The Day of the Jackal

Well, it was more like the night of the jackal (for those younger folks, The Day of the Jackal was a thriller movie in the 70s--but I'm just shamelessly plagarizing the title because it sounds cool and kinda works for this story).

And in my story, it's not really jackal (which is an animal similar to a coyote), it's jack-all:

So how does this relate to Monster Garage, you ask?  Well, as you may have read in the last post, the roof trusses were being delivered today (Friday), so Rob wanted me on Thursday night to prep the site for delivery of the giant trusses.  That meant moving all the lumber off the concrete pad, laying down some 2 x 4s to act as a ramp from the gravel back alley to the concrete pad, and removing the wooden snow fence we had strung along the back, so the truck could drive in and dump the 19 trusses (26 feet wide and 4 feet high) on the pad.  The first two tasks were easy, but the snow fence was a tad tricky.  Rob had pounded in five long pieces of rebar to use as posts to string the fence along.  Read that again--pounded with a sledge hammer, in compacted gravel, using rebar that is designed to grab and not move.

So I tried everything to get those rebar stakes out.  Tried wriggling.  That didn't work.  Tried digging them out with a shovel and then a pitchfork.  That didn't work. Tried calling/ringing the door bells of our male neighbours (and actually going through my daytimer to see who else I could call).  That didn't work. And it's dark out.  And late. And I'm getting cranky. Finally in despair after an hour, Rob had a brain wave--use the jack-all (it's a giant jack) to pry out the rebar.  His instructions:  lift the (heavy) jack-all out of the cluttered shed; lug it to the back; tie a string to the lifter foot and also to the rebar; use the lever bar to jack up the rebar and thus pull it out.  Voila.

You would think it would be that easy.  Not.  I could not get the lever to engage and start moving up.  The gear head kept slipping down.  And all of this is over the course of another hour, punctuated by phone calls back to Rob, me getting a tad more and more testy, trying to figure out which button, lever, or crank to move to engage the lift.

You see how tricky it is to find the right crank!

 It reached an all time low when Rob said....and I quote... "bring the jack-all into the house, boot up your computer, and skype me so I can see what you are doing." ** That did not go over well.  Not, no well at all.

So I went back outside and swept the concrete pad to cool off.  Our friend Kim came over and we moved the fence at least--had to slide the fence up and over each stake, and all the wood slats fell out of the fence (it's a very old dilapidated fence), and pushed it out of the way.  Then we tied the rope around the rebar posts to protect people from impaling themselves in the dark.  Then I had a solution.  I would phone our friend Doug who drives by our house sometimes on his way to work.  He is an engineer too (like Rob) and does a lot of home reno projects. Perfect! I gave him a call and he was game to come by in the morning.

We set a time for 7:15 a.m. (I thought), but Doug was a tad early, so I answered the door in my housecoat and fuzzy slippers.  And pulled the jack-all out of the shed for him in that attire. Duoh.  I went to change into jeans as he went to set up.  He tried wire instead of rope for the first stake--snapped the wire.  So back to the rope.  And it worked.  And the next one worked.  Doug showed me which crank to move to engage-- a ha--I had tried moving that piece last night, but didn't move it far enough as I didn't want to break it.  But done in 5 minutes.

So all ready now for the trusses coming today.  Then I get a call from Rob at 5:00 p.m.   The truss truck had broken down and they are not being delivered today.  Argh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  After all that work and agony and rush--and the trusses come tomorrow....

**Footnote:  The skype incident is somewhat similar to when our washing machine broke down.  I described the grinding sound to Rob, and he surfed the Internet to find a solution.  Some part had broken, but the part was designed to break to take the pressure off other, more expensive parts.  A simple $4 part, but not worth a $100+ service call. So Rob sent me a YouTube link on how to take the washing machine apart, install the new part, and put it back together.  That too, did not go over well.  I used friends' washing machines for two weeks until Rob came up and fixed it.