The car keys story
Cliff’s Notes: We went hiking and lost the only car keys that existed for that car. But we (and the car) made it back home!
Joel’s first position at Morgan Solar was as a Field Engineer at their test site in California near Los Angeles. Heather came to visit him there, and we went on a road trip in his coworker’s restored ’89 BMW convertible. It was a glorious trip up the coast, camping by the ocean and riding with the top down along Highway 1… After a stop in San Francisco to visit friends, we went to Yosemite National Park for Joel’s birthday.
The morning of his birthday we confirmed dinner reservations at 8pm at the fancy lodge in the park and chose a hike for the day. “Upper Yosemite Falls, 3.7 miles [one way] with 2700 ft elevation gain, sounds reasonable” we said, without actually doing the conversion to metric. We started up the trail, stopping along the way to take in the scenery and pay attention to the treacherous rock-paths which had been carved out by dynamite.
Two hours in we asked hikers on the way down how far it was to the top. “About two hours, but I hope you have headlights because it’ll be dark by the time you get down.” Headlights? Dark? We hadn’t planned for those.
“Ok. We’re going to set the timer for one hour, and we’ll turn back when it goes off.” And off we ran, uphill.
We made it to the top in just under an hour and took in the breathtaking view of Half Dome (if you have Mac OS Yosemite or higher, it’s the view on your desktop if you haven’t changed it from the default). We also watched the sun set behind the mountains and knew we didn’t have much time before it got too dark to safely descend.
So we ran down. We made it down the entire trail in under an hour. As we came down from the run and the adrenaline, we talked about what a bad idea that was and how we really needed to be more responsible.
And then we couldn’t find the car keys.
They had been in Heather’s pants pockets, so we turned out every pocket, then every bag, then searched partway back up the mountain, and still nothing. Joel called the car’s owner and learned that there were no spare keys. We were stuck in the middle of the park, ten miles from our tent, with only the clothes on our back and a small day pack. Clearly, our first order of business was the fancy dinner we had planned, so we walked 2 miles to dinner in the pitch black, ate a delicious dinner of swordfish and pasta with duck, and figured out where to sleep that night.
The family lodge was all sold out. The fancy lodge had rooms available, for $325 a night… so we chose the heated tents where schoolchildren sleep on field trips, for only $100/night.
The next day we called the locksmith that the auto repair shop in town recommended. They gave us a 1pm deadline to call them and have them arrive that day. That meant we had three hours to find the keys — Heather ran up the mountain (again) while Joel ran around town checking lost and found, posting notices and asking anyone and everyone if they’d seen our car keys. No dice for either — Heather called the locksmith at 1pm and they said they’d come by in about three hours. Three hours later, they called back to say it had been a busy day and they hadn’t sent anyone yet, but they sure would now.
We called back an hour later and they said “Oh, you still want us to send someone??”
And then they stopped taking our calls.
Every other locksmith we called either didn’t service Yosemite, or didn’t service BMWs. Another night in a heated tent for us.
The next morning, Joel got up early and started looking up more locksmiths. He finally found someone who was willing to come out and look at our car. When the locksmith arrived, we were restraining ourselves from hugging him, and then he performed the best magic trick we’ve ever seen: he made a new key.
From his truck full of locksmithing technology, he pulled out a blank key, a file, and magnifying glasses. He stuck the blank in the trunk lock, wiggled it gently, pulled it out and looked at it under the glasses, and filed away where the tumblers had left scratches. After half an hour of this, the trunk popped open! And it worked on the front door, and in the ignition! We were freeee!
In the end we learned that we deal well with adversity together, and that we should always keep the keys in a zippered pocket!
Joel’s first position at Morgan Solar was as a Field Engineer at their test site in California near Los Angeles. Heather came to visit him there, and we went on a road trip in his coworker’s restored ’89 BMW convertible. It was a glorious trip up the coast, camping by the ocean and riding with the top down along Highway 1… After a stop in San Francisco to visit friends, we went to Yosemite National Park for Joel’s birthday.
The morning of his birthday we confirmed dinner reservations at 8pm at the fancy lodge in the park and chose a hike for the day. “Upper Yosemite Falls, 3.7 miles [one way] with 2700 ft elevation gain, sounds reasonable” we said, without actually doing the conversion to metric. We started up the trail, stopping along the way to take in the scenery and pay attention to the treacherous rock-paths which had been carved out by dynamite.
Two hours in we asked hikers on the way down how far it was to the top. “About two hours, but I hope you have headlights because it’ll be dark by the time you get down.” Headlights? Dark? We hadn’t planned for those.
“Ok. We’re going to set the timer for one hour, and we’ll turn back when it goes off.” And off we ran, uphill.
We made it to the top in just under an hour and took in the breathtaking view of Half Dome (if you have Mac OS Yosemite or higher, it’s the view on your desktop if you haven’t changed it from the default). We also watched the sun set behind the mountains and knew we didn’t have much time before it got too dark to safely descend.
So we ran down. We made it down the entire trail in under an hour. As we came down from the run and the adrenaline, we talked about what a bad idea that was and how we really needed to be more responsible.
And then we couldn’t find the car keys.
They had been in Heather’s pants pockets, so we turned out every pocket, then every bag, then searched partway back up the mountain, and still nothing. Joel called the car’s owner and learned that there were no spare keys. We were stuck in the middle of the park, ten miles from our tent, with only the clothes on our back and a small day pack. Clearly, our first order of business was the fancy dinner we had planned, so we walked 2 miles to dinner in the pitch black, ate a delicious dinner of swordfish and pasta with duck, and figured out where to sleep that night.
The family lodge was all sold out. The fancy lodge had rooms available, for $325 a night… so we chose the heated tents where schoolchildren sleep on field trips, for only $100/night.
The next day we called the locksmith that the auto repair shop in town recommended. They gave us a 1pm deadline to call them and have them arrive that day. That meant we had three hours to find the keys — Heather ran up the mountain (again) while Joel ran around town checking lost and found, posting notices and asking anyone and everyone if they’d seen our car keys. No dice for either — Heather called the locksmith at 1pm and they said they’d come by in about three hours. Three hours later, they called back to say it had been a busy day and they hadn’t sent anyone yet, but they sure would now.
We called back an hour later and they said “Oh, you still want us to send someone??”
And then they stopped taking our calls.
Every other locksmith we called either didn’t service Yosemite, or didn’t service BMWs. Another night in a heated tent for us.
The next morning, Joel got up early and started looking up more locksmiths. He finally found someone who was willing to come out and look at our car. When the locksmith arrived, we were restraining ourselves from hugging him, and then he performed the best magic trick we’ve ever seen: he made a new key.
From his truck full of locksmithing technology, he pulled out a blank key, a file, and magnifying glasses. He stuck the blank in the trunk lock, wiggled it gently, pulled it out and looked at it under the glasses, and filed away where the tumblers had left scratches. After half an hour of this, the trunk popped open! And it worked on the front door, and in the ignition! We were freeee!
In the end we learned that we deal well with adversity together, and that we should always keep the keys in a zippered pocket!
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All honeymoon photos are copyright of Joel Slonetsky.
All honeymoon photos are copyright of Joel Slonetsky.