Lost and Found

You know...for the last year or so, most of my musings have been pretty repetitive. I run. I whine about the weather. I brag (occasionally) about my family. I try to capture (not always successfully) the adventures of the herd. I complain about how busy I am.

Pretty much the same thing...blah...blah...blah...

So for something different yesterday, I dropped the key to my car on a long run...somewhere along this route...

It's a really sad moment when you realize...after running about 9.5 miles, and are about .5 miles from your car...that you no longer have the key to aforementioned car in your hip pocket.

"Oh shit" is probably the first thing I said.

"Where the F is it?"

Unfortunately, at the moment of discovery, I was not running with Betty. She was somewhere behind me, so my first thought was that I'd run back to where ever she was to see if she'd picked it up (yes, I'd run 9 miles. It was hot and humid. I was not thinking too clearly). Luckily, in a moment of clarity, I realized that the most important thing was to get a key to the aforementioned car, so I called Walter.

Walter: Hello?
Alice: Hi honey! Whatcha doin?
Walter: Relaxing. How was your run.
Alice: The run is fine, but I did something bad.
Walter: (silence...for future reference, saying "bad" brings up thoughts of something REALLY BAD)
Alice: I dropped the key to the car somewhere.
Walter: OH! (apparently relieved that I had not crashed the whole car, or hurt myself...not necessarily in that order).
Alice: Wanna bring me the spare key?

Of course, he did...

My Walter...my knight in shining armor, here to save the day!

So...they key, not any old key, but it's one of those newfangled, don't even need to use the key, key that is electronic and costs about a gazillion dollars to replace, so we went back to try to find it.

I thought I might have dropped it here when I stopped to take a picture of the gorgeous day. I run with a Spybelt for my phone.

Sevin-ish miles in. Wouldn't you have stopped?

...but that didn't really make sense because I keep my key in a separate pocket from my phone because I know I'm going to take the phone out to take photos and I don't want to LOSE THE KEY (DUH!)

So Betty, Walter and I backtracked a few places where I might have dropped it. Running over the lawn in Mission Bay seemed like it might be a likely spot because I wouldn't have heart it hit the ground.

Then Betty walked over the lifeguard tower on the off chance that someone had turned it in...and GOOD KARMA...

Someone DID!

YAY!

I'm pretty sure it slipped out of my pocket when I ate the last of my Gu at a drinking fountain. It's a pocket with a zipper, but since I didn't put anything back in my pocket, I didn't zip it back up...and the key must have just slipped out...maybe the belt from the Spybelt pushed it out.

Anyway, thank you to whoever the good Samaritan was who saved me a few hundred bucks for a new one of these...

Easy to see how it would slip out of a pocket...no?

_________________________

So...I spent A LOT of time at the beach last week. I know that many people think that if you live in San Diego, you live your life at the beach, but we really don't, or at least I don't. Sure, I run at the beach or coast pretty often, but I don't pack up chairs, umbrellas, towels, coolers and all that gear more than three or four times a summer, which is what I did last week. We live about 10 miles inland, so getting to the beach requires driving, and in the summer, unless I get to the beach early, I'm not interested in fighting the beach traffic.

Even locals have to trek their own gear. I swear I was carrying stuff too!

Betty's version of "beach food."

Luckily, this week DramaGirl was in Surf Camp, so I had a good excuse to get down there early.

Being on the beach is pretty entertaining, lobsterized tourists, men who make you think that speedos should be outlawed, or at least require a license. But on Thursday, I had to take a picture of something I hadn't EVER seen before...

It was the biggest UMBRELLA I'd ever seen!