{"id":23093,"date":"2008-03-17T10:00:01","date_gmt":"2008-03-17T10:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2008\/03\/17\/i-try-not-to-rely-on-the-kindness-of-strangers-but-its-a-pleasant-surprise-when-strangers-come-through\/"},"modified":"2008-03-17T10:00:01","modified_gmt":"2008-03-17T10:00:01","slug":"i-try-not-to-rely-on-the-kindness-of-strangers-but-its-a-pleasant-surprise-when-strangers-come-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20080317-01\/?p=23093","title":{"rendered":"I try not to rely on the kindness of strangers, but it's a pleasant surprise when strangers come through"},"content":{"rendered":"

I took part in a casual bike ride last month in celebration of a friend’s daughter’s birthday. Our first stop was Trophy Cupcakes<\/a> in Wallingford. It was there that I discovered that my wallet was missing. I checked my pockets several times, but the wallet was gone. I was pretty sure I had brought it with me, but there was an outside chance that I had simply forgotten it from the get-go.\n The rest of the bike ride was pleasant enough. Well, I took a tumble on the Elliott Bay Bike Trail after coming down the overpass ramp: I was a bit too effective at keeping right and ended up catching the railroad tracks that parallel the trail. Fortunately, I had overprepared for the cold weather and wore four layers of pants, so I got off completely unscathed.\n Okay, so aside from wiping out that one time, the ride was quite pleasant, but the thought that I had lost my wallet nagged at me for the rest of the day. On the way home after the ride, I retraced my path, stopping to examine more closely the areas where I had stopped to remove a jacket or adjust some clothing. But sadly, no wallet.\n When I got home, I checked my e-mail hoping against hope that somebody had found the wallet and deduced how to contact me from whatever hadn’t already been stolen from it. And lo and behold, there was a message waiting for me from a person who works in the area we cycled through and who found my wallet barely a half hour after I had lost it. (And probably even before I realized that I had lost my wallet at all.)\n I jokingly thought to myself, “Well, when I go to pick up my wallet, how can I prove that it’s mine? I don’t have any identification with me; it’s all in the wallet!” But of course, my picture is on my identification, so it’s pretty obvious that I’m the right person.\n I offered the finder a reward, but he declined it, saying, “You’d do the same for me if the roles were reversed.” He was right, of course. And as far as I can tell, nothing was missing from my wallet. Even the fortune cookie fortune was still there, one that I’d been carrying around in my wallet for months for good luck.<\/p>\n

What was the fortune? <\/p>\n

Soon you will hear very good news. <\/span> <\/div>\n

Behold the power of the fortune cookie fortune. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I took part in a casual bike ride last month in celebration of a friend’s daughter’s birthday. Our first stop was Trophy Cupcakes in Wallingford. It was there that I discovered that my wallet was missing. I checked my pockets several times, but the wallet was gone. I was pretty sure I had brought it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-23093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

I took part in a casual bike ride last month in celebration of a friend’s daughter’s birthday. Our first stop was Trophy Cupcakes in Wallingford. It was there that I discovered that my wallet was missing. I checked my pockets several times, but the wallet was gone. I was pretty sure I had brought it […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}