“They dared to say it couldn’t be done!” He lifted the glass to no one in particular. He ‘clinked’ it against the framework of the machine then downed the whole glass in one gulp. He imagined that it made him tipsy, but knew it was only an illusion. Sparkling Cider won’t do that.
He started to smash the glass against the floor but reason won out and he gently wiped off the glass before meticulously setting it on the table, well back from the edge. He grabbed a notebook and added “clean up laboratory” on his “to do” list.
Flipping back to the first set of pages, he compared the designs to the machine. “That doesn’t look right,” muttering to himself. Taking a tape measure (the one in the leather pocket on the bottom left of the peg board was the most accurate) he measured a line on the drawing, noted the measurements on a blank page in his notebook, entered the numbers into the calculator, selected the appropriate numbers from his own legend, multiplied accordingly and then measured the matching piece on the machine.
Any more out of spec than that and the send off would have been seriously delayed. The new journal entries would have eaten up most of his upcoming weeks. Satisfied, he put the tape measure back in its sheath.
Knowing that someday, these notes might be worth something, he stopped and added another entry into the journal, double-checked that every entry had a date and time noted and closed up his notebook, sticking it back in the safe, which had the combination on a post-it note glued next to the dial so future historians wouldn’t have to damage the equipment to reach his writings.
Picking up the device by the intentionally-added handles he carried it out to the car and placed it onto the shaped foam in the box bolted into the trunk. Firmly pushing (but not slamming) the lid down, he pulled up on it once more to make sure that the trunk was secure. Climbing into the driver’s seat he made a note of the time in a smaller note book to be transferred to the larger one later.
The car silently climbed the winding road. It had never been driven over the speed limit and had just had an additional oil change over its regular 1,500 mile oil change in preparation for this trip. Had there been another spot to launch that was close to being as proficient, then a shorter route might have been preferred, but alas, there was no better combination of distance driven with appropriate location.
Finally reaching the top (exactly on time, according to the day-timer) he locked the car, wrote another time entry and then placed the keys and notebook into a pocket that was built into the device. Once secured, he put his arms through the shoulder straps and walked towards the ledge.