lost and found

sunday night coming back from my friend casey's house, bearing gifts (he lent me a few isle of man tt dvds) which i had bungeed inside my riding jacket to the back of the bike, i happened to look down at my shadow as the sun set behind me only to see the shadow of the bungee net flapping in the wind. i pulled off the freeway and doubled back re-tracing my whole route. on my way back home again i thought i had spotted my jacket between the freeway and an on-ramp. i pulled off the freeway and walked into the field where i thought i'd seen it. as i got closer hopes sank as i discovered it was just a black garbage bag.
disappointedly i slowly turned around and headed back to the bike. as i got ready to take off again i happened to look out into traffic and spotted something being run over again and again. my jacket! as another car rolled over it i could see the plastic shards of broken dvds fly up. i looked down the lanes of traffic headed toward reno, waiting for a wave to pass me and then quickly ran across the 5 and 4 lanes to grab it. as i got back to the shoulder with adrenaline pumping i began to examine my assaulted armor. surprisingly it was all in one piece. yay cordura! however as i went through the pockets, everything else seemed to be missing or destroyed. the snack bars in one pocket had been turned to dust. the pocket which held my blistex was now full of oily goo. and the only thing left from my cell phone was the battery. also, my keys had gone missing.
needless to say i was a little bummed. it's never fun losing something and even as i write this i haven't fully replaced the few important things that were lost out there (keys and phone) and to be honest i'm really not sure what the lesson is here. don't hold on to stuff too tightly? tie stuff down better? maybe not a good idea to go running across the freeway? i did get chided by a chp officer who saw me make that run, but thankfully he didn't add to my misery and cite me as well. i guess maybe i just need to pay attention. this was my second brush with cars on the freeway as i got scraped while splitting lanes a few weeks ago. better watch out for strike three.

(photo courtesy of ride the machine)