Yesterday, I got a chance to get out on my bike for maybe the second time this year. I was so excited and it was such a pretty day that I decided to bring the camera along.

These are a few of the things you’ll find if you go cruising around the big ol’ town of Butner on a pretty Fall day:

The reason I ask, is because my story’s probably better.

You ready for this?

….we sat on our front porch for 3 1/2 hours.

Exciting huh?

Ok, so there’s a little more to it. Here goes:

After church, Steph and I ran to Michaels and to Lowes to get some paint and supplies for decorating the nursery. Then we came home and laid down to take a ‘cat nap’, but since we were both totally exhausted, we slept for like two hours, so when we woke up, we were running late to get to a special service at a friend’s church.

So I threw on my clothes (Steph apparently can just snap her fingers and she’s all dressed and as beautiful as ever… not sure how that works exactly) and grabbed a couple pieces of fruit and ran out the door.

Steph pulled the door shut and then asked if I had the keys.

…I didn’t.

What proceeded was really frustrating and pretty funny too.

First we spent at least 45 minutes trying to find a creative way to break into our own house. We spent quite a while on the credit card in the door trick, walked several laps around the house trying to find an unlocked window…

Then we called the police who – and I’m not kidding – referred us to another police department. 45 minutes later an officer showed up, more or less confirmed that we were indeed locked out of our house, and then gave me a couple of phone numbers to the local locksmith, Jerry.

This wasn’t good news for me, ’cause I know that a locksmith never charges less than $100 bucks to come to your ‘rescue’. So I spent another 30 minutes working on the door…

Steph assured me that the deadbolt wasn’t locked, so I couldn’t figure out why my wiggling and prying and hacking and pounding wasn’t helping anything.

Eventually I conceeded and decided to call Jerry, which is when things really got frustrating/entertaining:

I call the first number and it seems to be the office, so I leave a message. I call the second number and it’s disconnected! Hmmm…. So I called my sister who dug into the yellow pages for us and gave us a couple more locksmith numbers.

Without fail, every one of them said they wouldn’t come to Creedmoor, and I should just call Jerry!

They also had a couple other numbers to try him at, so I tried those, left messages, tried some more…

At one point I was back on the phone with the police asking if they knew of any other locksmith. Apparently Jerry has them all on his payroll or something, because all they would tell me is to call Jerry.

So finally, after about an hour and half on the phone, I get in touch with Jerry’s wife. I could hear the hallelujah chorus as someone actually answered the phone. I told her our situation.

Guess what, Jerry’s having surgery tomorrow and he can’t work today. Sorry…

What? No!

We have to go to the bathroom and we’re hot and hungry and the freakin’ service we were leaving to go to is over now and we can’t break a window because it’s hurricane season and there will probably be another one before we get the window fixed and we just want back into our own house!

I didn’t actually say any of that, but I was thinking it.

So a few more phone calls, and I finally find a guy in Durham who can be here in an hour for 95 bucks, or a guy in Raleigh who can be here in about an hour for 165 bucks…

So the guy from Durham comes and works on the door for a second, and then he says, “Are you sure the deadbolt isn’t locked?” Sure enough, it was… which is why all my sweating and swearing was totally a waste of time…

When we finally walked through the door of our house around 9:00, I looked at the phone log: 31 calls trying to find someone, not counting the miscelaneous personal calls that were sprinkled in there…

We learned a valuable lesson: hide a spare somewhere….

You ever done that?