March 22, 2009

7:33 p.m.

Back Now

...I had quite a little adventure there at the end, just as I was about to leave. I'd loaded equipment and luggage out and then come back in for lunch, and only when I'd finished and was leaving for good did I realize I'd locked my keys in the car.

I have a spare key in my purse just in case I ever do this, and it's come in handy a couple of times. However, my purse was in the car.

No problem; I have AAA. I can just call 'em on my phone. My phone was in my purse.

I borrowed Carol's phone and got ahold of them in a jiffy. Good thing, too, because that made the hour I had to wait just go by like... roughly sixty minutes. Anyway they came, and I met Joe the automotive guy out back near my cute, muddy little locked car.

He had a devil of a time trying to break in. He wedged a little blood pressure cuff thingy into the door crack and puffed it up so there was just a wee space open. Then he passed a long, thin metal rod inside that turns a 90 degree corner just at the tip, and commenced trying to open the door.

Scions, we learned, have a little theft-proof aspect I didn't know about. If the door is jimmied open enough to get a thin metal rod into it, the door-opening button on the arm rest, the one that lives next to the window buttons, doesn't work to open the doors. You can jab that thing until Spring comes to the Berkshires and it won't do its assigned task. The button that lifts up, at the window, is just a little chiclet and there's nothing to grab onto. And without a key, there ain't no other way in besides breaking a window.

HOWEVER, when he ascertained that my keys were in my coat pocket on the seat, he managed after a few minutes to use said metal rod to hook them out, and bring them up close enough to the tiny gap in the door so that he could wedge his little finger in there and press the clicker button. Voila.

It was as awesome an example of grand theft auto as I've ever seen. I was going to give him my last $10 but he wouldn't take it.