Keyed up

Started out with a nice pot of coffee at the Gasthaus breakfast spread early this morning. 12:30am Denver time as a matter of fact. Then took off and rode in the early morning through farmlands and canals to Linz. Only about 30k today because we wanted to see Linz. Mozart and hitler both lived here at one time in their lives. Also Kepler, the famous mathematician and astronomer who formulated the law for how planets move through space. We saw their houses, along with an oompah band in the Hauplatz, sitting beside a 400 year old tower in the square. 

But the real excitement was caused by my increasing senility. I have already lost a pair of sunglasses by leaving them in a bookstore although we went back in two minutes later and they had disappeared, with virtually no other customers going in or out. Then the other dat we discovered that I was missing a pair of shorts. God only knows where those might have ended up. Alas, today I outdid myself. We went out on the bikes, because this town is too big to walk around. Immediately after locking them up, we walked fifty feet to an apotheke (pharmacy) and then another fifty to a bakery for a strudel. As soon as we left we checked to see if we had all of our stuff, and lo and behold the key to the bike lock was nowhere to be found. Ahhhhhh shit. The bikes were locked together to a streetside rack.

I have a hole in my pocket (too cheap to throw away a pair of shorts for that!) and it must have fallen out. We looked up and down the block ad nauseum, on the sidewalk, street, manholes, gutters. No key. It wasn't out of my pocket for more than 5 minutes, yet it had disappeared, even quicker than I am losing my mind.

We need those bikes........We kind of need to know a little German to get some kind of help. Hardware store for cutters? New lock? Saw? Getting picked up by the cops for ripping apart a lock and taking two bikes from the street which we can't prove are ours? Throwing a fit for being so stupid? All this ran through our minds.

But practicality won out, and I went to the nearest hotel, a nice fancy one, and explained our situation to the clerk. She told us to come back at 5 and a guy would help, and gave us a lead on a sporting goods store. We found it, bought a lock (Laura suggested a combination lock this time), and at 5 returned to the hotel. The bellman reluctantly retrieved a saw, and after verifying we were guests of the hotel, which we were not, and which Laura unhesitatingly lied about, he sawed the lock off. We were home free, except for me beating myself up. 

Maybe I need to get a sewing kit.