The "Stupid Garage Door Mishap" Story

It was an ordinary day. We were getting ready to visit with our daughter Brynn, our son-in-law Dave and our granddaughters Courtney and Camille in Maryland. Takes about two hours to get there. We like to get an early start so we have a few more hours for our visit. Almost 8:00 AM and we have our suitcases packed for the weekend and loaded in the car. Carol is saying goodbye to the cats while I head for the garage. I hit the button to raise the garage door and walk around the car and hop in the driver's set. Start the car, hit #1 on the seat adjustment panel and wait for the final adjustments to take place, then start the car. Carol's just coming through the door from the family room as I put the car in reverse and start backing out the door. BAM!! What the ???? was that? I look through my rear view mirror and realize that the garage door is still in my rear view mirror. Not good! And I just had the door replaced a few months ago. I pull front a little bit, get out and examine the damage to the door and the car. Car seems fine but the door.......seems that the door only elevated part way and my SUV tried to help it some more. Now, I have had neighbors who have run into the center post of their two, single door garage and knocked the middle brick post down and other neighbors who have gotten to close to their car mirrors when entering and broken them off and I always think how can anyone be that stupid. It's easy, I found out! I ASSUMED that the door went up, but never checked to make sure. It only went 2/3 of the way up. Now what do I do. The bottom panel of the door has come out of the track and the door won't move. OK, fix it! I must have spent at least two hours taking the rollers off the door, bending the track on the sides back into place, putting sheet metal screws in the bottom of the door panels to reattach it and twisting the door with a digging iron to get it back into position. Didn't look bad, really. Next week I can get the paint out which matches the door color and touch up some scrapes and paint all the sheet metal screws and no one will know what happened ........ except Carol. "Glad that wasn't me that did that. I'd never hear the end of it," she says as we get back in the car to try again. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.