For the last couple of days I've been exploring the Natchez Trace. It's a wonderful, do-it-yourself kind of place. You drive the Natchez Trace Parkway, stopping at whatever turnout or historic site or nature trail looks interesting, doing as much or as little as you like.
At one point I stopped at a spot where you can walk on the old trace. It's sunken quite a bit below the ground level but it's maintained by the National Park Service. I thought it would be neat to walk a short ways on the original trace so I set out after carefully locking the car (this will become relevant later). I walked a bit and headed back to my car. Put my hand in my pocket and couldn't find my keys. Not that unusual. Probably in another pocket. After repeatedly checking every available pocket, I had to believe they had dropped out of my pocket somehow. So I started back over my short walk. An older gentleman and his daughter who were also checking out the trace saw what I was doing and promptly started to walk along with me checking the ground. Unfortunately my key ring had only the black key insert for a BMW and not much else. And the trace is just as you might expect -- wet and muddy in places, covered with leaves, twigs and everything that falls from trees and bushes. Not exactly easy to see anything, let alone a small black object a couple of inches long.
My new friends suggested calling AAA or my insurance and I envisioned hours at a turnoff on the Natchez Trace waiting for someone to find the right place and then probably tell me that they couldn't deal with it on the spot. But the suggestion did spark my memory of those commercials for BMW Assist. Well, let me tell you, those commercials are true. I reached a human being on my cell phone quite quickly, convinced him that I was the owner of the car and about a minute later - as we all watched - the button popped up on the driver's door and I could get the spare set of keys in my purse. Hooray for cell phones and magic door openers.
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