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Where are my keys?

Yesterday, I took the boys to meet a friend at a local park.  While waiting for this friend to show up, my son asked me if he could get the soccer ball from the car.  So I gave him the keys and he went to the parking lot to retrieve the ball.  Upon his return he tried to toss the keys to me.  His launch was either too powerful or the trajectory was not calculated correctly, maybe even both.  Sitting on the bench, watching the keys sail past me, high in the air and then hearing a thud above my head as the keys landed on the roof of the building, I must have had a look of shock.


As you can see, it is a flat roof building, so the keys would not be sliding off.  I immediately said something to the effect of, "look at what you have done to us."  The wife was out of town, so rescue from her was beyond possibility.  Also, the roof was approximately 11'-2" above the ground, no way I could jump up to the roof.  I walked around the building hoping to find an access ladder. There was no ladder.  Fortunately, on the back of the building there was a small area enclosed with a chain link fence.  Next to that area, there was a CMU wall that was only 7'-4" tall.  I was able to scale the fence, walk the short distance on the CMU wall to the edge of the roof.  I forgot to take a picture, but here is a Revit model of the area in question.



I lifted myself to the roof and walked over to retrieve my keys.  I tossed the keys to my kid and then proceed to lower myself back to the CMU wall.  Trying to find that wall, blindly dangling over the edge was a little sketchy.  I did though find solid footing and then jumped off the wall to the ground.  I consider myself lucky to have gotten out of that situation without having the police called and without injuring myself.

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