Starting a car with no key

Well, the inevitable has happened.  I'm not sure if I mentioned this when I originally wrote about my car, but the key doesn't have a place to put a key ring, so it was always sitting, not connected to anything, in my pocket. On Friday, it disapeared.  Tearing apart my room , retracing my steps from the car three times and checking lost and found over the course of three days, I finally had the mechanic come to replace or rekey the ignition.  After 45 minutes of trying to break into the car (which he finally accomplished using a long heavy pipe to hit the unlock button through the back window), he removed my ignition and told me it would be two days until they could rebuild a key that works in my ignition and doors.  The next question surprised me, though.  He said, "Do you have a gerber?"  I told him I did and he promply showed me how to start the car using a pair of plyers to grab and turn the ignition switch.

What he didn't warn me of was to be careful not to pull the switch out....  So this morning, having offered or chief enlisted learder a ride and kind of excited about getting to start my car manually, I reached the plyers in, and somehow pulled the switch just enough that I had to spend the next 8 minutes fiddleing to get it back in. I was eventually successful, got the car started and drove over to breakfast. I even managed to turn the car off!

But that's not the end of the story, after grabbing our food to go, I came back out and started the car right up.  I was pretty proud of myself, until the gerber was a little stuck, and I twisted and jiggled resulting in the starter switch coming back out.

No worries, I thought, I'll just drive it over to work and then figure out how to turn the blasted thing off.  Well, I learned another new thing about cars today...  If the starter switch isn't plugged in all the way, the steering wheel locks up.  I guess that's a good anti-theft mechanism, but not so great for helping me to get to work. So, while the Chief started to enjoy his meal, I spent another 5 minutes fiddling with the starter.  I finally got it in, got the wheel turning, made it to work and even shut off the engine without removing the starter.  So, I'm learning.  The chief did recommend that I'm careful about leaving the starter in the hole while I'm driving though... 

All that to say, I'm looking forward to getting my key ignition back.