How Getting Rid of Tack Results in a New Garage Door

By Patty Wilber

Whelp, I am retired (but without retirement pay yet since the paperwork apparently is going in circles…sigh).  But even without income, I may sort of have time to tackle some projects–like paring down on the amount of tack I have accumulated over the years.

I decided to get rid of some of my English stuff:  clothes, ancient saddle, and saddle cover.  I kept both English bridles (no good reason) and my show boots–that could one day become barn boots–I mean, they are boots, after all.  I converted my English show gloves to everyday riding gloves.

I ditched my western pleasure show chaps--those were a little hard to part with, but I hadn’t worn them in 10 + years.  I also rehomed a Parelli bit and rein set-up I never use, and a western saddle cover.

I sold some of this for pennies on the dollar and gave some to the WalknCircles Thrift Shop. Picture me dusting off my hands and with a look of satisfaction on my face.

I also needed to get rid of a smaller sawbuck pack saddle that I wasn’t using. It was in great shape, and I decided to try selling it for real money on Facebook Marketplace.  I took some pictures and posted the ad at 11 pm, Wednesday night.  I had a hit in 10 minutes. And three more hits Thursday. I think I picked the exact right time to try to sell it–hunting season is taking off! I sold it to the first guy (who I “knew” from Facebook). He also took some smaller panniers (for an extra 50 bucks), and I threw in some wooden panniers. That was the easiest sale I have ever made.

LT modelling the sawbuck. Kind of an odd angle of the horse, but focus on the packsaddle!

Unfortunately, in the process of packing up the car with the gear, I fully busted the already malfunctioning 30? 40? year old garage door.  I had knocked a large red muck bucket slightly into the path of the door.  When I hit the controller to shut the door, it slid down and crunched onto the poorly placed bucket.  The bucket was not a wimp.  It resisted! There was a standoff!  The garage door ended up with a bent support beam, and the rim of the bucket cracked!

Fortunately, one of my fix-anything friends is on speed dial. He told me how to disengage part of it, so the door could at least be shut, and gave me the number of a garage door place he’d had good luck with: Precision Garage Door.

At 4 pm, Tony showed up and about fell over when he saw the age and condition of our entire garage door system.  Since we had installing a new door on our to-do list anyway, we now have that on the calendar for Monday! New door, controller, motor, the works.

I just have to clear the crap out of the way all by myself (the world’s smallest violin is playing “Have some Cheese with that Whine”, just for me) since Jim is busy being the Best Grandpa Ever in Hawaii, while Maegan and Rick are at the wedding of one of Maegan’s best friends (since 6th grade!)

We have Jim’s elk antlers in the garage, so Tony and I then spent the next 20 minutes talking about hunting, and I forced him to wait while I pulled up the photo of a neighborhood buck eating out of our bird feeder! Our bird seed kept disappearing at an alarming rate, at night, so I set up the game cam to catch the culprit, who I figured would be a raccoon! It was not!

Happy Friday!