Exercise that thumb

I truly believe we have become a lazy society. Most things we have are powered by some little button and when it doesn't work, it makes us quite anxious. My gate is such an example of a technological marvel. Well, it is supposed to be.

Motorised gates are a gift - when it rains you don't need to get out of your car. When it is cold, you don't have to get out of your car, instead you can have the little heater blowing full-stream while navigating the driveway. When it is hot, you don't need to get out of your car, instead you can have the aircon (reserved for top-of the range cars a decade ago) at full blast while navigating the driveway. When it works, that is. When we bought our house the gate motor was broken, so it was the first thing we replaced. Shortly afterwards the rainy season hit us and the motor stopped working in the rain. Quite a nightmare to get fixed - obviously every time the gate mechanics arrived, it worked fine. After the third try they decided to try and fix it anyway, without seeing the symptoms. And everything was well.

This morning the bugger started acting up again. No it wasn't raining. I managed to open it and get the car outside. It didn't want to close. So I mumbled something in a foreign language and switched it to manual. Unlock the theft-protector. Unlocked the motor casing. Try to switch it to manual, the gate didn't want to budge. Tried again, no-go. I stepped on the remote and the gate started closing. Ummm, car outside, me inside, make a dash for it. Gate closed. Let's try to open it. No-go.

At this point the gardener arrived and since he has a key to our little front gate, I asked him to let me in to allow me to close the little motor enclosure. Switched to automatic again. Closed everything up. Got outside again - the gate still doesn't respond to my commands. So I came to work. I think I'll leave a touch earlier to still catch the gardener there, at least he will be able to let me in. After I'm in I'll bond with our motor - come hell or high water, I'm not leaving the comforts of my car again tomorrow morning.