Don’t cry because it’s over…

…smile because it happened.

Nov 09, 2022

On October 9, 2022, at approximately 3 AM, David Towie was stolen, dragged off by a pickup truck in the dead of night without the thieves even bothering to remove the wheel locks.

This, as you might imagine, sucks.

I waited a full month to write about it because it was just yesterday that I mailed his title off to the insurance company to get back (most of) the money I paid for him earlier this year. It’s a kind of closure, I guess.

To be honest, the cash will come in handy. Val and I are getting married in the spring. Weddings (unless you elope) aren’t cheap. We are also planning a trip to Scotland next summer, which also won’t be cheap. 🤑

So, yeah…cash, yay.

But of course I will miss David Towie more than any number of dollars can compensate. It almost doesn’t feel real the 7 weeks I spent on the road with my little Bend Teardrop trailer this last summer, but what an epic adventure! Of all of my once-in-a-lifetime feats*, it ranks right up there as one of the oncests!

(I can’t believe autocorrect let me say oncests. I guess it’s a real word?)

Val was incredibly supportive throughout this last month (not surprising as she’s generally an incredibly supportive person!) and was less fatalistic about the loss and more determined than I was to do everything possible to get David Towie back or at least bring the 💩 heads who did this to justice.

When I called in the police report, they suggested I get on the Facebook group PDX Stolen Cars. I don’t have a Facebook account, so Val sprung into action and quickly connected with a young man whose trailer was also stolen just an hour and a half after mine. The Facebook group was profiled on the New York Times less than 3 weeks later and is doing yeoman’s work helping people recover their stolen vehicles.

I also posted to NextDoor and almost immediately a neighbor sent me video of my trailer passing by his house just after 3 AM (this is how we pinpointed the time of the theft).

I went out in my Jeep a couple of times driving around places where stolen cars are frequently found, but to no avail. In the end, I feared the condition the trailer would be in if I did get it back. 😬

Also, if I got it back, I was super stressed about how I would prevent another theft from happening in the future. Sure, I could add AirTags to it, but that wouldn’t prevent the theft, only make it easier to recover. Remember, it had wheel locks and a hitch lock on it when it was taken. The best idea I came up with was to put my utility trailer and David Towie tongue to tongue and lock them to each other. That way, they couldn’t just wrap a chain around him and drive off. Knowing I would forever live in fear of a repeat of this last month is also part of why I took the insurance money rather than having them buy me a replacement trailer. Sigh.

Anyway, I don’t know if this is weird, but I hope David Towie was stolen to provide shelter for someone down on their luck as opposed to being stolen to make some quick cash.

Thanks to everyone who followed along with #MegaRoadTrip2022 back in the summer! I’ll leave you with a couple of my favorite photos from the trip, but, yeah, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” ~Dr Seuss, probably

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