My Day Of No Luck!

(Picture not of actual garage door)

It was Thursday evening and I was driving our KSL weather vehicle home because I had a golf tournament early in the morning to be to. I arrived home and was starting to pull into the garage when BAM… POW… CRUNCH! I heard the most awful noise. I slammed the gear into park, grabbed the keys and jumped out. The top of the vehicle had an 8” bar (for a satellite) that I never noticed. The bar had caught the bottom panel of our garage door and smashed it in. The force threw the entire door off track! As I’m observing this, I set the key down on my Explorer already parked in the garage. Chase, hearing the loud noise, came running out of the house... with his jaw dropped to the floor. We both look at each other in utter amazement. Once we got over the initial shock, we spent the next hour trying to repair the door. We finally gave up, realizing we weren’t as strong as we needed to be. So Chase takes off in my car for his softball game in Kaysville. While he’s at his game, I text him: “I think I left the keys to the weather vehicle in my car… will you please look and if you have them, lock the weather vehicle up when you get home.” I sent the message and went to bed. The next morning my alarm went off at 5:15 am. I roll out of bed and get ready. At 5:45 am, I tap Chase on the shoulder and ask him where he put the keys to the station vehicle. He said he couldn’t find them last night. I instantly started to panic! I had to be down at the Thanksgiving Point golf course at 6:30 am… this only gave me 45 minutes to find the keys and get down there. I started to frantically look throughout the house, garage, both vehicles… NOTHING. I finally said a little prayer and tried to remember where I had set my keys down the night before. I finally remembered that I set them on the back bumper of my car after I hit the garage door. My stomach sank. The keys had to have been long gone. Chase drove my car to Kaysville and back the night before… there was no way the keys would have “hung on” for that distance. I searched around my car again… NOTHING. I decided to drive Chase’s route from the night before. I drove up and down the frontage road, up to Kaysville and back down to Centerville… NOTHING. I called my boss and finally confessed my frustration and how I obviously was going to be late. He tried to be understanding, but he also really needed me and the vehicle down at the golf tournament. I got back home around 6:45 am and woke Chase up. I was really flustered at this point. We drove the frontage road together with no success of finding the keys. We came back home and Chase asked, “How good did you look around your car?” He then proceeded to search around my car in depth. He found the keys! It was a miracle… the keys were wedged in a small crack behind my back-hatch door. Somehow they had held on through all of our travels. I was relieved and kicked myself at the same time… why didn’t I look harder before I drove up and down the Wasatch front? So I took off to the golf tournament… extremely late. I spent the next five hours running around and making sure the tournament was running smoothly. I had a USU Aggiette reunion dinner in Logan at 5:00 that night, so I was trying to give myself enough time to get up there. I had to slip out of the tournament early. I raced home by 2:30 pm, thinking I had gotten through the hectic day. I parked and walked up to the front door… just to realize Chase had all my keys… therefore, he had my house key! I was locked out of my house. At this point, I started crying. The frustration from the day had finally got to me. I called Chase and we coordinated a meeting point. So I drove up to Kaysville, got the house key, and drove back to Centerville. By this time, I had about 15 minutes to shower and get ready for the reunion. I sped through my routine and zipped out the door by 4:00, picked Chase up from work, and we were on our way to Logan. The rest of the night was wonderful and no more bad luck came my way. The moral of the story is: 1) Never pull an unfamiliar vehicle into your garage unless you know for sure it fits, 2) always know where your car keys are, 3) always have a backup house key, and 4) try to avoid days like this at all costs!

The good news... the repairs only cost us $80 and we didn't have to replace our garage door. My boss felt so bad about the whole thing that he reimbursed me for the expenses! After all was said and done, we aren't out of pocket any money and I have a great story to tell!