Chapter 4

Day four. 

As soon as we were two hours from Aix en Provence, we stopped for gas. It was an especially early start, and I drew the short straw for the morning drive. Naturally I was tired as hell… so tired I forgot my wallet was in my jeans from the previous day, and convinced my professor it was gone. It was turning out to be the trip from hell, thanks to me, but just when he got the emergency phone out, I got the nervous sweats, dove into the duffel, and found it. Sure fooled him! (he was pissedddd).

We moved on to a pretty smooth drive into Spain for about four hours until we had to stop for lunch.

Get out the car

“Jack did you lock the doors?”

“Yup”

Check for wallet (got it)

Walk inside

“Hola” (first Spanish I’ve heard all semester!)

Grab a can of honey roasted CACAHUATES, una jamon y queso sandwich, y una coca

Sit down and eat

Discuss Spanish cuisine and the excitement to indulge

Dispose of trash

Walk outside

Time elapsed: 25 minutes

Two undetected men drove up beside the three cars

            One – broke through the passenger window of the Volkswagen

            Two – broke through the back left trunk window of the Opel

Both men managed to grab

            My backpack

            Stephanie’s backpack

            Emilia’s bag

            Nick’s jacket

Who knows how long it took

I walked out to find the shattered glass all over the pavement and seat of the Volkswagen, for only enough time to realize we’d been robbed, and turned back to call for help. I realized after Stephanie Emilia and Heather rushed by that my stuff was gone. They found the hole in the window of the other car and my head started spinning. My brand new computer with my entire semester’s work, pictures, and personal files was gone, along with my passport, ipod, and sketchbooks. This was the trip from hell, and I was frozen. I didn’t know how to respond or what to do.

That’s when the spirit of Thanksgiving kicked in. I’ll never forget spending hours at the police station after things calmed down, joking around about the situation to ease the tension. The robbers left my bottle of shampoo and one flip flop at the scene of the crime, so that was an easy starter. “No dude we only need one… LEAVE THE SHAMPOO, LETS GO!” We waited for something like four hours there to see if the bags turned up on the search.

Apparently these highway robbers do it so often that the cops know where to look for the looted bags. They said it happens all the time because the punishment for the crime isn’t more than a slap on the hand. Typically they take out computers, ipods, cellphones, cameras, etc. and ditch all the other stuff.

Sure enough, they found the bags and returned them, without the valuable electronics. All of our stuff was mixed up between the bags (my shaving cream and cologne in Emilia’s bag; Stephanie’s passport in my backpack, under Emilia’s glasses). It was oddly courteous of them to put stuff back in the bags after dumping them all out.

On a more serious note I thank god for the rest of the class and my professor, my parents and the good people at USAA. Everybody really rallied and was so helpful. I had some reason to believe by the time we were back on the road that things would be ok. I had most of the pictures backed up, and all the thoughts about my project were still in my head. All I had to do was start fresh.

1 year ago  /  3 notes