I was building condos in northern NH, on the side of a mountain, across the road from a ski resort. I was putting plywood on the roof. Unfortunately, someone else had cut plywood while on the roof — a big no no. Sawdust is slippery.

As I was carrying my sheet of plywood up the roof, which was steep, 12 in12, which for the layman means a 45 degree pitch, about as steep as roofs get, I stepped on the sawdust and my feet slid out from underneath me. I crashed down on the roof with the plywood underneath me. The plywood and I slid down the roof on the sawdust lubricant. Fortunately when we started roofing we always nailed a 2×4 safety stop at the bottom edge of the roof.

As I was sliding down the roof time and space changed, everything seemed to slow down. On the way down I had time to contemplate all kinds of things, what was below me, life, death, and to calculate that the plywood was 1/2″ and that left me 1″ of the 2×4 to get my feet on, so I had better get them down.

I got my feet down, but the speed I had picked up on the way down threw me upright. So there I was teetering at the edge of the roof, 40′ above jagged granite boulders that had been dynamited out of the mountainside to make a flat place to put the condo. It must have been a sight watching me flapping my arms trying to keep my center of gravity on the roof side.

I am grateful that my feet caught the 1″ of wood and I was able to stay on the roof. Going over the edge probably would have killed me, at the very least I would have been seriously damaged.

- John Riordan

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