Locked Out!

Above, the house I was locked out of. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. It ended up being sooner.

I locked myself out of the house with my keys and my phone inside.

I went out to switch off the heater and holding tank heaters in The Beast. While doing so, I was thinking that I need to get an extra key made. I kept a spare key in the motorhome for such occurrences (which usually happened about once a month) back in Tarzana. But when I bought the house, I only was given one house key with several for the garage.

I only had the keys to the RV with me when I went outside.

After shutting off the heaters, I went back to the house and, lo and behold, the front door was locked. Since the house has double pane windows, I was screwed.

It is funny that minutes before I was thinking about getting an extra key made, not knowing what was about to happen to drive that point home.

So I went down to the Flying J and there are no pay phones there. I went back up to my neighborhood and the two neighbors I met weren't around. So I went back down to the Boss Shop (next to the Flying J) and a nice clerk there called a locksmith for me.

About 45 minutes later, the locksmith arrived and I became a few (quite a few) dollars poorer (it isn't cheap getting a locksmith to come out from Gallup). I'll be seeing him this coming week (most likely tomorrow) to have him make a spare key.

One thing that was accomplished during the time the locksmith was here, he turned the door lock right side up. It was originally installed upside down and dirt can get inside the mechanism to cause future problems. He took the door lock apart and installed it the correct way. The deadbolt (that uses the same key) was installed correctly, but the door lock wasn't.

We chatted for a while and he told me about some great camping spots up near McGaffey and Fort Wingate (he grew up in the Fort Wingate community).