I had a serendipitous experience last year. The wife and I decided to celebrate a big round anniversary and a big round birthday by embarking on a rather ambitious journey. We drove to St. Louis for the eclipse, then to Burning Man. We got there a few days early to help out with “build week.” The Burning Man stories are for another time and place, but at some point after the event opened officially, I noticed that a camp schedule was posted (we camped in a village of several camps, with a large group of mostly DC area burners). While perusing the schedule, I noticed that there was a lockpicking class on the schedule. I asked the leader of that camp about it, and he replied, “oh yeah, there was going to be a class, but the guy who teaches it couldn’t make the Burn this year.” Excitedly, I asked if his equipment made it without him (it had) and volunteered to teach the class.
Fast forward to class time. I figured one or two people would wander by, so I spread out the backpack full of labeled progressive lock cylinders (1-pin through 5-pin) and the other oddball cylinders and locks on a table with some chairs near the front of our camp and sat and started playing. One or two campmates came to keep me company and play along. It didn’t take long for people to start showing up, and soon the table was crowded. I’d like to say I gave them brilliant insights and harrowing demonstrations of technique, but all I really did was explain how pin tumblers work, and a general demonstration on how to use the tension wrench with just the right amount of pressure in hopefully the correct direction, and boy were they off! The table was aflutter with people shuffling cylinders around, saying “I’m done with 1, is there another 2 free?” “I’m up to 4 already!” Fast forward an hour or three (burner time is a bit fuzzy) and some 20-30 people or so (counting burners is also a bit fuzzy) successfully passed their first lockpicking class. Nobody failed, nobody gave up.
I still haven’t had a chance to thank the guy who didn’t show up. I think he’s part of TOOOL DC, may have dated one of the burners in the camp at some point or something (yeah, facts are fuzzy out there too). I was hoping to track him down at Defcon this year and thank him, but I didn’t manage to get around to it. Hell, there’s always next year.
