Prodigal

Kevin got a quite unexpected phone call on Friday...

Look what the police found:



Poor Vespy--missing mirrors, stolen battery (Kevin and the man at the impound lot tried to jumpstart it, then Kevin managed to kickstart it), mangled and partly missing ignition, scratched paint, and somehow the handlebars and front wheel have gotten slightly misaligned--when the handlebars are straight, the front wheel is slightly angled (presumably the thief broke it when s/he unlocked the front wheel without the key). Oddly, it's only been driven another 150-200 miles since it was stolen.

We're hoping it can spend the next couple of weeks (while we're traveling) at the repair shop, and then we're going to have to rent a garage, I guess--unfortunately, if it's more than a block or two away, I don't think we'll ever ride Vespy, so our options are rather limited). The police and the impound lot guys suggested that we get a large chain and big lock... but we had that, and it didn't do any good!

Kevin's race on Sunday (organized by the same people as the previous swim) went much better--although it didn't start out promisingly, as we had quite a time finding the registration. The course was much simpler--they jumped off a water taxi, then swam around Governor's Island till they got to the right pier, so you just had to keep the island on the same side of you at all times--and the tides cooperated.

I helped out with bag check again--and nearly strangled another of the bag check volunteers, who insisted that we put all 100-150 bags in exact numerical order (each bag had a numbered tag), rather than just grouping them by number range (which worked just fine last time). So we did, but he still couldn't find a single bag when the swimmers came back--he just stood around bleating "124? 124?" till someone else found it. It felt a bit like he thought he was in charge of managing the rest of us.