Katie and I had planned on going canoeing all summer.  With her work schedule it hasn't been easy; the few days she's had off also happened to be the few days we had rain.  So when today dawned clear and blue, I knew this was it.

It was absolutely gorgeous out.  It was windy, but not too hot and not a cloud in the sky.  We decided to have lunch at the Tin Fish and then rent canoes.  We lucked into a parking spot less than a block from the resteraunt.  Katie left her bag in the car, so we locked it and headed to the lake. 

It could not have been nicer.  There were a lot of people having lunch, but the wait wasn't terrible.  I put in our order and when I pulled out my wallet I realised we had trouble.

"Katie.  My keys are gone."

"Omigod.  I'll bet you locked them in the car.  You wait here for the food and I'll go look."

"Okay, but check the ground.  If I dropped them between here and there I want you to look for them."

 I sat down with our ice waters and waited.  A minute later I could see her walking back and I could see that she was laughing.  There's only one reason she would be laughing.

"I've got good news and bad news," she said when she reached me.  "The good news is I found your keys, and the bad news is..."

"I left the engine running."

"Yep."

So, I left Katie to wait for the food and I went and looked for a pay phone, as Katie's cellphone was in her bag, locked in the car.  The running car.

As I explained the situation to the gal at AAA, she started to laugh.  It could have been worse.  She could have said "Oh, boo hoo, your locked car is running out of gas while you eat lunch outside at the lake, instead of stuck in a windowless cubicle, answering the phone calls of morons!   How'd you get a drivers license anyway, idiot?"

No, she said it was a Monday thing and that due to the engine running emergency she would bump me up to the front.  Since I had no phone, I would have to wait by the vehicle.  I thanked her and returned to Katie.   As it had only been about ten minutes, I wasn't surprised that the food had not yet come.

"I have to go be by the car when the locksmith shows up."

"Do you want me to bring the food up there?"

"Yeah, it could be twenty to forty minutes, but I have to be up there."

So I walked up the block and approached the car from the passenger side.  I had to get right next to it to realize that the engine was running, it was so quiet.  I looked in the window and there were my keys, just hanging there.  Then I saw something else.

The door wasn't locked.

I opened the door, pulled out the keys, grabbed Katie's bag, hooked the keys into my purse and walked back to the resteraunt just as our food arrived.

"The car wasn't locked."

"What? I locked it."

"Nope."

"We called AAA to get your keys out of a running car that isn't locked?"

"Yep."

"We're acting like a pair of blondes."

"At least it gave us something to do while waiting for our food."

We canoed for an hour and managed not to hit ourselves in the head with an oar or fall overboard, although we did keep our life vests on the whole time, just in case our inner blondes weren't through with us.

After we got back home, Katie took a practice LSAT test and scored 175 out of a possible 180.

Josie earned her blue belt today.

 

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