Jon's Solution

Todd and his fiancée (and my friend and former co-worker) Rachel have been visiting, and, not to place blame, but when we left the apartment to jump Nathan's dead battery at Starbucks, one of them locked the door to the apartment.

This seems to be a reasonable and hospitable thing to do when you're staying at someone's place, but I had forgotten to warn them that neither I nor Nathan had been given keys to that door. We secure our apartment with the deadbolt, and leave the knob unlocked.

Until today, when we returned from Starbucks to find the apartment locked. Us being summer camp folks, our first instinct was to find a way to climb in, probably from our second floor neighbors' porch.

"Sylvia?" said Nathan, "Can we come in."
"I'm in the shower," she said, "Gimme a few minutes."

We started out, then, with lock jimmying -- credit card into the door frame, bobby pins into the lock -- but none of us had much experience with that kind of thing. I called the landlord, who said she or her husband could be there in an hour and a half.

"Well," I said, "We could get dinner."

Sylvia opened the door, and we scouted her porches, front and back. Too high for a boost, too much overhang for a climb, unsafe slate on the front roof; the porches were out. We adjourned to the landing in front of the door.

"We could pull the hinges," I said. We started on that one, too. The pins came out fine, but the door was too well-made to shift in its setting, and so we couldn't take it off. Jon, Sylvia's boyfriend came home.

"What's up guys?" he said.
"We're locked out," I said.
"Well, you know what I would do in this situation?"
We were interested. Jon has had a lot of interesting life experience, and probably knew more about forced entry than we did.
"What?" I said.
"I'd probably have a beer."

So we went back in to Jon and Sylvia's place and had some beers, and soon, the landlord's husband arrived, and we were back inside.