Think of a 1940’s “Mom & Pop” motel, the long building, two stories, with the covered walkway to the rooms. Each room has a window and door facing that walkway. We got here on Friday afternoon and were issued the keys, the little plastic cards that you wave over the scanner in the door latch–very high tech. We walked up the stairs, waved the key at the door, and nothing happened. We tried the other key, still nothing. Our teammate farther down the way had already gotten into his room, so we asked him, “What’s the secret?” So he masterfully held the key in place, each one, and then said, “There’s no secret here, it doesn’t work.” We had carried the luggage up the stairs, it was hot and muggy, and we were at the end of a trip that had started at 4:30 am. I took a look at the window, wiggled it a little to find it was not latched in any way, opened it, and climbed in. It’s a standard modern sliding style window, a little more than waist high for me. Thanks to my early ballet training, I could kick my leg high enough to get up to the sill and slide in. It was tricky at one point because even folded up, as it were, I am larger than the 28 inch opening. I opened the door and got the luggage in.
About 15 minutes later, our teammate next door said loudly, “Oh, NO!” So I rushed out to see what was the matter. She said “I went out and forgot the key.” “No problem,” said I, and climbed in her window. Later on that evening when she couldn’t get the air conditioner to work, I suggested she leave her window open since it was quite cool. She didn’t want to do that, “I’m afraid someone could get in,” she said.
Since my Dear Husband had gone back down the stairs and had not yet come back up, I climbed in the window again to get back in our room. When we met our school hosts half an hour later, they asked if we had gotten into our rooms and were starting to get settled in? I said that it was relatively easy to climb in the window. They were surprised that the keys didn’t work, since they had checked them the day before. But the host apologized and said he would come up later to see what he could do.
What he did was attach a long length of synthetic fiber twine to the door handle and tie it securely. Then he set the length of twine on the chair just inside the window. In this way, I could open the window, pull the twine with one hand while pushing the door with the other, and this would be easier than climbing through.
Today one key has been found for the door to bypass the high tech battery operated opening system. This key has been issued to my husband who said, “Now we can get rid of this twine.” “Not so fast,” I said, “Since we don’t have exactly the same rhythm of going and coming, I think I’ll keep the string latch.” High tech is fine when it works, but low tech works all the time.