I live in a house that backs onto a park, which connects to a white-collar complex, which in turn faces the road that goes to the Starbucks, the Metro, and the grocery store. (Which my father bought for two zuzim, had gadya, had gadya.) The complex is private property, but it’s 2/3rds of a mile to Starbucks according to satellite mapping when takin’ it to the streets, versus a half-mile cutting through the park and the complex. Easy call.

Even then, my shortcut takes several cutbacks and u-turns, and it was 95 frickin’ degrees in DC yesterday, so I did some exploring to see if I could find a better way.

I wandered around to various other entrances to the complex, meandering through a few parking lots.  Noted that these parking lots had trees and shade, which is already a bonus over my usual route. Found a break in the hedges and fences that surround the place—apparently to protect the houses behind it, including mine, from the dangerous white collar workers. Walked around a tree, wandered up a short path, and found a fence with a gate—directly in front of my house.

The gate, of course, was locked.  With a particular brand of padlock.  Which, as was documented last year in various places on the Internet, I could learn to pick with about a half-hour’s practice, using tools that I probably carry around anyway. (Innocuous tools, mind you. Nothing shady or even techie.)

Next up was the long walk around the locked gate in the fence, to get home and simultaneously see if I had any better options. That trip was 3/4ths of a mile to get me from point A to point A plus a smidge, as illustrated in the accompanying photo. This just annoyed the heck out of me.

(If you’re wondering, yes, there is a huge difference between teaching myself how to pick a lock, and just climbing over the fence right then and there. One is a clever hack. The other is doing something you clearly aren’t supposed to. This goes without question.)

On that long walk home, I’m calculating a few things in my head:

1. The time and effort it would take to learn how to pop that lock, and in a short enough period of time such that no one would notice me repeatedly opening and closing the locked gate.
2. The extent of the risk if I’m caught, which has its own categories:
1. I could be stopped by a rent-a-cop, and forbidden to be on the campus private property again, in which case my walk rises from 0.5 miles to 0.65 miles.
2. I could be stopped by a real cop and tagged with a misdemeanor; I’m not sure what law I’m breaking, as I can easily walk around the fence, but I’m guessing that “opening locks that don’t belong to you” is on the books somewhere.
3. I could be tagged for something much worse, since I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, in post-9/11 DC, what I’m describing here counts as an act of enemy combatant terrorist trespass. (And if you think I’m kidding, I’m fairly sure I committed a felony yesterday while troubleshooting a client’s network. No, I’m not going to tell you about that.)

By the time I got home, I was absolutely convinced that the next order of business was to look for the HOWTOs on popping locks with innocuous household objects. I had a clever hack, and it was going to save me time on a daily basis; that’s my favorite kind.  But just for the heck of it, and partially to prove to myself exactly how clever my clever hack would be, I pulled up the maps to get the exact distances I was saving.

My current, annoying route:

My new, timesaving, perhaps illegal route:

According to satellite mapping, total distance saved:

(wait for it)

16 feet, 10.7 inches.

Okay. So perhaps not quite so clever.