Townies, Thieves and Bears… Oh My! (Part 3)
Days 20-21 (August 4th & 5th) Everett, WA; Seattle, WA
The woman working the front desk at the Travelodge told us about a delicious steak house just 2 doors down from the hotel so we cleaned up in our room and walked over to the Buzz Inn to get some much needed food. I ordered the most delicious BBQ bacon cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten while Johnny felt compelled to take part in the all day breakfast menu ordering French toast. With our bellies stuffed to the brim, we waddled back to the hotel past 2 construction workers using a mini barbeque grill outside their van. Weary from the ridiculously long trip through Canada we went to bed almost immediately after getting back to the hotel.
We woke up the next morning walked down to the lobby to eat some of what they called continental breakfast. I had a bowl of generic Froot Loops which was unfortunately the main attraction of their “continental breakfast”. This shoddy breakfast wasn’t the biggest mood killer of the morning. We went back to the room where Johnny fell asleep and I began messing around on the computer while watching TV. Somewhere around 9 the phone rang. Expecting it to be the main office wanting to know when we were checking out I almost didn’t answer it. I picked up the phone to hear a woman say “Hello, do you own a Volkswagen Jetta?” “Ugh… yeah?” I answered. “Well, somebody just shattered your window” she said coldly. I was in shock. I didn’t know how to answer that. “umm… ok. Thanks for letting us know” was the only thing that came out of my mouth. I went over to the bed and woke Johnny up raising my voice to say “Dude, wake up. Someone broke into the car!” We ran out to where we parked the car to see the driver’s side surrounded by a sea of glass with a fresh hole in the back window with bits of glass still hanging from the frame. Each passing second we kept remembering what was in the backseat that they took. The first thing we noticed was the camera. We were so tired from the trip that neither of us remembered to bring the camera into the hotel room. It was the one and only time the camera bag has ever been out of our sight. Next we noticed they got both of our packs still full from the Alaskan adventure. We kept noticing they took nonsensical things. They took Johnny’s pair of sandals but left his expensive shoes. They pushed my shoes out of the way to take the collapsible cooler underneath them. They took both our good dress shirts in the rear window. We called the cops who had already been there that morning because somebody left a van with the windows down running in the parking lot. The same cop that was there earlier in the morning showed up a couple minutes later. We took some pictures from insurance and filled out a police report. Johnny called his insurance company. Roughly 80% of my clothes were in my pack so we needing to find a way to get more camping gear and clothes for me. First thing was first though. We needed to get the window fixed. We used Johnny’s phone to find a good window repair show that had 19 good reviews on Yelp. They said they could fix it in about an hour and a half so we sat down and set to the task of making an elaborate list of items that had been stolen. With the camera and all our belongings it equaled up to about $3,000. Tallying it all up like that was a huge punch in the gut. It could have been a lot worse. My keys with a spare car key were sitting in the passenger door. They could have stolen the car. I don’t want to say this guy was smart but he knew what he was doing. He knew that if you shatter the window and don’t touch the door, the alarm wouldn’t go off. Throughout the day we kept thinking of more things that were in our packs and in the backseat. We found a nearby Wal-Mart to get some general clothing for me and some much needed groceries. Out next stop was a nearby Best Buy to try to find a replacement camera. The thing that pissed us off the most, aside from the fact that some stranger may have been rifling through my underwear at that exact moment, was that everything we had was meticulously purchased. We had comparison shopped and waited for the exact moment when things were at their cheapest. Now we were looking at replacement things that weren’t as good but were still more expensive than their better counterparts. After spending an hour or so in Best Buy and not making a decision we went to 4 different sporting goods stores to try to find cheap camping gear. We couldn’t find anything good until we got to the Sports Authority in Auburn, WA. We were able to get two really good really compact sleeping bags for just about $60. We passed a movie theatre on the way to Sports Authority so with the events of the day we figured we needed a pick-me-up. We arrived at the movie theatre around 9 PM and decided that we had put off seeing Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part 2 for too long. I had really mixed feelings about this movie. We spent a couple days listening to the 7th book on my iPod and they left a lot out of the movie. If I hadn’t read the book I don’t know if I’d be happy with the movie. The movie seemed to give you just enough to piece the story together but not enough detail to fully appreciate the ending. After the movie we parked at a nearby Wal-Mart and settled in for some much needed sleep.
