Before I get into the gory details, a small disclaimer. If you hear this story from Brian, it may sound a bit different. He likes to "color" his stories to, as he says, make them more interesting!
Back to the story. We were packing the car and Brian asked me to start it to let it cool down. It was still hot in Florida, no surprise there. So, in a hurry and not thinking I jumped in the car, started it up and started to back out of the garage. Problem was, the rear hatch on the car was still open. Luckily, I had thought to open the garage door though. That didn't really make me feel better when after moving the car less than a foot, I heard a terrible sound - metal on metal. Hit the brakes and I immediately knew what had happened. Before I could even shut the car off and get out, Brian had heard the noise and came running from the house.
So, what did happen? Well, first you have to know that garage doors in Florida have to be hurricane proof, able to withstand 155 MPH winds by code. That means they are made of metal with large, pronounced "ribs" on the back of them. When I backed the car up with the hatch open, the edge of the hatch caught on one of those ribs. Since the noise scared the crap out of me, I stopped very quickly, but not before the car pushed the garage door down about a foot. Now that I think of it, the garage door opener is probably what saved me, the car and the door from a lot more damage. When the door was pushed by the car, the emergency release popped, unhooking the door from the opener. If it hadn't, the door wouldn't have moved and more than likely damaged the hatch on the car, not to mention the door itself.
After a few choice curse words, we calmed down and saw that there was really no damage to the car or the door and I figured we could just reset the opener and miraculously every thing would be fine. But no.... we weren't, or I should say, I wasn't that lucky. The little bump must have been enough to pop something in the opener, or just enough to to twist the track, because when I tried to run the opener again (after getting the car safely out of the garage), it would only run a few inches before the opener would stop and just "click". More choice curse words. So, I unplugged it and we made a safe, if quiet exit from the house.
Brian of course found all of this extremely funny. He had an evil little grin on his face for quite a while after we left. To his credit, he knew how upset I was about it and kept quiet. But before we had even gotten 50 miles from the house, he was on his iPad, telling everyone about my little adventure! It was nice that at least someone was enjoying the day! But he made it up to me by arranging to have a new opener installed, all with the help of his iPad and cell phone.
Hell of a way to start the trip home! But we made it. Got home at about 10:30 PM on Thursday night. Max took it all in stride too as you can see by the picture below.
Eating while going 70 miles an hour down the highway. That's Max.
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