Bay Area couple Jamie Neal and Garrett Hand apparently disappeared while bike touring in Peru. They dropped off of the grid in late January. Friends and family began asking for help locating them. Turns out they were on a boat enjoying life.

Peruvian police made contact with Neal and her boyfriend, Garrett Hand, while the couple was traveling by boat on the Napo River. They were unaware of the commotion and that loved ones were worried about them.

“The couple was found on the Napo River at a place called Angoteros,” Miguel Antezana, communications director of the Foreign Commerce and Tourism Ministry in Peru, told the station. “There they talked to the police and were very surprised by all the questions. They finally asked, what’s going on and the police told them about all the worry, etc. and they were of course very surprised.”

Story in the Merc-News: Peruvian police locate missing Oakland couple on bicycle trip in South America. H/T Meli.

In other local news, officials consider the possibility of a hoax regarding reports of a family who abandoned their 29 foot sailboat in heavy seas last Friday 65 miles off of the Monterey Bay coast.

This is kind of amusing:

“In his State of the City address Tuesday, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn responded to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s threat to lure Seattle’s tech jobs to his city by creating a world-class bike lane network,” reports Tom Fucoloro. “We’re going to build world-class, safe bike lanes, too, the mayor said. And we’re going to keep those jobs here.”

California’s largest city, Los Angeles, has made significant advances in promoting bike use under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, though I don’t know if he’s made bike facilities any kind of centerpiece of job growth.

The third largest city in California, San Jose, has also worked to improve cycling facilities though, again, I don’t think any high profile mentions have been made tying high tech job growth in Silicon Valley to the innovations in the city’s bike infrastructure. San Jose’s efforts have been led by a handful of activist city council members such as Sam Liccardo, along with the city DOT’s new director Hans Larsen, who has aggressively pushed his staff for more bike projects since his appointment in 2011.