Trouble in Whitehorse

Trouble in Whitehorse

So, if you have a problem, what day of the week is the best day to have it?  Sunday!

As we were leaving the fish ladder, I got the key to the camper stuck in the lock and couldn’t get it out.  John tried without success, so we drove to the trusty Visitors Centre.  On the way, we thought about the extra insurance we had purchased on the camper for the trip.  The Visitor’s Centre let us use their phones, and also looked up the one towing company and one locksmith in town. 

So armed with this information, I made the call to the service while John stayed outside and tried to come up with a solution for at least getting into the camper.

The people at the service company were friendly, but when I was transferred to roadside assistance and explained that we were in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, she asked me if that was Northern California.  When I told her it was Canada, she then asked me if we were near Toronto.  ‘No,’ I said, “More like Alaska.”  We were doomed!

I gave her the name of the towing service and the locksmith service, and she said she would call back when and if she found someone to help.

In the meantime, John, never one to sit around and waste time, decided he could crawl through the window of the camper.  Never mind that the window is about seven feet above the ground.  He went to a trash area and found a big bucket to stand on and managed to shinny his way into the window.  No one saw him, or if they did, they did not wonder what he was doing.

So now, John’s in the camper and he still can’t get the door open!  Great!  He asked me to take the keys (through the window) and get some tools out, and he got the lock off the door.  But the key was still stuck in the door.

In the meantime, I’m waiting for a call from the service and decided to make these local calls myself.  I called the towing company and explained to a very young man that we had the key stuck in the door of the camper.  “Oh that’s terrible”, he said.  I paused.  “Well, my husband has managed to get inside.”  “Oh. That’s awesome,” he exclaims.

Another pause, “So can you help us?”I asked.  “No,” he says, ‘We only do towing.”

I decided to call the service back before I called the locksmith.  Lo and behold, they had already gotten a hold of him and he was on his way!  I couldn’t believe our good fortune.  Here I was thinking that help was as near as Toronto, and instead, a guy was coming in 35-40 minutes.  Did I want to cancel the service call, they asked?  NOOOOO!  We were glad to wait.

It turned out a pin in the tumbler of the dead bolt had fallen.  He said it would require ordering parts.  He did get the key out of the lock, however, and while we can’t use it until the lock is replaced, at least we don’t have a key hanging out of the door. The situation is manageable!

The guy was super friendly, and there was no charge to us, and we did get help in one of the few places with a population big enough to have a locksmith. And John now knew he could manage to get into a window seven feet off the ground, so he was stoked!   So, we thanked our lucky stars and headed on to Skagway. The whole thing took about two and a half hours.