Oh, Chute: Halloween, 2020

October 31, 2020

A fun start to the day – a bird got into the kitchen, and was quietly surveying what the heck he needed to do to get out. I was able to prop the kitchen door open for him, and after waving a T-square in his direction… he flew off straight out the door.

True to form, I was debating doing anything for Halloween up until last night. A lot of our block has decided not to give out candy this year, due to concerns around Coronavirus. We ended up going with a candy chute approach (unbenknownst to me, it was an idea that Liz had about six weeks ago).

I had started to see designs for something like this online, but over the last week was convinced it was more work than I wanted to undertake. Didn’t have enough time, etc. Then, last night, decided we should try to do it.

While I was determining how to affix an 8 foot PVC pipe securely so it wouldn’t crush a small child, Liz worked on painitng a bit of plywood. And doing some light design work.

Inside, the flooring install continued. There was little we could do to help, so we focused on our Halloween work.

The “Boo Chute” takes form.

The PVC in place. I’ve got two bungee cords wrapped around the pipe, resting on some blocks of wood that I screwed into the saw horses.

View from the top. The pipe feeds into a 45 elbow (something I had to buy from Ace), which fed into the plywood ghost face easier. “Plywood ghost face” is not a phrase I expected to ever type out.

Looking down the tube. We had some trouble getting this situated “just right,” as the initial setup had our candy launching out almost to the main sidewalk. Later on, the PVC was aligned so that the candy would hit the 45 elbow at a rather sharp angle, and that took some of the speed out of the glide.

Liz reminded me that we were not going for distance here, which took some adjusting for me, mentally. Ultimately, the snag made the candy delivery easier for the children. And I guess this whole thing is about them. I guess.

It should have gone much further, much faster.