Garage Life

As an apartment dweller (townhouse if I feel like being fancy), who has way more stuff than he should own, but cannot get rid of any of these essentially stored and rarely used items, I spend a lot of time rearranging my garage.

Last week, I celebrated the new year with my first session of rearranging items and filing away seasonal decor. I was filled with the joy of putting away decorative wreaths and climbing up and down a ladder, then playing adult Tetris with Rubbermaid storage bins of all different shapes and sizes.

During this highly enjoyable session in the garage, I looked to the ceiling and questioned why I didn’t just toss all of this stuff in the garbage.

As I did this, I saw my surfboards and flashed back to just over a year ago, when I ingeniously figured out how to get around my garage’s false ceiling which was preventing me from hanging my surfboards with my usual rope and hook system.

Instead of hanging them from the ceiling, I used the framing track for the garage door to create a web of roping, then laid the surfboards across the web for safekeeping until central Texas installed an ocean.

I was never a Boy Scout, but I am always prepared.

Towards the finishing stages of this when I️ was on my ladder, taping the ends of the ropes so they did not fray (safety first), I️ found myself near the garage door spring. I️ stared at it, contemplating how much tension was in that spring.

It’s a big spring. It is at least 3 inches in diameter. I bet it is ridiculously strong. It does, after all, assist the motor in opening the garage door.

Should you ever find yourself at this level of curiosity, I️ hope you dismiss it. The spring is strong. Mystery solved. Just know this. Engineers have already verified this before selling and installing it for use with a garage door. Your assistance is not needed for further research and development.

Do not. Do. Not. pull on the spring to see how much tension there may be.

Or...do what I️ did. Pull on the spring to check it’s masculinity. How strong are you string? Am I️ strong enough to stretch you further?

Like an old rubber band, as soon as I️ added a bit more tension, it snapped. Whisk, bang, crash, that thing shot from my hand and slammed against the wall.

It was loud. Gun shot, cannon blast, ceiling collapsing loud. I stood on that ladder in total shock, jaw dropped, gazing at this huge dangling spring.

Once I came out of my trance, I immediately made sure I still had both my eyes and was not impaled by any shrapnel.

Somehow, I escaped with a small cut on my hand.

Garage door: Out of Order.