Window washing

Exterior window washing is never fun, in any type of dwelling (unless you're my friend Bonnie who gets a charge out of using her window squeegee and obsessing over, oops, I mean admiring, the results!). One day when I was visiting my recently-departed friend I saw some window washers at her apartment complex. There is a large courtyard between the buildings and this was my view as I approached her entrance. Look carefully for the two guys in the center.

The doorway to her "block" is right underneath the guys dangling from ropes and I couldn't resist getting their pictures. I often see workers using those long platform window-washing devices on a hotel near our place (in fact they seem to be up there pretty much every day. Seems a bit overzealous to me, but I guess the hotel is doing its part to keep some of the billions of people employed!) but this was the first time I'd seen the guys working from such tiny trapeze-type equipment. I was nervous just to walk below them...I don't know how they got up the nerve to actually use them. Notice how they each have a bucket hanging from their seats--it just occurred to me that the water must be beyond filthy given the amount of windows to be cleaned and the air pollution. They must've been just pushing dirty water around by the second story and there are a LOT of stories to cover!

Yikes...this is the looking-way-up view! I'm not sure exactly how many floors there are in this building, but I know it is more than 30. Can you tell that there is just one rope for each guy, extended all the way to the very top of the building (attached to what??) with the rest of it dangling below? Amazing that anyone would risk this type of work...especially for a job that will need to be repeated so often!
Another day, another kuai...