A Little Walk

Yesterday Vince was going to walk down to the highway to get the mail. It’s not 1/2 mile down there but it’s more than 1/4 mile. The driveway is rock and it’s a bit hard for me to walk on with my knee but I said “I’ll go with you!” I couldn’t have done it before losing weight but the knee is doing so much better.

Just past the house, Vince handed me the gate opener. It’s kinda like a mini garage door opener on the RTV keyring. When he handed it to me to stick in my pocket, I noticed it was open a bit so I snapped it shut. I said “Why is this open?” and he said he didn’t know.

We got down to the gate, I mashed the button . . nothing! I handed it to Vince and he mashed the button . . nothing! We both stood there looking at the fence, which is pipe rails. I said “I’ll go through them!” He said “Can you do that?” I have done it before but I couldn’t do it yesterday. It was too low where I’d have to go through. I said “I’ll climb it!” He said “Can you do that?” I had before but the knee was not cooperating that much. Vince used the RTV key to pop open the opener, thinking the battery might have lost contact. He opened the darned thing and . . nothing! It was completely empty inside. He said “Where are the insides?” Heck if I know!

There we were, at the end of our driveway, and couldn’t get out to get the mail. I said “Maybe someone will see us down here and stop and we can have them punch in the gate code (we couldn’t reach the box) and the gate will open and we can get our mail! Nope, no one passed. Not many cars pass down our road.

We walked back to the house . . halfway looking for the insides as we were walking. I told him I didn’t think it had fallen out in the driveway because when he handed it to me, it was almost completely shut and all I had to do was snap it closed. We backtracked all our steps but he didn’t remember when he had last used that opener to open the gate.

I went and looked in the floor of the RTV just in case and yep, there were all the electronic parts on the floor. The battery had come completely out but Vince got it all put back together. We drove the RTV down to get the mail and the opener worked again. Isn’t that all weird? He doesn’t remember dropping the keys. We’ll have to pay more attention to that little gizmo and make sure it stays closed or . . buy another one!