Part II of the keys

Heidi already told the ending but I wrote this without knowing that--so my take on the keys :)

Part II
Over the next few days of our vacation I made calls trying to see if the keys were in lost and found or if there was a way to duplicate them without the originals or any proof that the car was ours. Every call to the lost and found was futile but they did often ask, “Where did you leave the keys?” I suppose this is a common first reaction for normal people but I would think that people that work in lost and found would realize that this question is pointless since if the person knew where they had left the keys they could go there and recover them.

The duplicating of keys has, like every other part of car repair, has moved to a digital, electronic and difficult phase. So when I called the dealership they said that they could make me new keys but for $137. Now the original keys were quite nice but I don’t think they were worth that much money. And if you consider that just 10 years ago you could copy keys for about 2 dollars that is quite a large increase.

I tried many approaches during our week in Ohio including a plan where I rented a car that would be ready for us at the NH airport. In this plan we would drive home, search like crazy for the lost keys and then I would drive back, return the rental car and drive home. Doesn’t sound to bad but a 45 minute 1 way trip isn’t exactly what I was looking for after a few plane rides. So we just stopped working on the problem and decided that we would figure it out when we got to NH.

When we went to bed on our last night in Columbus we still didn’t quite know what we are doing [1] but we went to bed anyway with the thought that we would figure it out when we got there. But then at 1am Aaaaaaaaaaaaa! Waaahhhhh! Heidi did her best to calm Amelia and then gave her over to me. She was crying louder than I had ever seen her cry. I was so worried that she would wake up her 2 year old cousin Katelyn that I went down into the basement and tried to walk her to sleep down there. But for the first time she didn’t respond to any of the normal tricks. She just kept crying and crying. To make our flight we had to leave at 4am so I was really hoping to get her to sleep—which I did by 3:20. A restful 30 minutes later I woke up worried that I had missed the alarm and just got up.


Amelia was very good on both flights, possibly due to staying up most of the night, and we arrived in NH without incident. Heidi and Amelia took up a spot near the in-airport McDonald’s I began trying to figure out what happened to the keys. As stupidly as on our first day of the trip, I had worn flip flops but insisted on running to the car to see what the situation was. I jogged, walked fast, dodged cars that were trying to hit me and made it to our car. I walked right up to the driver side door, grabbed the handle and opened it. Oooops! I jumped in and there were the keys in the ignition[2]. As dumb as it was to leave the keys in the car I was very happy to have them and immediately headed back to the terminal to tell Heidi that we could grab our bags and we could go home. The car had been unlocked for a week but I still felt the need to hit the remote lock as I walked away. But it didn’t make the characteristic ‘beep’ sound. I walked back to the car got in again and tried to start it up—totally dead. I had not only left the keys in the car but I had left the car on[3].

There are some more details but I’m going to end it here. We had the attendant at the airport jump the car and we were home in no time. Lesson learned—next time we will take the 8 am flight rather than the 6 am one.


[1] Don’t worry—this story is sort of boring me too but I had to finish it since I said the first part was part 1—next time I have this kind of idea I won’t do part 1 and part 2 since clearly part 2 sucks more than part 1 and part 1 might not have been that good.
[2] Just so you know this approach is not recommended in states other than NH and VT.
[3] Just so you know this approach is not recommended in any states.