Backpack stolen, computer and legals needed to drive. So heading home on a rental car. Going to make very little if anything this trip.

May not post again until I get a new computer.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

(The following is written up a few LONG days later)

Breakfast was the usual ... just hang around until about 9 AM.

Left to go switch cars, we wanted to be done with the damaged one so we didn't have any delays when we were ready to leave town. Stopped a fueled part way between the motel and the rental car office. Plan was to go do some walking here in Livermore once we were done here.

The main person we deal with was back today, he came out, took some pictures and got us a different car. It was getting close to 11 when we were done there so we decided to go eat before we went for a walk.

About 10 miles down the road is a Black Bear that we've eaten at a few times before. Family type diner. When we pulled in, there wasn't any room on the entrance side, drove across the side and them came back and parked in the 1st slot against the building nearest the front.

We both had soup and then BB had a turkey sandwich and I had the meatloaf. As we sat there we notice that there was plenty of parking in the back of the building, right next to the window. There had been a couple of trucks when we pulled in so I hadn't realized it.

When we went to leave, I paid and BB took the keys so she could get walking shoes out of the truck so we were not together when we walked out. By the time I'm coming out the door, BB is waving at me to come there (to the car.) As she unlocked and opened the truck she noticed it was light inside the trunk ... and that some of our bags were missing ! ! !

Someone had broken the right back window, pulled down the back of the seat and taken out two of our bags. I called 911, BB went back in to the restaurant as we were parked right under one of the camera's. 911 is the highway patrol so they gave me the number for the local police.

This happened just after 11 AM, two sides of the building were full of cars, people coming and going. The only thing inside the car that someone could see was BB's winter coat. Everything else had been put in the trunk 10 miles away. Very unlikely that someone would follow us 10 miles through town not knowing how far or where we were going.

I started making calls, my backpack was gone. My computer and ALL of my legal's I need to drive were gone along with a whole list of other things. (I'll add the list later)

I called the local dispatch and told him that after waiting four days, I am no longer available. I called both drive companies to tell them we had lost our plates. I called the computer companies to try to lock my website and back up. That was an issue as I don't deal with them on a regular basis and didn't know enough information.

The police finally got there and we had to answer a lot of questions including a lot I didn't, and still don't, know. Like what brand of backpack was it. What model of computer, etc. Then they started asking BB about her bag. She lost the bag with all her driving stuff in it but no electronics.

We had noticed a plastic glove on the ground and thought maybe the thieves had used them, no, the cop figured they dropped it the last time they were here (I should have asked how long ago that was.) The cop did go in to look at the video but came out saying something about the manager was not ...

I'm not sure it made a difference, no one is going to go looking for theses thieves. They just want our information if they find something. The cop did ask if we had any tracking devices on our computers, we don't.

BB was in charge of calling the rental car back ... they didn't have any more cars for us. We wanted to return our 2nd damaged one in the same day and they were out of cars. They gave us the OK to go to Oakland Airport and return it there, same price. BB had already looked at cars and that was where the cheapest cars back to MN were out of ... more on that later.

During this time, BB gets another call. It's only been about an hour since we called the cops (they are gone now) and BB gets a call from a citizen, they have found our bag in Oakland a couple of miles from the airport. ??? They looked at the address on her paperwork and then used Google to find our home phone number. The home phone rolls to BB's cell. Now we know where her back is, we don't know what is in it yet.

As soon as we saw we were broken into, we did something we try not to do. We made a snap decision to head home. We should have, paused, spent the night and thought about it.

At some point I called my pharmacy as ALL of my drugs were gone. I had been real good the last few years about keeping some in two different bags ... until the last two trips. And being in a rush to go, I had us picking my meds up in Roseville, a few hours away.

The person who had called about BB's bag was a truck driver who was sitting in the parking lot of another restaurant and watched the pickup (?) pull in, bust into someone's car and then throw two bags from the pickup on the ground before they left. We knew where the restaurant was and after almost an hour in traffic we were there. Yup, the glass is on the ground from the car they broke into ... right in front of the front door with floor to ceiling windows. The thieves don't care who sees them, who is going to try to stop them? This was at the height of the lunch hour.

We found someone on the place who spoke English and they had us come around to the back. Yes, one was BB's bag, but the other wasn't mine. They wanted to know what to do with the other bag? I took a picture of the airline tag and sent it to the airline with a message, I never head anything from them. Not sure how often this happens, someone finds your bag and lets you know within an hour of you knowing you lost it ... 30 miles away. THANK YOU. And the only thing missing is an envelope that her paperwork was in, and that may have been the citizen using it to contact BB.

Another few miles down the road and we are at the rental car company. Luckily we were the only ones as it takes a few minutes. In the process of doing the paperwork, the agent tells us that they have one local restaurant that five of their cars A DAY are broken into ... plus all the other locations. While we are there I see a row of them yet to be moved. That might be why there are very few cars available out of Oakland right now.

We are switching agents here because of the price, it turns out the car we are taking back to MN is in the next lot. We don't even have to do any extra walking, go in a building our anything. This agent has almost no cars in the lot either. When BB is waiting in line, both people ahead of her are returning cars ... because their car's were broken into and their laptops (and other things) were stolen. One had six years of data that he had never backed up.

I am good in that area, I use a backup service to backup to the cloud that runs anytime I am on WiFi ... and I back up to CD about every six months anything I can think of on my computer that is not a program. So for me, it is just a big pain. I may loose a day or two's worth of data, but most of what I do is on the internet, not stored on my computer.

Now that we have a new rental car, we need to get another 150 miles down the road before the drug store closes. And it's bumper to bumper in SFO traffic.

At some point BB decided to peg in the directions to the drug store and finds out there are two drug stores in that town and we did not pick the one we thought we had.

Then we are talking about which airport we will drop at back in MN, usually we drop at a remote location as it is often cheaper. So BB is looking at the paperwork and we have rented a LOCAL CAR for a week, this one needs to be returned back in Oakland, CA. Another reason we should have just gone to a motel and thought things through. BB looks at Kayak first to see who has the cheaper cars, then goes to the company's site to book them. What Kayak was showing was a 'managers special' for one specific car at $50 a day, that is the same rate as a local and why she didn't catch it. This one is twice that and no one else has a better price and some no cars at all.

... this we are going to sleep on.

We do get to the drug store with about an hour to spare. My drugs were $8 each. Afterward we realize that we should have gotten a couple of weeks worth of pills instead of a few days. It was likely the same minimum price.

We go up the road another couple of miles, BB wants one more In-and-Out burger before we leave town. This time we only get singles, no double-doubles.

Back across the freeway there is a Verizon ... agent. So not everything is Verizon, I could have likely bought the same stuff at WalMart. But I needed a phone cord. Tonight.

Back track a couple of miles and we are back at the Comfort Inn in Rocklin. We are going to be using our rewards points for most of the rest of this trip, and still will be lucky to break even.

-0- on the board out of IA. CA bus dispatcher still didn't know if he would have had work tonight our not when I talked to him at noon.