I will get to the trampoline. But first, a picture to remind me of how an almost 13 year old boy thinks when he decides to make brownies by using one dish to mix and bake so he doesn't have to clean a separate bowl.
Now for the trampoline. During the Christmas season of 2011, we thought it would be mighty fun to have a trampoline in our backyard. January 2012: the McGregors buy a 14' trampoline.
The kids played on it. We made neighbors get permission from their parents to jump on it. It got hot. It got sunshiney. The padding deteriorated from the springs; the foam peeled off the poles. By the winter of 2013 the net was starting to get holes in it, which I (and my mother) painstakingly stitched up, and the trampoline was renamed Frankenline.
I regularly patched the net until it was unsalvageable, sometime in 2014. At that point I cut off the worst areas and left the rest of the net hanging loose. It looked (really) bad, but by that time we had started building a house and I thought we would just replace the net when we moved. After all, we never had a net on my childhood trampoline, and we were fine!
....Until a little girl I was babysitting flew off of the trampoline and slammed into the wooden fence. (I can't get the image out of my head.)
I Amazoned it that hour. $80 and 2-days later, we had a net to replace. If you have never put a trampoline together, you might not be aware that this means you unknot every string that is holding the net on, and then restring the trampoline to the springs. Loads of fun. Especially when you guess the middle wrong and figure out it doesn't stretch that far, so you get to start over a few times.
A few months later we moved. 2015. I was 7 months pregnant and it was ice storming while I once again unknotted and untied every net string. Luckily, some nice men from church helped us to take apart and then moved the rest of the trampoline.
While 8 months pregnant, I (and the kids) set up the trampoline and restrung the net. I was a balancing baby-belly trampoline goddess.
That summer (2015) the jump mat started ripping away from the springs. A neighbor fell through the side (are you seeing a pattern here?); that hour I ordered a new net. Two days and $80 later we once again unstring the net, replace the pad, and restring the net.
2016, this week. I am away from home and come home to: the net torn off of the metal ring on top. A neighbor apparently jumped into the net and the sunburned top just ripped right through the poles.
Today. I find black duct tape and tape around the entire top of the net. Anything to save a few bucks--and prolong the time until I will have to undo and redo the net.
So if you are thinking about buying a trampoline and you live in Texas, you have been warned.
