Sometimes I even surprise myself.....

A couple of years ago I wrote about doin' something stupid when I fell on my butt after being too lazy to go get a step ladder when I was doing some painting and my homemade "ladder" crashed.
I had taken a bucket and turned it upside down and then put another bucket on top of that one and turned it upside down and had an instant ladder. Well, duh...it crashed and I got banged up a little.

I promised then...."no more dumbass things"...I'm getting too old to be breaking any bones or gettin' all stitched up or spraining any muscles. Well, until today.

I was on a pool call to a house I had been to previously. The customer has a automatic gate that closes off the driveway from the alley. The remote control with a touchpad is mounted on the outside of the gate and I had the combination to open it. There is no other way to open or close the gate unless you are in one of the cars with a remote control....

OK...have it pictured in your head-brain?

I saw when I got there that the garage door was also open. So .after I pulled my truck in the driveway, I went back outside the gate and pushed the code to close the gate. I did a high jump over the safety beam so as not to cause the gate to stop from closing. I thought that was pretty brilliant....and besides, I had done it before. The reason I had closed the gate after I pulled my truck in was because the homeowner had recently lost a dog that had gotten out and was killed in a construction accident across the street. And, his second dog has a doggy door that goes into the garage and the driveway. I saw the garage door was open and didn't want the dog to get loose.



The homeowner came out and we visited and I had explained what I had done and he was very thankful for me being that considerate. He told me he had to leave and put the dog back in the house, closed the garage door since he had parked in front and left.

Then it dawned on me...Hell, I was trapped inside. The gate was closed. The touchpad was on the outside. AND, for any of you who follow this blog, you know I lost all of my phone contacts 2 weeks ago and I didn't have this homeowners number.

Well crap, I looked around and he has a ten foot high fence all around the back. And then I spot what might be the answer. I saw a homemade ladder made out of two 2x4s with boards nailed across them for steps. You'll see ladders like this around new home construction sites when workers need a fast ladder and can make them with the available materials.

This dang thing was covered in ants and it looked rotten. But one does what one has to do.

It was long enough as I placed it up against the fence. Carefully climbed to the top. Placed my butt on the top of the fence and pulled the ladder up and put it on the other side. The ladder didn't break, neither did I. I went over and then keyed in the code, opened the gate and and gave myself a pat-on-the back. And, picked off a few ants.

Not bad for some 68 year old man, who knew how to think through the problem!