Shoe Saga

The other day I mentioned that Laura's shoes were MIA. There's more to it, really. Here's the whole story.

On Wednesday I had to head over to main campus in the afternoon for a meeting. When I got down to the car I noticed that Laura had left her keys, bike shoes and sunglasses in there. She was planning to ride home from work. I thought I'd do her a favor and bring those things inside for her--since they wouldn't do her any good if they were on main campus. I was in a hurry though, so I shoved the shoes, glasses and keys into my work mailbox and left her a voice mail. I thought she ought to go pick them up as soon as possible because my mailbox is not that big and the shoes were conspicuously sticking out of the box.

When Laura finally got around to picking her shoes up around 7pm, they were gone. Granted, that's a very long time to leave shoes unattended but seriously, who would have thought? The mailboxes are behind a door that you need to have a keycard to access, and ...bike shoes? What a weird thing to steal. And plus, aren't scientists supposed to be upstanding characters or something?

Laura was distraught. Absolutely distraught. She had spent months trying shoes on and sending them back before she finally found a pair that fit. The shoes have to be specially ordered from Italy or something ridiculous like that. I guess they must have LOOKED expensive, too.

That night, I fired of a quick email to the whole campus asking please for the quick return of the misplaced shoes. Lots of people responded and were concerned. I got a lot of emails suggesting that I review the security tapes, or that the shoes were there at 5:30 when whoever went home. The security camera doesn't point at the mailboxes and it wasn't even on...great.

Thursday morning came and went and no shoes. Thursday afternoon I printed up some reward posters and put them all over campus and sent out another email to a larger email list that said something like "oh goodness, a pair of shoes has mysteriously disappeared from my mailbox. They belong to Laura, a rising star on the south Florida biking circuit and she can not race without them this weekend. Laura and her missing shoes were the talk of the campus and I'd definitely decided that we were never going to see them again.

Friday evening the shoes reappeared as mysteriously as they had disappeared. Someone found them in the recycling/elevator room on the second floor of the same building where they were lost. How weird is that? I'm amazed they came back and I hope that it was my guilt-inducing emails that helped...

Oh, and Laura won her bike race this morning. She beat all the women in her category and came in 4th over all. That's 4th out of all the PROS. Wow. She says she could have placed 'on the podium' or top three if only she'd been less polite...Next time.

My workout: 1 mile swim, 4.5 mile run with 2 miles of bridge repeats. I nearly died, but I was running with one of the H.ammerheads who told me that that feeling like you're going to puke is because your heart gets overfilled with blood and your extended aorta triggers that pukey reflex in your esophagus. Does anyone know if this is true? If so, that's scary.