I would often squeeze in 30 to 40 mile bicycle rides in the afternoon when I was splitting the work day turning out stories in the morning for the afternoon Press-Tribune in Roseville and covering evening city council and planning commission meetings in a Roseville, Rocklin, and Lincoln.

It was a routine that queued up my most embarrassing moment back in 1989.

I was stopping by my mom’s house after a ride to take a quick shower and change clothes before heading to a Rocklin City Council meeting.

Mom was at work and no one else was going to be home.

I used the shower in the back bathroom.

It is the same bathroom my oldest brother had promised for months to fix the door lock that had a habit of getting stuck after you locked it from the inside.

As a result, a screwdriver had been placed in a drawer in the vanity in case someone got locked in and needed to turn the locking mechanism.

On this particular afternoon, I placed my change of clothes in the back bedroom after taking off my cycling shorts and jersey.

I then headed into the bathroom with a pair of Jockey briefs, locking the door behind me.

In retrospect, there was no need to lock the door. No one was expected to be home. I locked it anyway out of habit.

I finished my shower, slipped on the briefs, and went to open the door.

It wouldn’t open.

No worries, I’d just take the screw driver out of the vanity drawer.

Unbeknownst to me, another brother had used it for another task and did not put it back.

I spent more than a few minutes working the door knob.

I then got the brilliant idea to climb out the window.

It was your typical smaller “half” window that bathrooms typically have.

And unlike most windows today, it wasn’t a slider.

You opened it by turning the window sill crank. It also meant the window itself would end up being at a maxim angle to the wall that was less than 90 degrees.

I almost forgot.

The original part of my mom’s house had a full-sized basement. When the two additional bedrooms and second bathroom were built, they were even with the original part of the house.

The basement was not extended but the crawl space below the floor was 3 feet off the ground.

The house sat on two city lots. It was built in the late 1930s hugging the northern property line by a dentist who planned to build an office for his practice next door but never did.

That meant the side yard was entire lot.

There was a brick flower bed abutting it with lantanas below the bathroom window and a tall cypress style evergreen shrub next to it.

I figured that would offer cover as I slipped out the window.

Because there was a sidewalk along the flower bed, I wanted to go out feet first so I could see where I was going.

I removed the screen, climbed on top of the toilet and squeezed through the opening, steadying myself with my hands against the windowsill.

As I started lowering myself, I realized I should have unscrewed the handle on the window crank when the back of my briefs became caught on them.

Try as I might, I couldn’t free myself.

Meanwhile, the strain of staying in place prompted me to slip creating what could be described as the Mother-of-All wedgies.

I struggled to try and lift myself back through the window with my back to the wall.

This went on for several painful minutes before I decided to go for it.

There was a clear unobstructed view all the way to the back of the side yard with nary a tree or fence to break up the view from the sidewalk and street.

Directly a across the street was the St. Joseph’s Catholic Church parish hall where Monday night bingo would start in an hour.

I figured I could land in the lantanas and jump onto the lawn.

I removed my hands from the windowsill.

It took a little while, but my weight eventually caused what Janet Jackson might label a wardrobe function.

An audible ripping sound preceded my landing bare feet first in the lantana laden with prickles.

Between the wedgie pain and the prickles, I was screaming when I ended up standing on the grass naked as a jaybird facing the street just as two nuns walked by on the sidewalk.

They had left the church that was three doors down and were heading to visit our next door neighbor Elise Silva.

They glanced my way and kept walking as if it was just another crazy thing that the Wyatt family did.