She’s A Locksmith, Too

We all know there’s absolutely nothing Miss Terry can’t do when she sets her mind to it. Need a Thanksgiving dinner cooked? She’ll serve the best bird you ever tasted. Hungry for a pecan pie? Get your taste buds ready, because she will make one that will put anything else you’ve ever had to shame. Need to replace a window or a screen? She spent many years in the commercial glass business, doing everything from house windows and storefronts to automotive and truck windshields. And that’s just a few of her talents. She also built the custom cabinets in our bus conversion from scratch, has assembled all kinds of equipment that we purchased for some reason or another, and even wrote a cookbook. If there’s such a thing as a Renaissance man, Terry must be a Renaissance woman.

But even I didn’t know she was a locksmith! As I’ve gotten older and my fingers have gotten stiffer, it was becoming harder and harder for me to open the combination on my Champion gun safe. Sometimes it would take me three or four attempts before I could get into the safe. Since a comparable gun safe with an electronic keypad is a couple thousand dollars, I decided to call Champion and see if there was a keypad conversion. Turns out there was, for just $300. It would be worth that for me not to have the frustration of trying to get into the safe every time I needed something.

I ordered the keypad, and it came with instructions, and the other day we changed things out. Okay, you know how this story goes. Terry changed it, I was just the eye candy. We ran into a little bit of difficulty, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Once we had the new keypad installed, the combination would work with the door open, but it would not release when I tried to turn the handle as if opening the safe. I darn sure didn’t want to close the door and lock it if I couldn’t get back into it again. We studied on it for a while and couldn’t figure out what we were doing wrong. Yesterday Kenny came over, and within just a few minutes he realized that there was not a problem. When the safe door is actually closed, a pin on the side of the frame pushes in to activate the release mechanism the next time I want to open it. So all’s well that ends well, and now I can get into my safe without any hassle. Thanks, Terry and Kenny. I appreciate you.

Congratulations Gene Belvin, winner of our drawing for a copy of More RV Chuckles and Chuckholes-More Confessions of Happy Campers by Darlene Miller. It’s her second book about the RV lifestyle which is full of amusing anecdotes, jokes, adventures and chuckhole experiences while traveling throughout the USA and Canada. It includes stories about the search for the white Kermodei bear in British Columbia; how to stay in touch with your grandchildren while traveling and bond with other RVers while parked in the desert around Quartzsite, Arizona. Guest contributors write about the quest for New Mexican chilies; what happens when the windshield breaks in the middle of traffic on the San Franciso Bay Bridge; or how to RV when you are born with no mechanical genes.

We had 40 entries this time around. Stay tuned, a new contest starts soon. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed. After 30 days, unclaimed prizes revert back to the drawing pool for a future contest.

Did you know that you can find all of my books and sign up for my free author’s newsletter on my website at www.nickrussellbooks.com?

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – The time is always right to do what is right. – Martin Luther King, Jr.