Lost and found

This morning it was raining hard when I woke up. I don’t mind a bit of rain (living in Vancouver means you’ll have to live with rain for most of autumn and winter), but when it’s Sunday morning and it rains so hard that you can hear the rain drops  hitting the windows I prefer to just stay in bed. However, I had promised Scott to take him to the Mosquite Creek Boat Show to look at some yachts, so I got up, showered and prepared breakfast.

When we wanted to leave I realized my wallet was not in its usual place. I assumed I had misplaced it, so I looked in a few other places but could not find it. Strange. I’ve never lost my wallet, at least not for more than 5 minutes (knock wood). So I tried to figure out when I had last used it.

That was yesterday when we took the gondola down from Whistler mountain into the village, after some mountain sightseeing and a late lunch in the Roundhouse Lodge (pictures see here). I remembered my father-in-law asked me how much lunch had been, and because I had not idea I checked the receipt. After that I don’t remember I used my wallet anymore.

After searching for my wallet for almost an hour I gave up. Either I had accidentaly dropped it in the gondola (I had Elaine on my lap, so I was not paying full attention) or someone had pickpocketed me in Whistler (very unlikely because I had the kids and my family around me and Whistler is not known for pickpocketing). Anyway, I decided to call the lost and found at the Whistler ski resort, where I got an answer machine (“We’ll listen to the messages at least once per day”). I left my name and number, but did not expect a call back.

I then worked a bit, I was not in the mood for the boat show anymore and was still annoyed with my stupidity. How could I be so dumb to lose a wallet, I could not get it out of my head. I made a list of all the things in my wallet that I had to cancel or renew (at least 3 credit cards and 2 debit cards, my drivers license, key cards for my parking garage and office etc.). I decided to wait a few hours, because there is always a chance someone finds it.

I locked myself in my study and among others set up a new Bitcoin wallet and wanted to transfer some coins into it (I spread the risk in case one of my wallet gets hacked). After doing that I went back to my main wallet and guess what… I was locked out of it. I had no idea why, but because there is quite some money in it I was a bit worried. I assumed maybe a cookie from the new wallet had caused an error, so I restarted my laptop. But still the same problem. It took me about 10 minutes (and a lot of sweating) to realize that I was using the password of the new Bitcoin wallet for my old one… I was just not thinking clearly because of my lost real wallet. I also realized again how vulnerable Bitcoin still is, I protect my wallets quite well but if you lose your passwords you have a serious problem.

Then Grace called me and told me lunch was ready. I went up to the living room but wasn’t in the mood for eating. Grace was talking to Scott who told her he had seen my wallet in the playroom. Grace asked him where, but he said he did not know. Then she asked if he had seen it last night, but he wasn’t sure. I didn’t pay too much attention to it, kids have a lot of fantasy and I had not been in their playroom last night. But then Elaine said that she had seen Scott with my wallet. What??? Grace questioned Scott and it turned out he had taken my wallet last night and hid it as a joke, but that he had forgotten that he had done so until just now. And worse, he did not know anymore where he had put it.

So I jumped up and went into the playroom. I scanned the room and indeed a minute later I found my wallet on a shelf behind some toys! I was very relieved. I wasn’t angry at Scott and was actually happy that he told me the truth (if I had found the wallet without him telling me I would have been less nice to him). But I also made clear that he understood that hiding a wallet is not a game he should ever play again.

Everything was still in my wallet and I was glad I did not cancel any of my cards yet – there were even 5 credit cards in there, I didn’t realize I carried so many on me. It taught me a lesson though, I am now going to take a scan of all my documents in my wallet and put them in the cloud. And I am going to carry less cards in case this should ever happen again. And I may revisit a company that I looked at a few months ago that developed a sensor for your wallet so you can more easily find it back!

This morning wasn’t too good, but the afternoon is a lot better: not only did I get my real and virtual wallets back, but while I’m writing this the rain stopped and I see the sun through the clouds. Time go go outside!