You can usually find someone not to far from you that knows how, runs a group, willing to travel too. Especially if you set it up with a local hacker space.

But cool that you found a local group.

All you really need though, is Deviant's book, a hand full of picks, an couple of quickset locks you can take apart and put back together (you'll learn even more making your own progressive sets), and go go go.

this is probably the best progressive lock out there http://learnlockpicking.com/