The next morning we woke up and stopped into a local mall appropriately named SuperMall. I was trying to find a University of Washington sweatshirt but sadly they were out of season. I still needed some clothes however so we went into a Marshall’s and I ended up with a pair of UW shorts instead. The whole ordeal with the window had set us back at least a day off schedule. We went back into another Best Buy to try to make a decision on the camera so we could hit the road and try to make up some ground. We talked to one guy about the camera specs and told him our dilemma. He was very helpful and became really interested in our story. As we were checking out another girl who worked there overheard our story and came over to wish us luck. We ended up deciding to go with the same exact camera that we had before. We got back into the car and I had just gotten the battery out to start charging it when Johnny saw that he missed a call and had a voicemail. The voicemail was from the Snohomish County Police asking if we had recently had our stuff stolen. Johnny called them back to see what was going on and they said they had arrested a guy outside of a Wal-Mart with a van full of stolen stuff and wanted to know what he took from us. They had roughly 95% of our stuff. Thankfully we were still in the area looking for replacement stuff so Snohomish County was only an hour north of us. We went back into the Best Buy to return the camera we had just bought. The security guard working the front wanted to know what was going on so we told him about the voicemail and how they had all our stuff. With an excited congratulations he stickered our stuff and sent us over to the returns station. While we were waiting in line the guy that helped us noticed we were back and thought we were unhappy with the product. We told him our story also and he was just as excited as we were saying how nobody ever gets there stuff back. He then went back and told the girl we talked to and she came over to congratulate us. It was as if the whole store was coming over to congratulate us.
The ride up to Snohomish County was as pleasant a drive as you could imagine. Johnny was as giddy as a schoolboy and could barely contain his excitement. I on the other hand wasn’t going to count my chicken before they hatched. I had this image in my head of the camera screen being cracked and borderline unusable while our clothes, although intact had been urinated on. It turns out that my fears were unjustified as the only bad thing that happened was that our clothes now smelled of body odor and some form of drugs. We walked into the police station garage where our stuff was sprawled out on the floor. All our clothes were in a pile and our bags had been emptied of their contents. We had to fill out a police report and scavenger through our own stuff to decipher which was our and which was from some other of our thief’s poor victims. One of the officers held up a small dress asking us if it belonged to us. Johnny coolly replied “That’s mine but I’m not claiming it”. We had a good time with the officers. I asked if he was still in their custody to see if maybe I could coincidently be walking down the hall at the same time as him and accidently put my fist in his gut. The arresting officer assured me that our thief got was what coming to him. Apparently this guy stole a van, dropped off said van at our hotel where he stole the van of a family from Canada. Then he used their stolen van to steal from us before heading to a nearby Wal-Mart to try to steal HDMI cables. When confronted by a worker he brandished a screwdriver and the worker let him go but called the police where they apprehended him outside. We were able to claim back almost all of our stuff minus Johnny’s sandals (which one officer said he was sure the guy was wearing when they arrested him), one glove, 2 sunglass cases, a can of Off bug spray, a notebook, a long sleeved shirt and my good luck Troy Aikman action figure that my mother got me when I was young. Sadly the only reason I brought that with me aside from bringing some luck to the trip was that I have him in my pocket every time I fly and rub his head for good luck as we’re taking off. Of course, when we go to Hawaii I’ll have to find another good luck charm but alas I digress. We claimed our belongings, thanked the officers and headed back down south through the Seattle rush hour traffic making it the third day in a row we had been in it. We made it to southern Washington where we set up camp and had a few beers to toast our good fortune and unwind from the whole ordeal.