You'll Never Believe This....

....but here it is anyway.

I was driving down 101 - the limited access part between Rte. 114 and S. Willow St, for those of you who are even slightly familiar with the area (or have access to Yahoo! Maps), and what should I see by the side of the road but a copy machine! This was no little 3-in-one copier thing either; no, this was massive! In case it means anything to you, it was a Xerox CopyCentre 265.

I pulled over to the side of the road and jumped out to survey the piece of equipment. I could hardly believe it, but it looked all right. It had a few scratches, but it wasn't broken anywhere that I could see. Naturally, I checked to see if there was any way I could identify the owner of the piece of equipment. At first, I couldn't find any. No one leaves his address on a copier! I was about to give up when I noticed a little sticker on the side: "Continental Business Systems; 1-888-XXX-XXXX (I can't remember the number, but it's not important anyway); Cust. ID: XXXXXXX. I got back in the car and called the number excitedly. I felt like a Hardy boy! And why not? I'm Joe's age, after all, and I was exercising my powers of deduction.

Anyway, the number didn't go through, and I was disappointed. I had really wanted a good post for my blog to rival the story on KJ's blog. Realizing that I could not let this opportunity go by, I pulled out my phone again and gave it one more try. The phone rang and rang. I was about to hang up, when suddenly someone finally answered.

"Continental Business Systems, how may I help you?"

I briefly explained the situation, and the phone-answerer (to whom I will refer as Mark, since he said that was his name and I have no reason to doubt him) gave me an address and a phone number. I wrote them down and thanked Mark politely. I was ecstatic!!! Now, Ryan and I had just taken a load of trash from the construction on our house (for those of you who don't know, we are having our kitchen remodeled and a guest room added). There were a number of boards and pieces of plywood going that wouldn't fit normally, so we had taken out the back row of seats and created a large cargo area. We had just finished emptying the trash at the local dump, and the cavernous trunk space was empty. Together, Ryan and I lifted the heavy machine into the back and headed off to the address. My imagination was running as wild as the wind, and I could hardly believe my good fortune. It never occurred to me that someone might just accept my returning his copier as a token of good will, given freely and without thought of return. Fortunately, that didn't matter.

I had instantly recognized the name of the street Mark had given me - Technology Drive, Bedford - and I knew its approximate location. We had already passed the exit, but we had to go to either Home Depot or Lowe's, and Lowe's was back at the other exit anyway. I turned off the highway onto Brown Ave, and soon we were back on going in the opposite direction. We took the S. River Rd. exit and headed down toward our destination (we had decided to go to the Technology drive address first since we might need some trunk space when we got out of Lowe's; anyway, Technology Dr is only a bit over a mile farther down the DW highway). Never before had a mile seemed so long to me! We finally got there, however, and pulled up in front of a large brick building.



In case you can't tell from the sign in front, we were at the offices of Segway, Inc.

!!!!

Ryan and I walked into the office together and, once again, explained the situation. Some oldish guy (graying hair, probably in his sixties or late fifties) who was sitting in a little office to the side overheard what I was saying, I assume. Certainly he jumped up and congratulated me on my honesty. I felt quite complaisant. I admit I may have also felt a twinge of complacency. At any rate, the man who was congratulating me appeared to think I was the best of the best. "What makes someone who finds a $15,000 item in the streets return it?" he kept asking the man at the desk, all the time shaking either my hand or Ryan's.

I could have said, "Ummm...because he had absolutely NO idea that it was worth $15,000?" but I restrained myself. After all, I would have returned it anyway, right? Instead, I said, "But how could a copier worth $15,000 dollars end up by the side of 101?"

The oldish man explained. Just an hour before, he said, some delivery guy who works for Segway had gone to pick up the copier from being repaired at Continental Business Systems in Manchester. He had just moved to the area from Massachusetts, and he got confused and took 3a (the Everett Turnpike) instead of 3 (the Daniel Webster Highway). It's a very easy mistake to make, especially considering the fact that 3a turns into 3 once you cross the NH/MA border. When he realized his mistake and turned himself around, he took the exit for 101E, apparently thinking he had passed his exit. As he was coming up onto the highway, he had to accelerate rapidly because of a tricky traffic situation, and as he sped up, the ropes that had been holding the copier in his truck broke. By the time he realized he had lost his cargo, he was some distance down the road, and he had turn around twice to get back to where he had been. He repeated his former route and sped off down to Merrimack to turn around there. And in that time slot, Ryan and I had found the copier.

I tried to retrace the routes in my mind. It seemed to me that he was pretty silly to go all the way down 3a again. I retraced the various alternate routes in my mind, and I was just deciding that the delivery guy had taken the longest possible route when I realized that the oldish man was speaking again. "Call Dean up!" he said. "We need to ask him what we should give for a reward!"

So I got to talk to Dean Kamen! We live in the same town, but I had never seen him before, nor even much more than a glimpse of his famous octogonal house. And Dean Kamen said that Ryan and I could share a Segway XT!!!!! I was about to protest such an extravagant gift (or at least I flatter myself that I was), but Mr. Kamen told me that it only costs his company half the selling price to build a Segway, and plus (he didn't say this) he is insanely wealthy. So we accepted it with great glee and jubilation.

Pictures coming soon!!!