We were kid-free last weekend thanks to various grandparents spiriting the kids off to various exotic locales. Jane and I had a lovely night out on Fri and were looking forward to a day of fun on Sat.

8:30am Saturday morning, we headed out to the garage to get our bikes for the ride to bootcamp at Tyler Park. Jane opened the small door in the back yard and let out a cry of alarm.

"The garage door is open and my bike is gone!"

"Shit!", I said as I went rushing to the garage.

"Both of my bikes are gone!" Jane cried, "And Rina's bike too."

I stepped in the garage and took a quick inventory. Jane's hybrid bike was gone. Her road bike, previously hanging on the ceiling, gone. Catarina's bike, gone. I also noticed that my cordless drill was missing. But the lawnmower, all of the other bikes and assorted yard tools were still there.

That seemed to imply they were on foot.

When we were robbed a number of years before, they took two bikes from the backyard but dumped one in the alley so it occurred to me they might have done the same thing again.

I walked into the parking lot behind our house and immediately found Rina's helmet. Then I noticed something in the bushes across the parking lot. It was Jane's road bike! Aside from a broken spoke, it seemed fine.

We decided that Jane would drive on to bootcamp in the Park and I'd stay and deal with the police. A car came out within about 10 minutes, a very nice policeman took down all our information and gave me a case number. He said that a dective would call us in a few days and we'd go from there. I also tweeted out a picture of Jane's bike just so people could keep an eye out for it.

It was exactly 9am by this point so I hopped on my bike and bombed up to the park and managed to get in the last 45 minutes of bootcamp. Then Jane and I met up back at the house.

We'd been planning to do our friend's new Aqua-Land bootcamp class at the JCC at 11:30am and it was still early so we decided to walk the 2mi to the JCC. Aside from the loss of bikes, it was a pleasant walk through the neighborhood. It was warm and sunny and we walked along chatting with each other. As we headed down the bike path on Taylorsville Rd, I noticed a woman with a stroller and a giant dog waiting to cross. She kept hitting the crosswalk button but the sign wasn't changing even though the light was green.

We didn't want to miss the light so Jane and I started jogging so we could cross in time.

And then, right as we went past the woman, her dog reared up and jumped at me. He grabbed my entire hand in his mouth and bit down hard before the woman was able to get him back under control.

I looked down and I had a series of scrapes from the dog's teeth, a puncture wound on the top of my hand, and another on my palm. I was so angry, I couldn't imagine trying to talk to the woman without losing it so I told Jane I was walking away for a minute. After I'd cooled down, I went back to talk to the woman.

She was very apologetic and upset. We exchanged information and then, since my hand was bleeding pretty badly, she suggested we go to the nearby fire station for some first aid. The firemen on duty were friendly and helpful. They disinfected my hand and wrapped it up in bandages.

And then we headed on our way to JCC. The Aqua-Land class was fun, although keeping my hand out of the water the whole time was kind of pain.

After that, we walked home. We had appointments at 3pm to donate blood at Lakeside. I decided to take the wheel from Jane's road bike up to On Your Left to get it fixed so she'd have a bike to ride on Sun. We agreed to meet up at the pool. The guys at OYLC were great and fixed the wheel right there. Then it was on to Lakeside.

I got there just in time for our blood donation appointment. Not that having an appointment matters because still had to sit there for almost 40 minutes before it was our turn.

Jane headed off to one little booth and I to another. They took the initial blood sample and vitals. While they were doing mine, I heard Jane on the phone. She sounded excited but I couldn't tell what was happening.

We got out of the booths and that's when she told me our friend Shannon had called. She'd been driving up Bardstown Rd. when she'd spotted Jane's bike leaning up against a building at the corner of Bardstown Rd and Bonnycastle! She texted Jane a picture just to double-check that it really was the right bike, then she tossed the bike in her car and drove it back to our house.

Jane and I swam for just a little while after donating blood, then headed home to check out the bike. There was no question it was the right bike.

And, in an amazing stroke of lunch, there was a bunch of stuff in the basket!

• My drill!
• Assorted small electronics (I'm assuming stolen from other people)
• A set of keys
• The title to a car

I was so excited to have all of this stuff to turn over to the police but I couldn't get a hold of anyone through the non-emergency line so I decided we'd just wait until Mon. From there we headed out for drinks with friends, the dinner at Boom Bozz.

It was almost 10pm by the time we sat down to eat at Boom Bozz. We'd just ordered and were waiting on our pizza when I had a call from the police. It was the detective assigned to our case and he was calling because they had Rina's bike but they needed us to identify it!

We changed our order to carry-out and rushed home. We sat on the porch and ate pizza until two police officers showed up at about 11pm. They said they had the bike and they just needed to identify the bike and they'd record me doing it for evidence.

They wanted to know if I had any good way to identify the bike and I told them that we all have the same bike lights. I suggested showing them the lights before they showed me the bike which they thought was a good idea. I also showed them some pictures from last Christmas of the bike.

That was more than enough to prove the bike was ours so we got the bike back and handed over all of the other things we'd found in the basket of Jane's bike. Apparently they'd had a warrant out for this guy for some other burglary and when they went to arrest him, had found all of these other stolen items. There was stuff from our next-door-neighbor and several other people on the street.

It went from pretty much the worst morning ever to the best night ever. We got back everything we lost and a bad-guy is off the streets. The only remaining thing was the dog bite which I got antibiotics for.

What an insane day!