The first day of the OWGRV Northwest Corner trip went smoothly – sort of.  Nathaniel Guest drove us to the airport with plenty of time.  Flight was projected to leave on time and arrive early.  We got our first-class upgrades.  Everything went smoothly until we were taxiing for takeoff when Tom said.

• Sh*t – I forgot the keys.

That meant that we couldn’t get into Khan and Polo (the RV and jeep, for new readers) when we got to Salt Lake.  But wait – technology to the rescue! Tom finally got the Mercedes Me app working, and he checked while we were waiting for takeoff.  He could connect to Khan, but it did say the battery was very low.  We had seen that before – not a problem as Khan always started up even after sitting for 3 months.  We’d be fine.  We would wait until we arrived in Salt Lake City to unlock Khan.

Second leg from Charlotte also left on time and arrived early.  Uber was a 5 minute wait.  On the Uber ride to the storage location Tom tried unlocking Khan.  Mercedes replied that – sorry – it could not unlock the car if the battery was low.  Time for plan B.

Tom contacted AAA and started a lockout call for Khan.  Our Uber driver dropped us off at Khan and Polo – both really dirty but otherwise unharmed.  It was 93 degrees, so both the vehicles and OWGRV team were hot.  Tom checked – AAA had not yet assigned someone to bail us out.

Scott seemed to remember that we left both a Polo key and a Khan key in the jeep.  How hard could it be to break into it, and get on the road?  It was a convertible, after all, and was designed for everything to be removable.  Tom said he’d try.

The answer to how hard is it to break in is “really easy” if you are as nimble as Tom.  We had left bikes in both the back and rear seat of the jeep, so getting in was only half the problem.  Scott didn’t time the effort, but from start to keys-in-hand was about 2 minutes.

We knew from an earlier OWGRV episode that, when Polo was locked an alarm would go off if you opened a door.  So we avoided that, and it was time to see if either vehicle would start after 3 months.

Success with both!  There is a solar panel on Khan, so we thought it would start – and it did despite the warnings of very low battery.  Polo started right up as well.  We were on our way to the close-by and relatively expensive Sun Outdoors.  No real problems setting up – and we had time for the traditional Walmart run to stock up on groceries.  Then a trip to In-N-Out for a quick burger and an early (for Mountain time) bedtime.