All he needed was a ball-point pen and a paperclip
My husband is an original MacGyver, pronounced here in Latin America as Ma-Gee-ver, accent on the middle syllable. According to his wiki page, MacGyver’s “main asset is his practical application of scientific knowledge and inventive use of common items—along with his ever-present Swiss Army knife.” Alan doesn’t use the knife, but he is the master of reusing, recycling, salvaging, and reprocessing.
He is also (not surprisingly) a hoarder. I am the great liquidator. I, for example, would toss all leftover parts from broken appliances or scraps of rubber or wiring or plumbing or anything else he keeps.
I rarely go in his shop. The shelves are full of pieces and parts of all sorts of things. I can never find anything I’m looking for out there, anyway, and he gets pretty testy if I move something. On the other hand my house is spotless. Well, I admit I have a bit of an If It’s Out of Sight It Doesn’t Count as Clutter mentality. But, really, it’s pretty tidy in here.
I suppose we keep each other balanced.
But here is the thing. I have wanted an inversion table for the longest time. Ever since I first saw one, over 20 years ago, I just knew my back and hips would feel divine if I could only hang upside down for a few minutes a day. I never felt I could fork over the bucks for one when I lived in the States, and then we moved to Costa Rica. Until recently things like “exercise equipment” has seemed redundant to people who evolved from an agrarian based culture. Want exercise? they’d say, Go out and chop bush for ten to twelve hours a day. Then see if you want to “work out.”
Alan has known about my bat-like desires for a while now. The other day he asked me what project he could do next. That is something else about him: he is always busy with some venture or another and one reason our house is as beautiful as it is.
Would you make me an inversion table? I asked.
We looked online and have studied YouTube videos of various models. I printed off a couple of brochures for him to peruse. 
He is almost finished with it. I will post photos and video here and on facebook when it’s done.(I think I should pre-flight it in private and over a very soft surface.) He has welded it together using parts from bicycles, motorcycles, paint rollers, plumbing tubing, as well as wood from a tree that fell a couple of years ago. I can hardly wait to try it out.
No comments yet