Some introduction to this story. I wrote this out the day after it happened. My initial intent was just to tell a co-worker about my previous evening, and I sort of got into telling the whole story. It was a particularly slow day at work ;)
Part I: The Realization
Some background. I had just gotten back to home from my parents, where I had picked up my new shoes that had just arrived ;) Its funny tracing events back to their catalysts – carrying that box of shoes up to my room would prove to make for a far more interesting evening than usual. I got up to my door, and began to try and get my keys out from my pocket while carrying the box of shoes and a couple other things from home. The first thing to note is that my usual, habitual action is to take out my keys, unlock my door, and put my keys straight back in my pocket. However today as I was fumbling around with my arms full one of my housemates, Prach, came walking by and offered to help. I had just taken out my keys, and said “sure”, and threw him the keys so he could unlock the door for me. After doing so I said “just throw the keys into the box,” and he threw them in next to my shoes, and I walked in. I set the box on top of my dresser, and began milling around preparing for bed, as I was pretty tired. I grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste, and began to head out the door to go down the hall to the bathroom. Note 2: I *always* do a quick check that I have my keys in my pocket before I close the door behind me when leaving my room. This is usually accomplished by a quick pat on the outside of my pocket, to make sure I can feel my keys inside. So, of course, I do so. And I feel keys. So I close the door behind me and head down the hall to the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I head back to my room, I reach in my pocket to pull out my keys… as useful as keys to my cash locker, drawer, and the branch at Issaquah are, they are rather ineffective at getting me into my room when its locked. As I hold my bank keys in my hand, an unpleasant realization of my situation sweeps over me: its around 10:30 at night, I’m standing out in the hall with my toothbrush and toothpaste, and I’m locked out.
Part 2: No worries… right?
So! I start thinking about what I can do about this situation. Some further background: Gabe is the RA at our place, so he’s got a master key to let people into their rooms when they lock themselves out. But when I got home I hadn’t seen his car… I knock on his door to double check. No response. Ok, still, no worries. I know Gabe really well, and help him with a lot of the stuff he deals with as RA, and so I’m the only other one in the house that knows a secret spot where he will usually stash his Master key if he’s out of town or gone for a long time so that I can stand in as RA if anyone needs to be let into their room. So I go to said spot and check... no master key. Well, no worries, that means he should be around or home sometime soon, I’ll give him a call and see where he’s at. Except that my phone is on my dresser. In my room. Next to my keys. How about that ;)
At this point I’d like to interject that I’m really glad that I know a lot of the people in the house really well. This will prove even more critical as the story progresses ;P So I need a cell phone to call Gabe. I head back upstairs, and yes! Dan’s door is open, and he’s home, along with his roommates Alex and Xun. So I fill in Dan about my situation, we chuckle about it, and I ask if I can use his phone. Of course I can! I dial up Gabe… and get his voicemail. I leave him a quick message, tell him that its me even though its Dan’s phone, and ask him to call me back when he can. Well, I don’t know what else to do now but wait, so I grab a chair and join Dan, who is watching “Heroes” since he hadn’t seen the series before. Time passes, no call back from Gabe… sometime past 11 I start thinking about my options if Gabe is actually out of town and not coming back tonight, and just didn’t leave the master key in its usual spot, and the chance he could already be asleep wherever he is. I could sleep in Dan’s room that night, and even wear the same clothes to the bank tomorrow if I absolutely needed to… Oh wait. It’s not just my room key that’s locked in my room. My car keys happen to be on that same keyring. I’m not going anywhere without those keys. The only other option would be to call my parents and have them head to Seattle at well past 11 at night to bring me the spare Vibe key so that I can use my car the next day. I mention this to Dan, and he asks “have you tried the credit card thing? That works sometimes.” Why, no, I haven’t!
Part 3: In case of lockout, break in.
And thus Dan and I begin a mission to see if we can break into my room. I pull out my Qdoba’s card, trying to find the piece of plastic I’d miss the least using it to try and pop the door open. We manage to get the card slid in between the door and the jam (though this was tricky, the jam actually overlaps the door on our side by a good inch, so the card is bent at a 90 degree angle to be in-between the door and the jam). But try as we might the card won’t slide down through and push the retracting metal piece into the door so it will open. My next suggestion to Dan: do you have any paperclips? He didn’t but knew there were some in the study downstairs. As he kept trying his luck with the Qdoba’s card and the door, I ran downstairs and grab a couple paperclips. Maybe we’ll have better luck with our lockpicking skills! We begin jamming bent up paperclips into the door, trying to wiggle them around and seeing if we can randomly and through sheer luck get the lock to pop open. Well, after some time attempting this we both conclude that neither one of us have any clue how to actually pick a lock with paper clips ;P Though Dan has another thought: “are your windows open?”
