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title:A Foolish Blunder
menutitle:a-foolish-blunder
author:matt
tags:blog, food, outside, personal
date:2025-04-25
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Today on my lunch break 5K,[^5k] I decided to stop at a gas station, one of a small handful of stores within a 30-minute radius of work, to get something different for lunch. It's not a good gas station, like a 7-Eleven or Sheetz, it's a second-tier regional chain inexplicably named "Par Mar".[^hms] But they at least have some refrigerator sandwiches.

They're one of many stores in my college town that won't let you in if you have a backpack, so I took out the bike lock I keep for this purpose and secured it to a disused air dispenser at the side of the store. I looped it through the fabric top-handle, which isn't the most secure thing in the world, someone with a decently sharp knife could saw through it, but I would only be a couple minutes, it's mainly to keep people from grabbing it and running off.

I picked out my items as quickly as possible, and I was in the checkout line when it occurred to me I didn't think to look at the combination before I closed the lock and scrambled it. Well, it had been awhile since I used it, but I knew for certain the first digit is a 2 and the last digit is a 6. The other two digits will come to me, I reassured myself. In fact, I was pretty sure it was ``2586``.

Well, I got out with my sandwich and jalapeño cheese puffs, and I entered the combination and realized that the numbers don't go up to 8. They only go up to 6. Okay, I thought, the 3 could easily be mistaken for an 8, so it must be ``2536``. Still no luck.

Panic set in. I tried a few more adjacent combinations, none of them worked. My lunch break time was steadily ticking away, and I had no idea what I was going to do. I started fiddling with it aimlessly, thinking about all the passers-by wondering what the hell I was doing for so long. I thought about going into the store and asking if they had a pair of bolt cutters I could borrow to destroy the lock, or barring that, a big knife to destroy my backpack. Finally, through sheer dumb luck I fell on the right combination. It's ``2532``.

So I'm back at work just as my hour was up, eating my crappy microwave burger[^burger] and writing this as my inaugural post in my new blog, because if I post about it maybe I'll embarrass myself thoroughly enough to remember to check the combination next time 🦝

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[^5k]: I.e., my 5000-step walk.

[^hms]: Which I'm unable to think about without my brain appending the word "superstar". Also, I looked it up on their website (they have a website! 😮) and apparently the name comes from **Par**kersburg (WV) + **Mar**ietta (Ohio). So are we supposed to be pronouncing it "par mare"? Bad name.

[^burger]: It cost $5.50. Remember when Hardee's (Carl's Jr. for you westies) had a promotional item called "The Six Dollar Burger"? It only cost like $3.50 or something, but the idea was that the quality was what one might expect to pay $6.00 for in a fancy sit-down restaurant. Such luxury! Such decadence! How far we've fallen.

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