I'm pretty sure I experience what I like to call an "operational crisis" more than twice as often as the average person. These events are the ones in which you realize that you've gotten yourself into a problematic situation a moment too late and wish you could turn back time. However, my uncanny ability to enter these situations is almost balanced by my creative problem solving abilities (which I will now flaunt).
Today's major catastrophe was the locking of my keys in the car, while on the job, with the radio on, about 50 minutes away from the nearest spare key. As the door swung shut, I remember thinking, "hey, I like this song." After the ensuing curse-fest, I got tactical. The obvious solution would be to accept responsibility for the mistake and call my boss. Unfortunately, I already used that maneuver the last time I locked my keys in the truck. Yes, this is the second time in about a month on the job. All I can say in my defense, is that I enter and exit my vehicle about 75 times per day and sometimes I forget a step in the exit routine. To make the situation more ominous, I feared that my boss might be harboring some resentment toward me because he received a speeding ticket on the first occasion that he had to rush a spare key out to my stranded, dumb ass. Yes... I was not eager to call him. So, I brainstormed. I could either break the window and blame it on a rogue moose (though I remain skeptical, I am assured they live in Colorado), or I could break into the vehicle by some other means.
So, I tried to channel McGuiver as best I could. Fortunately, I'm constantly surrounded by barbed wire in my profession. I managed to liberate a small amount of thick-gauge wire from a nearby fence and bent it (using a small slot in a tree trunk for leverage) into what I thought might be an appropriately-shaped "jimmy." I proceeded to insert this crude device into the seam between the window seal and the passenger window itself. A half-hour of many different movements, terrible scraping noises, and wire reconfigurations (each one more advanced that the previous) went on before I decided that this piece of wire was not doing the job, although I did manage to induce some wiggling of the little lock thing. Apparently, the simple hook shape and upward tug method only works on cars that are used in films. So instead, I tried shoving it into one of the holes under the door handle. This felt desperate, but by some miracle, it worked. I was able to push the wire forward and make the lock wiggle. After some further manipulation, I got the lock to rise up about half way. I couldn't get it fully unlocked, because the wire would begin to bend as I pried harder and harder. Thinking this half-up configuration might be enough (ha), I pulled on the handle. Mistake. This made the lock return to its fully locked position. But now confidence had kicked in. After bending my wire in two and wraping the now parallel wires for double the strength, I was able to raise the lock all the way. I was so happy to get the door open I sat down in the passenger seat with my head laid back for about 10 minutes, thus bringing my non-working time for the day to a comfortable 1 hour. That's your tax dollars at work boulder county.
So, if anyone needs help jacking a Ford Ranger, now you sort of know how. And I'll be keeping my "spare key" in the bed of my truck for the next time my cerebellum drops the ball.
