After waiting in high anticipation, a new piece of equipment was delivered today and sits proudly in my driveway … because I can’t get it into my shop.

If you’re a regular reader, you know I treat the roll-up door in my garage-based shop as a fourth wall. I don’t hang anything on it, of course, but I do arrange stuff just far enough away that it won’t impede the door should I ever need it, which is rare.

I don’t like to open the door. Doing so lets any accumulated cool (or heated) air out of the shop. Rain, which almost always comes from that direction, blows right in. Plus not being able to see my neighbor while I work increases the odds that she’ll go unstrangled a bit longer. The last time I opened that door was sometime last year, maybe around Halloween or so, to bring in some full sheets of plywood. Since then, I haven’t brought home any lumber or sheet goods so large that I couldn’t just tote it in through the front door.

But the shipment I was expecting would be in a box too large for the front door, and too heavy to maneuver through the house. A straight shot to the shop floor is what I needed, so when the truck pulled up to my driveway I hit the door button.

The motor hummed. The gears meshed. The chain strained. The door didn’t move.

It’s stuck fast, and I have no idea where the sticking point is. Releasing the drive chain didn’t help – I thought maybe with the chain released I could lift the door by hand – and I can’t figure out why it’s stuck. Maybe the roller wheels have rusted or frozen with disuse or maybe the bottom of the door is literally stuck to the concrete, but I know nothing about garage doors so the last thing I want to do is force it open. Fortunately, the company that installed the door when the house was built is just a couple miles away and I can have someone here soon to take a look at it.

But in the meantime, I have an unopened new toy sitting in my driveway singing a siren song I can’t, for the time being, answer.

A.J.