I know, that for some of you who find this article via the search engines, what you are going to read will be a major disappointment. I concede that the development of door openers is a riveting niche subject that keeps you awake at night in giddy excitement, and it deserves the very best treatment. Alas I am not qualified to tackle the subject in any serious way.

So, instead of an indepth study of hydraulic or motorized devices that open and close front doors, garage doors or vault doors in an ultra convenient manner, here are some of my observations on how people open boring normal doors, the ones with a couple of hinges and a handle.

Public bathroom door openers

Don't get me wrong, I don't hang around bathrooms out of choice, but when you have no working toilet at home, you have to take whatever facilities are going. So, here in Berkeley, fortunately there are a string of public bathrooms at our disposal, usually in a row of 4.

From time to time, I have seen the bold ones who stride up to the first door and decisively twist the handle and push - only to find that it is locked. Thereafter, they are on the back foot, not quite so confident. They move to the next one and a little more tentatively, repeat. No joy. By the time they get to door number 4 you can see by their body language that they are definitely not as relaxed and bold as they were trying to open the first door. Hopping from leg to leg bent over double, positioned to the side not in front of the door, (in case someone bursts out, escaping the plague that lurks inside?) they snatch at handle 4, twist and shove - voila, it is open and they fall inside.

Ghetto door openers

Years ago I knew a Scottish guy who grew up in the Gorbals tenements in Glasgow. (These apartment blocks made Fort Apache the Bronx look like 5 star accomodation.) He told me that even to this day, if someone knocked at his door, he never opened it standing full on, but always turned to one side, so he wasn't such a big target! I had never considered answering the door to be such a technical exercise in self defense, but then again, I never grew up in Glasgow in an era when nasty types would knock, and when the door opened, they'd whack the person standing in the door in the face with a 2 x 4 wrapped in barbed wire.

I wondered if it wouldn't have been better to peak through the letterbox first, to see who was there, before you opened the door, but that would have played into the hands of really nasty boys who poked their victim in the eye. Braveheart was alive and well.

Garage door openers

Fricking batteries in remotes, that Duracell advert about going on and on, is a con. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to get out my car, walk around to the front door, walk through the house and open the garage door manually from the inside. Of course, to add to the pleasure, it was usually pissing down with rain or blowing a gale or doing something that made you want to stomp all over the dead remote, rip the garage door opener mechanism out the ceiling, and revert to a good old fashioned up-and-over door with a simple handle.

There we go, Ed's A to Z of door openers!

What handles or openers or doors get your attention, or on your nerves. Feel free to share.

Or How not to drive an SUV

We were pottering down a tree-lined street in the Bay Area at a measly 25mph, a few feet behind an SUV. Its super shiny back door was plastered with 4WD All Terrain stickers. It had tires the width of the front seats in my Camry. What a hunk!

Suddenly I realise I am only a few inches behind this poseur. He has slowed down almost to a halt. I jam on my brakes in time, thinking that there must be a surprise jay walker or stray cat in the road. Wrong. Slowly the SUV rolls to the left then to the right and... jesus this retard has slowed down to 2 mph to navigate a 2" high lump in the road. Slowly does it, so he doesn't tip over? Give me strength.

To make a point, I waited for the SUV to get a way ahead, then I accelerated and hit the bump at 25mph. Our Toyota Camry 2-wheel drive POS with no suspension worth a dime glided over the obstacle and continued on its merry way, none the worse for wear.




This image has nothing to do with my story, but a hats off to the driver for scratching their SUV.

SUV retard revisited

I was driving down the same road an hour or so later and blow me if another SUV, a Range Rover, (which according to the marketing brain-washing from its parent Land Rover, is probably the ultimate off road vehicle), did the same slow-to-a-crawl deal.

Do these people have no idea what they have? Sling a cable up a mountain and that Range Rover would make the summit in no time. But no, the owner treated the suburban roads of San Francisco as if they were in the middle of a landslide in the jungle. It is like they owned an oven and were scared to turn it on beyond 35 degrees - just in case.

I seriously think someone needs to confiscate SUVs from anyone without the balls to give their vehicle a good off-road thrashing, and redistribute them to people who appreciate and use them for what nature intended. Like this Hummer in water