Barn Manager + Power Tools = New Gate

I finished installing our new electric gate today. I was very proud of myself. I had been putting off working on the cursed thing for over two months because, frankly, it intimidated me. I had to hook up a marine battery to a solar panel and then connect them to the gate opener, which I had to install properly on the metal gate. I knew that if I just sat down with the whole mess that I could figure it out. But the instructions, at first glace, looked a bit like Chinese translated to Russian, translated to some African tongue, and then finally translated to English. Some things just didn't make sense.

But I did it. The gate works. Except for the keypad. Apparently the one I purchased doesn't function on the same MHz as the gate opener. "Of course," I thought.

So I still have to get a keypad, but that should be easy enough.

The reason we needed a new gate?

Janine.

Let me take you back a few months. It's early on a Sunday morning. And it's storming. The rain is whipping down in sheets and the wind is gusting. Janine (our barn manager) is trying to GET OUT to make it to church. Alexis (our trainer) is trying to GET IN so she can load up her horse and head to a horse show.

Back up one more day....

"Janine, would you make sure to lock the gate before you go to bed?" I asked. "I saw a strange truck drive up yesterday. Makes me uncomfortable."

"I will," said Janine.

Famous last words.

So it's storming. And Janine can't get the padlock unlocked. (She had the correct key, so who knows what the problem was. Did it rust?) By the time they were working with the bolt cutters trying to get the chain off, Janine and Alexis were soaking wet. You could have wrung them out and they'd still be dripping. The chain was too strong, however. Nothing they attempted worked.

"I need to get in!" screamed Alexis over the pounding of the rain and the cracking thunder.
"I need to get out!" yelled Janine.

They called me about this time, and I jumped in my car to head that way. But I wasn't going to make it in time, not for Janine to make it to church or for Alexis to make it to the horse show.

"Just do what you need to do," I told Janine.

And she did.

She walked back through the pouring rain to the barn and retrieved the battery-powered saw.
I didn't see Janine actually hacking away at the wooden post that held the gate together, but I could envision it as plain as day.

There she was, that determined look in her eyes, wielding a saw. No way was a stupid gate going to keep her from getting to church. No way in hell.

And it didn't.

Alexis never made it to the horse show, however. They cancelled it due to bad weather.

I have to say, I almost miss seeing that poor, ragged, wooden stump hanging from the old metal gate. But I have put so much time into putting up the new gate that from now on I think I might just hide the power tools.