Two years ago, we took our kids to the north shore of Michigan for a camping trip. Part of that included a day on Mackinac Islad with the girls and the bikes. Living in the country, I’d never had need for a bike lock. But, heading to the island without one didn’t seem like a good idea, so we got a word-combo lock for the bikes for a few bucks.

Fast foward two years. I got the bike back out because this summer, aside from having anoter baby, I don’t have any major house renovations to do.

There was the lock. Not in the way of anything, but it was a little annoying to have hanging on the frame.

My memory isn’t as good as it used to be.

We started by breaking out a pad of paper and looping over each dial, making a list of words changing one letter at a time. This took…a long time to do.

My wife is much smater than me and did a Google search for words used my Master Lock. Beacuse the Internet is a wonderful place (sometimes) she found a page which not only detailed Master Lock’s four-dial lock but also provided a link to a Google Sheet of each of the words, in order.

An hour later with nothing more than slightly cramped fingers, I was in.

I wrote the combination down this time.