Last week, my husband had an eye appointment on the IUPUI campus, near downtown, about five miles from the house. He drove to it, but they said he should not drive himself home, so he called me and I rode my bike (which I wrote about last year here) downtown to meet him and drive him home.

The ride was not great. About two miles from home, I was riding on a single-lane road, and a guy in the passenger seat of a car passing me yelled, “Get off the road!” right as the car was beside me. It startled me, but not too badly. The funny part is I caught up with that car at a stoplight about a block farther up, and it had a “Peace and Love” bumper sticker. I said, without meaning to, “Peace and Love, my @$$!” Fortunately, that car turned at the light, and I went straight.

It was also colossally windy that day. So windy that, once I got downtown, every time I’d hit a cross street, the wind would try to blow me into the lane to my left. So windy that even using my battery on its maximum power, I was only able to achieve 20 miles per hour.

As a matter of fact, I don’t think I could have made the trip if I hadn’t had an electric bike. See, I received my second COVID vaccine about 24 hours before, and I was still very tired/fatigued. The adrenaline jolt I got when Andy said he couldn’t drive home helped me get going, but it was a tough ride.

Traffic was not too bad, which was to my favor. About a block from where Andy was parked, I hit a big bump, but I was near my destination, and I kept going.

When I got to the van, he was wearing those stupid disposable eye doctor glasses, because they’d dilated his eyes. We loaded the car, I got into the driver’s seat . . . and realized I didn’t have my phone. It had fallen out of my pouch somewhere between the house and the van. Ugh!

Andy checked Find My Friends, and the phone was showing where I’d hit that big bump, which made sense. So we walked back that way to look for it. We searched for 15 minutes or more, but we didn’t see anything. Andy refreshed his phone, and it looked like it had moved into a building. He said someone probably picked it up and put it in their backpack or office, and so we decided to head back to the van.

When we got home I reported the loss to the university police department, then to my work’s IS department. I checked Find My, using my iPad, and it then looked like the phone was at the hospital on campus, so Andy called them. After talking to Lost & Found and another area, he was transferred to the front desk, who HAD MY PHONE!

I finished up a quick work project then headed BACK to campus to the hospital. The lady at the front desk told me that the woman who turned in my phone saw it fly off my bike, but I was moving too fast for her to catch me, so she turned it in to the closest building. I’m so fortunate that the person who found it had the presence of mind, and the time, to turn it in. I’m also grateful that Apple’s software allowed us to track it down. And, I’m happy that the engineering of the iPhone 12 Pro is so good that it could take a 20-MPH+ impact and only suffer a small crack to the case.

THANK YOU to the Good Samaritan, who will probably never know how grateful I am to her. I promise I’ll pay it forward!