A. seemed to enjoy it as well. As I had bridesmaid duties all weekend P.A. was pretty much left to entertain himself. Luckily, he enjoyed wandering around town seeing all the Amish folk and exploring campus.

On Friday all of the brides party went up to Lake Placid to walk around, have lunch and get our nails done. Lake Placid is one of the cutest places I have ever been. They have wonderful little shops lining the the streets and beautiful views of the lake. It was neat to see the Olympic complex and you can even see the bobsled track running through the trees. I could have spent the whole weekend there.

The adventure started after lunch. We had all had a great time eating at this cute place on the water. They had fantastic homemade granola! As we were leaving I decided to call P.A and see how he was doing. While placing the call I noticed a long hair on the rear side of one of my fellow bridesmaids. I did what any friend would do and decided to reach down and grab the hair. The bad choice was to balance my phone between my shoulder and my ear and then reach forward with that same side. Just picture as the phone slides from my shoulder, bounces on the curb and then bounces through the storm drain grate!
The picture does not do the view justice it was 6 ft down and taunting me. I could call it with my other phone and it would ring and I could see it was just sitting in sand. Had I not been able to see it or had I heard it plop in water I might have been able to let it go. Instead I could see it sitting there just laughing at me.

For a while my friend Shari and I just stood their staring at the phone. We could not lift the grate that it went through for 2 reasons; 1 it was sealed around the edges with asphalt & 2 it has a car resting on it. Behind us there was a manhole cover clearly marked "sewer access" but how would we get it open without a crow bar. About this time came along a strange teenager who apparently just likes to wander the streets of Lake Placid all day. He decided that this was by far the most interesting thing that had happened to him all week and was going to watch the story unfold. His suggestions for getting the phone included using a powerful electromagnet, putting gum on a stick or finding someone who had the force. No, I am not joking.

As we stares down at the phone we began to lose hope as we had spa appointments in an hour and well no one had the force....or so we thought. I saw a verizon truck drive by and figured they usually have tools for pulling phone wires through walls maybe they would have something I could use to grab the phone. I waved them down and they were kind enough to stop but did not have the right equiptment. I guess you only use long hooks to pull wire with. While I was talking to the phone guy, strange teenage probed Shari on how I had magically stopped a person on the street. Shari tried to explain that people are sometimes nice and stop to help when waved down expecially if the person waiving them down happened to be a girl. She was then told that I must indeed have the force. Really?? If I had the force don't you think I would have willed my phone out of the grate by now?

Next idea, go down the street and see if there are any workers who may have a crow bar so I can try to get into the sewer access and thus get my phone. I know gross, but really the phone was fairly new and I didn't want to buy another one at full price. Walking down the street is where I met the wonderful Graham and Andrew. They had a mini crow bar which with a little work allowed us to get the manhole cover off. Down I climbed heals and all to see if I could get to my phone. Once down I discovered a large concreat beam that I had to go under to start climbing through a only slightly visable and really small tunnel. I decided this was not going to happen. My newfriends took a look and decided it wasn't going to happen for them either.
New thought, if we could get some duct tape maybe we could feed that down the hole and use a stick to push it on the phone. Really duct tape sticks to everything, why not. Off go Graham and Andrew to find duct tape. They came back with a large piece of super strong cardboard that was shaped like a "V". Their thought is if we bend the end we can scoop the phone up. Great idea since it was shaped like a "V" the bent end was pretty sturdy. The snag was that this was too big to fit through the holes in the great. :-( We then proceeded to cut the "V" in half. Now the cardboard fit, but due to it's smaller size it was extreamly flimsy.
The bottom is bent so now the pieces look like an "L". We figure that we can use both pieces to scoop under the phone and lift it up. This part wasn't too hard, however the bottom of the "L" would straighten out everytime we lifted up. We needed something to hold the cardboard flat at the bottom. My new job was to hook the end of a measuing tape under the edge of the bottom piece of cardboard. I would then be able to keep our delacate lift from colapsing. It took a while for us to get the hang of this. We would get it part of the way up and the measuring tape would slip or the lift would be slightly uneven and the phone would slide off. Everytime it would get close your heart would race and then down would go the phone again. This only encouraged us more, like those silly crane games in arcades we would get the prize we wanted.















On the 4th time it came close enough for me to reach with the tips of my fingers. So while holding the measuing tape with one hand and reaching with the other I slowly reached through the grate and grabbed it with 2 of my fingers. I was so affraid I would loose it again, but in this story the 4th time is the charm. You would have thought I had just nabbed a gold medal, I wanted to parade that phone around and show everyone what we had done.


























At this point we realized we needed to get to our nail apointments pronto. We couldn't reach the others (we later found out that there was no service at the spa). We saw that the town had a trolley system, but we didn't know where it went or how to use it. So naturally we started asking people on the street. We ran into this great guy, Robert who runs a limo company called Polar Express Transportation Service. He not only told us how to catch the trolly but then gave us a ride so we did not have to. We made it on time and had a great story to tell when we got back.










If you ever get a chance please go to Lake Placid. Not only is it beautiful, but complete strangers will help you in a time of need and make you feel welcome!

Thank you Shari for being the official photographer on this fantastic adventure!