April 20th, 2008 | 
Author: It’s been an interesting, busy, hot weekend. It seems that Mother Nature’s not messing around this year. Last weekend, I was wondering if it was going to be warm enough in May for my bees to get established. This weekend, it’s been warm enough for shorts while doing the yardwork.
We’re planning some “renovations” to the backyard this year and 5 apple trees have to go. It’s OK, though. We’re keeping the other 7. 
The folks that built our house had green thumbs the size of Buicks: a dozen apples (three different varieties), grapes all over the place and 800 sq.ft. of garden. We’re not big gardeners, so the first thing we did was plant grass. The trees and grapes, we’ve pretty much left alone.
But, we want to expand the boys’ play area and to do that three trees need to be removed. I spent most of yesterday trimming the smaller branches from them. I borrowed Mom and Dad’s trailer to load the branches into and was going to finish that up today, but the garage got in the way.
Specifically, the garage door opener. We’ve had a bit of trouble with a cable on the door for some time. You see, it’s a wooden sectional door and, it weighs about 500 pounds. So, to make it humanly possible to move it, there’s a big counterspring mounted in the frame above the opening. From this spring there are two steel cables that attach to the bottom corners of the door. That allows the spring to take most of the weight of the door and makes it possible for one person to manually open the door. It makes it easier on the opener, too.
One of those cables has had a periodic habit of jumping off the takeup spool and getting snarled around the spring shaft. In the process, it’s gotten kinked. That makes it more likely for the cable to jump the spool. Yesterday, it did it’s thing. It always does it when the door it closing, so the procecedure is to open the door, re-spool the cable and Bob’s your uncle.
Not yesterday. The door was so off-kilter that it was jammed in the track. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that until after the opener tried to kill itself opening the door. I grabbed the emergency release (it separates the door from the drive chain), but it was too late. The poor opener made some weird noises and died. Now, it’s 8:00pm, getting dark, my garage door’s partly open and buggered up. I finally managed to wrestle it closed and came inside.
This morning, off to Sears. They had a replacement opener on sale. It’s not exactly the end of the world, we’d be planning to replace it anyway. I just hate being forced to do stuff like that. Then, to Home Depot to get some new aircraft cable for the door itself.
It took about an hour to get the cable replaced. Not fun: I ended up having to remove one of the door’s pulley brackets to get the cable re-attached. Oh, and open and close it half a dozen times. The counterspring also keeps the door aligned in the track, so when one side’s not attached, it becomes a wrestling match to move the thing.
Next up: take out the old opener. No big deal. A few screws here, a bolt of two there. Boom.
The problem came after I got the new one assembled. The track is about 18″ shorter than the old one. Therefore, the mounting brackets on the garage ceiling are too far back. So, I must climb into the garage attic to install backer boards to attach the bracket to. Problem 2: my ladder’s at the cottage.
After considering and discarding several creative ideas for getting myself through a trap door 9 feet above a concrete floor, I called my parents to see if their ladder was in in town. Yep. So, off to borrow it!
Nope. Inertia took over. Too much work for a weekend. I’ll borrow it tomorrow and putter away. The door’s closed, and it’s not like I can actually get the van into the garage anyway.
I planted strawberries instead. We’ trying our hands at a bit of gardening this year. God, it felt great to dig my bare hands into the warm earth and pluck out weeds and crap. All is good with the world.
Saved by a ladder. Or lack thereof.
Posted in Life
Too bad. If you had found a ladder there would have been a good story for you to tell about how you__________
gary’s last blog post..me and Ben
I could have borrowed my neighbour’s, but it’s one of those rickety wooden 5′ deals. That would have left me swaying back and forth with a heck of a stretch for the opening. Not interested.
I hate when stuff that you take for granted falls apart. Then you realize “Hey, I’ve taken that thing for granted for years! How DARE it break!”
Law Student Hot mama’s last blog post..Did Ya Miss Me?
My solution to my broken garage door last year – Call The Door Doctor. They came out, fixed it up, works like a charm. Cost me $200 approximately, but since I really didn’t know where to start (I know what needed to be done, just not how to do it), I was more than happy to have a professional do it.
Ken’s last blog post..Uh oh – should I be worried?
The good earth. Yes, it makes things right, eh?
I replaced my old 500lb. door (and aren’t you folks metric anyway?) a number of years ago and did it all solo. At one point the top panel swung free unexpectedly and I nearly had a splintery man-boob mastectomy in a jiffy. I installed a pressed steel door with windows and it made a huge difference in the life of the opener. Plus, it only needed one torsion spring, which made me feel safer. Those things are wicked vicious, and those cable track wheels are a bitch when snared.
Stucco’s last blog post..It’s Just So Sad, Really
I’m too stubborn to do that, Ken. Nothing thus far has been particularly complicated and I have all the necessary tools to do it. I like doing this stuff.
It does, Kate & Jim. It does.
That spring does make me nervous, Stucco. I can see it causing major bodily damage if it ever came loose. I’ll be paying someone to fix it if it ever screws up.
As for metric, I’m one of the crossover people. I was learning the metric system, as a young-un, at the same time as the rest of the country, so I have this weird schmozzle of preferred measurements: weight is pounds, long distances are kilometres, middle distances are in metres, distances under about 30 metres are in feet. Heights I can do either way.
I have all the necessary tools to do it.
Aha! See, you have an advantage over me already
I not only would have had to figure out how to fix the door, but would’ve had to buy the appropriate tools. In the long run it would’ve cost me way more than the $200 I paid to have it done. Besides, if it breaks again, I can yell at The Door Doctor instead of myself 
Ken’s last blog post..Uh oh – should I be worried?
Ha! I can’t deny I enjoyed reading that others have had to battle the evil garage door. It sounds like you got the best of yours. Just keep one eye on that thing at all times. They don’t fight fair!
“This weekend, it’s been warm enough for shorts while doing the yardwork” – considering there are pictures of you in shorts in the snow, I don’t think this gives us any indication of the temperature.
Darren’s last blog post..3 years today.
Hmmm … Good point, Darren. It was 27C on Saturday … We appear to have completely bypassed May and jumped directly to late-June weather.