Another couple interjections. First is this: My room is on the third floor. The side of the building that my windows are on is flat, red brick, 3 stories of it. The second thing that needs to be brought up is that over the past week we’ve been having new windows installed in all the rooms, and all the uninstalled windows and the equipment the window installers have been using are sitting in a little courtyard area that’s part of our house (surrounded by the house on two sides and fenced off on the other two sides with a gate to the alleyway behind the house). The windows in my room had been replaced the previous day (and they are nice I might add, I like our new windows ;) With that said, moving on with the story!
I look at Dan, obviously puzzled by his question. “Yeah, they are actually, but what good is that? There’s no way we’re going to be able to get to them.” Dan: “Well, I think the window people may have left the huge ladders they’ve been using out in the courtyard.” I think about that, and I think he’s right, I have seen ladders out there! But wait… “I think you’re right, but there’s a padlock on the gate to the courtyard, we wouldn’t be able to get the ladders out of there.” Dan: “Oh, I know the combo to that padlock, just go check if the ladders are there!”
Part 4: They make some *really* big ladders!
Sure enough, out in the courtyard is a pile of ladders, all stacked together, ranging from smaller step ladders to larger ladders than I thought they actually made. I figure we’ll need the largest ones they’ve got to reach the third floor, so I go over to the stack to see about grabbing one. Problem. It looks like the window install people have run a metal cable around the ladders, and padlocked it shut, so all the ladders are tied together so you can’t move or steal them. I start examining the lock, and the cable snaking through the ladders… wait a minute… the padlock on one end of the cable is too big to pull through the slot in the ladder that the cable goes through, essentially attaching it there, but the cable then snakes through the ladders, and ends… at bare cable! Someone was apparently too lazy to tie them up properly ;P So I work the cable backwards, un-snaking it from the loose end, until I completely free one of the largest ladders. To give you a description: These aren’t the ladders that spread apart so they can stand up on their own, but the huge tall kind that you lean against a building for support. The ladder comes in two layers, with a pulley system, so that you can pull a rope and one layer climbs the other layer, making it possible to extend the latter so that it’s twice as tall as it would be when both layers are just sitting on top of each other. Even in this compact state, the ladder I’m looking at is roughly 2 stories tall. And its *heavy*.
I get Dan, we unlock the gate to the alley, and both carry out the ladder to the side of the house with my window. After heaving the ladder down, we look at each other with the same thought: how in the world do they get this heavy, 2 story ladder off the ground and propped up against the side of the building? First we think about trying to just keep pushing it up until its straight up and then setting it against the side of the building. We didn’t get very far with this: it really quickly became too heavy to keep pushing upwards, and too topheavy to keep balanced. Then we thought about using a small chimney outcropping of brick – we could use the corner this created on the side of the building and just push the ladder up enough to get it wedged in there, then keep shimmying it up a bit at a time, with the top always resting in that corner between the side of the building and the chimney until it was up enough that we could swing it to the side and place it flush against the side of the building. We started this, but it quickly became apparent we needed more help. So Dan went to grab his roommates, Alex and Xun.
Now that there are 4 of us, we think about trying to get the ladder up using the usual “keep pushing it up until its straight” method instead of the chimney-shuffle method. We put one of us on the base of the ladder, pushing down so that the base stays put, and the other three of us work on getting under the ladder and walking towards the base, pushing the ladder above us one rung at a time, and working on keeping it steady. We actually manage to pull this off! With the two story ladder now towering precariously above us, we carefully rotate the ladder 90 degrees so we can then carefully lean it flush against the side of the wall. It comes down just above the second story windows, so we then use the pulley system to extend it up until its now just below my window. We shuffle the base back a bit so it’s not as nearly straight up as it was, and use some wood to shove under one side of the base to level it out since the ground wasn’t doing that for us ;)
Part 5: The break-in of the century (at least for us)
We’re nearly there! There’s now a ladder going from where I’m standing up to my open window 3 stories above. With admonitions for everyone on the ground to hold the ladder steady, I begin climbing up 3 stories and get to my window. And begin to examine the screen before me. It should be noted that our old windows didn’t have screens, and this was a welcome addition to the new windows. Until now. Screens aren’t made to be taken off from outside the window. The little tabs that you’d use to push the screen back on its little metal springs to pull it out are on the inside of the screen, I don’t have anything to work with. And I’m not going to destroy the brand new screen to get into my room tonight. I keep playing with it, trying to push the screen to the side with no tabs or holds, but any movement I get just ends up getting snapped back into place without something to pull the screen out in my direction. But I think I might be able to do it if I had a screwdriver! I call down to Dan, and he runs in the house to get a screwdriver. After climbing down, grabbing the screwdriver from Dan, and returning up, we’re in business. I get the screwdriver inbetween the window and the screen, and get it to slide out towards me, and eventually get the whole screen off!
