What was meant to be a fairly relaxing evening ended up in a course of learning how to unscrew the backseat of a Kia Optima. A note I would also like to make here is that Grae and I are looking to buy a car this coming summer/autumn and the Optima had been one of the choices but after this particular evenings experience, I can say that thought has been put on the farthest back burner possible.
My Mum had driven down for Uncle Mike's funeral and we had just returned to our apartment to finish up the day and wait for Grae to come home so we could do the last of our Christmas shopping. Through a flurry of information, rain, and packing up the car for her trip back home in the morning, she locked the keys in the trunk. Now my first thought was, not a big deal, we'll call AAA and they'll come unlock the car and we'll pop the trunk, easy!
Now, calling AAA and having them unlock the car was the easy part, but what we didn't factor in was that everything was tied together via the electronics of the car. Once the car was "forced" open everything practically locked down except for the alarm which went off about every 10 minutes until Grae got home with the tool kit to get the battery out of the car. Thus began a four hour pursuit of the keys in the trunk, from disconnecting a large portion of the backseat, using our phones as videocameras to have a look around the trunk, to getting a great work out by having to pull the back portion of the seats away from the door so Grae could reach in and pull out items that were blocking the way to unlatch the trunk.
Finally after several failed attempts Grae was able to stick the end of a broom in with a good view of the emergency latch and open the trunk... Success!!
The next hour consisted of reattaching the seats to the car, packing up the car, having dinner, and falling into bed.
Lessons learned: buy a car that manually allows the backseats to fold down from inside the car, always know where the emergency latch is within the trunk, keep tools handy, if able have a hide away key stored somewhere on the car, and if possible maintain a sense of humor when such situations arise :)
My Mum had driven down for Uncle Mike's funeral and we had just returned to our apartment to finish up the day and wait for Grae to come home so we could do the last of our Christmas shopping. Through a flurry of information, rain, and packing up the car for her trip back home in the morning, she locked the keys in the trunk. Now my first thought was, not a big deal, we'll call AAA and they'll come unlock the car and we'll pop the trunk, easy!
Now, calling AAA and having them unlock the car was the easy part, but what we didn't factor in was that everything was tied together via the electronics of the car. Once the car was "forced" open everything practically locked down except for the alarm which went off about every 10 minutes until Grae got home with the tool kit to get the battery out of the car. Thus began a four hour pursuit of the keys in the trunk, from disconnecting a large portion of the backseat, using our phones as videocameras to have a look around the trunk, to getting a great work out by having to pull the back portion of the seats away from the door so Grae could reach in and pull out items that were blocking the way to unlatch the trunk.
Finally after several failed attempts Grae was able to stick the end of a broom in with a good view of the emergency latch and open the trunk... Success!!
The next hour consisted of reattaching the seats to the car, packing up the car, having dinner, and falling into bed.
Lessons learned: buy a car that manually allows the backseats to fold down from inside the car, always know where the emergency latch is within the trunk, keep tools handy, if able have a hide away key stored somewhere on the car, and if possible maintain a sense of humor when such situations arise :)
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