Jane got robbed on her train ride back from ETech.

That brings to mind my experience with a vancouver thief, which, it turns out, did not end there, but I never updated this pseudo-historical record of random events.

On closer inspection of the garage, we found that in addition to stealing two bikes, they’d left a glove. Weird. We called the cops after a couple of days to report the theft for insurance purposes, and gave them the glove (“DNA testing, you know”).

The night after the cops came, we (oops) hadn’t locked the garage, and someone came back and rummaged through everything again, presumably to recover said glove, since they stole a pair of ski mitts. They also took our halloween candy from the freezer, and still didn’t take the vodka.

Just before ETech, we went for our last nighttime ski trip. Came back at 11:30pm or so, parked in the back to unload the gear. The light was on, which was odd. The door was open, which was worrisome. There was a strange man inside, which was infuriating. I yelled at him (very loud, it turns out), clearly scaring him more than I was scared, even though he had a box cutter (probably mine). He mumbled that he was leaving, and I let him go, which seemed the only safe thing to do.

Turns out:

• while the garage was locked, a window wasn’t latched. He unscrewed the hinge and broke the hinge open, then climbed in.
• he was slowly cutting up the fibers inside the security lock which was attaching my new bike to a cart in the garage (good thing I was feeling paranoid!). Another 20 minutes and it would have been gone.
• he stole my skanky smelly used-all-winter-in-the-rain sneakers (size 12) and left a pair of much nicer Skechers (size 8 ). Oh, and he left an umbrella

I’m quite convinced that all of these visits are just from one guy, not very bright, who has luckily for him stumbled onto us, a family that needs a few losses to really lock down our security, because life in jail just isn’t much fun. I think we’re secure now. Sigh.