The weight and perks of adulthood

It had been an awesome day at the mountain. My partner and I drove up there around 11 am and it was not too busy for a weekend. We had an amazing snowboarding session, where I finally started learning small jumps. We even ran into a couple of friends and did a few runs together.

As we finished off the day, we all walked back to the parking lot, chatting and enjoying the fresh snowfall. We said goodbye to our friends and headed towards our car.

When we get to the car, I look at my partner and wait for him to get the car keys. He looks back at me and assures me that I've got the keys. Turns out that, after looking all around our pockets, we find out: His pants have a hole in it, big enough for keys to go through. That was usually the pocket he’d put the keys in...

Welcome to adulthood. It sucks, but you'll love it. You're responsible for having your keys to enter your own house and car.

Thankfully, our friends were still at the parking lot, so we managed to get their attention and ask for help. We still needed to find a way of opening our car because our apartment keys were in there (at least they were not lost, am I right). We never even had spare car keys, so we made our peace with having to leave the car at the mountain.

Now, that is where our 1.5 h journey of hacking into our own car began. As my partner ran around the ski resort to see if anyone had found our car keys, my friends and I were watching YouTube videos. Here is a helpful one:

Essentially, you’ll need (i) a shoelace to make a slip knot with. The shoelace would (ii) go through the window, all the way down to the lock, and then you have to (iii) pull the lock sideways (don’t try to pull it upwards, and don’t be afraid to put a lot of strength in it).

Folks, after several attempts in making the perfectly calculated knot with our ONE pair of shoelaces amongst ourselves (only one of our friends was wearing sneakers. We completely ruined his shoelaces)... I managed to open that freaking car door.

Once I did it, I felt pretty powerful. I CAN DO ANYTHING NOW. I've opened my car with a shoelace!

Now, I hope you never run into this situation, but if you do, I hope that:

• Your car is old enough to have that lock pin (my friend's new car doesn't have that)
• You have long shoelaces (that’s one of the reasons we struggled so much, the shoelaces were slightly short)
• You have patient and supportive friends like ours (we are forever grateful)

As for us, our friends gave us a ride back home and we were able to enter our apartment.

The next day, after spending $200+ in new car keys, wasting half a day of work and getting another lift to the mountain, we got a call. It was the ski resort: someone had found our original car keys…

Here’s a bonus story: My partner DID IT AGAIN another day, forgetting about his pocket hole. Thankfully, he had the apartment keys with him and his friend gave him a lift back home, where we had another spare key (we did a couple of copies just to be safe). BUT the mountain staff saw the car parked overnight and assumed that he had gotten lost in the mountains, so the police knocked on our door at 2 am. That was enough for him to finally get new pants.