To infinity and beyond!

Criss Angel eat your heart out.

As a matter of fact, that is a sofa levitating outside my 20th floor balcony.

Sometimes, more and more as time passes, one just has to love the Chinese people. They do things that we, as Americans, have been conditioned not to attempt because of legislation, insurance rhetoric, fear of lawsuits, boo-boos, or whatever.

In this case, I wholly expected the outcome to be as magnificent as the climax to those wonderful Warner Brother’s Road Runner cartoons where upon, Wiley Coyote’s ascension, is met, by a more rapid, and eventful decent into oblivion. Which is exactly why I bothered to record this event with images in the first place.

Much to my dismay, something that Americans have come to second-guess all too often prevailed – common sense.

I can hear it now watchdog groups, “You're lucky something terrible didn't happened” or “Wait’ll the boss hears about this!” even worse “It’s all fun and games until my lawyer gets involved.”

China will have none of it.

If it looks possible they will, with measured risk, attempt to make it happen. I suspect some of this is due to a Wei Qi mentality. (Wei Qi the strategic game that involves problem solving by identifying opportunities in a landscape of shifting probabilities.) Just who calculated the probability and what the variables taken into account were, is not immediately clear.

The problem in this case, a sofa bigger than the apartment front door, as well as the elevator. Was met by an opportunity, having a better than average probability for success; getting the sofa up to the 28th floor, through a sliding glass door large enough to accommodate it, with a window washer’s guide wire, a mover’s tension strap and a few nylon ropes to help traverse.

As Ed Harris so eloquently, and forcefully mandated many years ago “Failure is not an option.”

I watched for about 15 minutes as a conversation focused on the sofa ensued between two movers, seven security guards and one female supervisor. Once all parties involved had spoken or enlisted support to one opinion or other, it was off to the 28th floor. The window washer’s guide wire was lowered to connect to the securely bound sofa. There were numerous inspections of the mover’s tension strap and the connection. As the sofa began to rise, the seven security guards dispersed to a wider parameter and still with keen eyes, evaluated the security of the connection and stability of the lone mover manning the traverse line. Again, the De facto commission gives its approval for lift-off.

Slowly, the sofa rose above the bushes, smaller trees and eventually the tallest Palms.

The security guards’ parameter grew larger as the sofa was hoisted higher. It is important to note at this point, that the opportunity of increased altitude brought with it a greater probability of a “big boom” if any of the principle components should fail. Soon the "sofawaffe" approached my balcony at about 320ft without incident. The slackness of the traverse rope puzzled me because the sofa was seemingly as stable a rock while the mover manning the rope seemed to be vigorously wrestling with it.

Within a few seconds it was at the height depicted in the image above and quietly ascending to the 28th floor. Slowly, and steadily she rose to her new crib. I was awestruck. They did it. Even thought I could see wires the smoke and mirrors couldn't hide, I was astounded. 

Then as quietly as it had all started, "mission control" disbanded and went on to lesser furniture and more chatter on the security radios.

The one probability that I’m willing to wager on, is that the Chinese appetite for the "new" will assure that re-entry is much faster than lift-off.

© 2011 Karl Shaffer