Now just one more obstacle. Currently my huge standing dresser is flush up against the window, blocking my entrance into the room. Being careful to use the window ledge as my leverage and not the ladder, I begin slowly pushing the dresser back away from the window, trying not to tip it over since I’m pushing over halfway towards the top of it. I get it to edge forward enough… I climbed up on the ledge into the crack between the dresser and the window… and jumped down into my room, amid the cheers of my three housemates below ;P I put the screen back, and call down that I’ll be right there to help take the ladder back down. I grab my keys, unlock the door, and head back down to the ladder.
Part 6: Just when you thought it was over
Now we just need to put everything away. We figure we’ll get the ladder down the same way we got it up, so we start trying to push/swing it out away from the building to get it standing straight. Now, if you are more observant than we were, you’ll remember that we moved the base of the ladder away from the building after setting it against it, so the angle wouldn’t be as steep. This also means that there’s a good chunk more top weight to deal with in getting the ladder now from the building to being completely horizontal than there was when we eased the ladder against the building in the first place. We weren’t expecting this. I’d like to mention now that the following all occurred very very quickly, and writing it out doesn’t nearly do it justice compared to our frantic shouts and actions at the time ;P
So we start to push the ladder up away from the building and swivel it around (in the same movement!) to walk it down, not expecting the extra weight compared to that same movement when we set it against the building in the first place. Immediately we realize this horrible mistake, as we don’t have enough oomph ready yet to deal with that weight, and the ladder begins to skid sideways across the side of the building, as it tries to keep falling against a support that we aren’t providing. Lots of frantic shouting ensues, and we try and shove the ladder against the building with enough force to stop the skipping sideways and get the top of the ladder to wedge against the wall again before the whole thing falls over sideways, 3 stories. We barely manage to do this, but all our effort is on keeping it steady in this position, and it’s still wanting to fall. Because its still slipping away we move more under it to try and support the weight, twist it a little more, and walk it down like we planned on doing. Now, the next part is one of those times in life where things seem to happen in slow motion, and everything is happening on automatic, no conscious decision making involved ;) Because we had all moved to help support the weight of the falling ladder, no one was left in the critical position of bottom brace – making sure that the base of the ladder was firmly pushed into the ground. The base of the side of the ladder away from the house swung up, and the other base pivoted, finishing the rotation that we had planned on making, but removing the option of pushing the ladder against the wall, the ladder was now 90 degrees turned from when it was lying flat against my window, in the orientation we had originally pushed it up. As we were all at the same instant realizing what was happening, and that no one was on the base, we could feel that the last remaining leg on the ground also wanted to pivot straight up, so that we would act as a fulcrum point on the falling ladder, and of course the result of that would be the entire weight of the ladder now completely on us, with all of us only a few feet away from one end of the ladder and 3 stores worth swinging down on top. We all shouted “THE BASE!!” And Dan, who was closest, frantically swung his foot around and jammed down on the base, shoving it back to the ground. I was a fraction of a second behind him doing the same thing to the other base, and I shoved that into the ground. Now Dan and I were both using a lot of effort to keep the base on the ground, while Alex and Xun were dealing with the still descending ladder and trying to keep it steady and controlled and get a handle on it. Finally we seemed to reach something stable, with all of us panting, Dan and I still holding the base down, and Alex and Xun holding up the ladder at a good 45% angle. They were both *really* straining though, we had barely been able to handle that weight with three of us on walking and only one on base when we got the ladder up in the first place. But the bottom was still wanting to pivot up, and it was taking both Dan and I to keep it from doing so, so Alex and Xun had to slowly walk backwards and bring the ladder down on top of them. VERY slowly they managed to do this, until the ladder was finally down, and we all gave each other high fives and laughed ;D
Part 7: That’s the story
So we managed to retract the ladder, put everything back, I re-snaked the ladders together and went up to my room. I then checked my phone – Gabe had called back on MY phone, since I told him it was me, and he said he was out downtown and would be back soon. Sure enough, a few minutes later Gabe returns home, and I filled him in on all the details of the story ;P (He had a cool story as well actually, had gotten free spontaneous tickets to a concert downtown, anyway, another story, but he was in the concert, why he didn’t answer his phone ;) Finally after all that I got to bed, like at 1:30 or so ;P
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