What do you do when your plane goes on the roof? Get it down, of course.

While you were likely watching Super Bowl XLV, my wife was making me wait “a few more minutes…” before leaving to watch the game at a friend’s house.

Next thing I know I’m the one making us late and I’m standing on the top of our two story apartment building.

So when we got married last July we got all the necessities to run a house and a few extra gift cards… one of which I used to buy a remote control toy plane at Target! Needless to say this was radical and the best wedding present we got! While I was waiting for my wife to come out to the car I was seeing just– how–high– I could fly this little airplane. My first thought was “wow, I can’t believe I still have radio reception at this height.” Soon I was thinking, “this probably isn’t a good idea…” And then my final thought was “I’m screwed…” as the airplane went too high, lost reception, and crashed on the roof of the neighboring apartment building…

Sure, I got this plane on sale and made the purchase with a gift card. To some people this might not be a huge loss. But remember, this was our BEST wedding present. I was determined to get it down. I considered climbing the gutter, calling the maintenance guy, or waiting for a wind storm, but then I figured the most logical way to get the plane down would be to climb a tree and jump to the roof. A circle around the building proved that one tree was high enough (and possibly strong enough???) to complete the task, and that almost everyone in the building was so occupied with the game that I could get away with scaling the tree and tip toeing across the roof top to reclaim my plane.

I shimmied up the tree while my nervous wife took pictures down below, probably wondering if we were going to spend the next few hours watching the game or hanging out in the emergency room. Stepping from the tree to building felt kind of like when you step from a boat to a dock. The transfer of weight from unstable to stable and sturdy. But stepping from the building to the tree felt like…I can’t really explain how it felt, but I definitely remember staring down a 25-plus foot drop onto rockery and thinking “this tree will hold me, right?”