I Had to Use my Emergency Exit This Morning.

Don’t worry, Wanda is fine, and I didn’t have to exit in a hurry or for a real emergency. What happened? Well, I woke up this morning to a chilly house, again nothing out of the ordinary for me these days. 

The first thing I do when I wake up is turn the furnace on and then start the stove to perk my coffee. I set the coffee up the night before. Well, the stove didn’t light. I let out a sigh as I knew that this meant that my propane tank had run out. 

Again, this is not a problem and nothing that I haven’t faced before, so out I go to switch over the propane tanks. There is a little valve that I flip over so I am drawing propane from one tank or the other.

Well, the deadbolt lock wouldn’t budge, it was frozen in place. What happened is kinda like getting your tongue stuck to a pole in winter. In this case it was the dead bolt to the door frame.

Again, I have faced this before and I either just wait for the day to warm up to melt that frozen bond or heat up Wanda. Well, with my propane out, there was no heat coming out of that furnace anytime soon. 

So I had to find some way to flip over that propane tank so I could fire up the furnace . . . that meant going outside, which I couldn’t do with a frozen door lock. I had to find another option.

You know what they say, when one door is frozen shut, open a window. In my case it was my one window that is designed for me to get out of in case of emergency. 

So there I was shortly after four in the morning dangling myself out of my window in a very undignified manner. I got it done though, I got out and didn’t fall on my butt, thank you very much. 

I flipped over the propane tank and then came the task of getting back into the trailer. The window was too tall for me to haul myself up and into unaided (at least before my coffee). So I used the plastic cover for the propane tanks as a stool and in I went. 

With coffee perking and furnace humming, I decided not to wait to warm up the lock. I used a tealight candle to bring heat to that lock. The combination of the furnace heat and the candle did the trick. Oh, here is what my candle setup looked like.

[candle]

Thankfully that lock did defrost and I was able to get the door open. I will now not use that deadbolt for some time to come. I still have the entry lock so Wanda will be secure. Well, as secure as any RV Trailer can be, let’s face it, Wanda is a lot of things, but Fort Knocks she ain’t.

I was able to resolve the situation in a relatively short period of time because I kept calm and thought through what I needed to do. When faced with challenges and other such situations always keep in mind: What do you have and what do you need?