While I was mowing the grass on Saturday, I managed to notice that both the passenger side doors on Laura’s car were unlocked, and the front one was actually ajar. Since both Laura and Stevie were known to not lock their doors when they were passenger’s in Vicki’s or my cars (in much the same manner that fish are known to like to swim in water), I assumed that she or her friends had just been careless the night before. I somehow managed to miss noticing that the back window was smashed. Somebody evidently broke into her car and found nothing worth stealing.
I guess I should probably stop leaving my GPS, digital camera, film camera, kayak paddle, and flight bag with 3 expensive headsets, portable transciever and my worthless but irreplaceable log book in the trunk of the car any more. Not sure about the XM radio – yeah, it’s supposedly portable but that would be such a hassle to drag in and out of the car every night. The CDs can probably stay – they’ve all been ripped to MP3 anyway, and besides they’re all obscure crap that nobody would steal.
Back when I worked for GeoVision we had a tradition in the winter that the night of the full moon, we’d go cross country skiing in the dark up to one of the lodges there, cook some dinner, hang out for a while, then ski home. It was extremely cool. One day at work, the day after one of these ski trips, I noticed that there was no money in my wallet. No matter, I thougth, I’ll just head over to the Toronto Dominion next door. But somebody else who had been skiing with us asked if my car had been broken into last night. I said I didn’t think so, so they asked me if there was any money in my wallet. They suggest that I go down to my car and look for a small hole beside the keyhole. Sure enough, there was one. Evidently somebody had gone around to all the cars, punched a hole in the door panel near the keyhole and opened the door somehow, and stolen any money he could find in the car, but only money.
The next full moon came, and this time I decided to be one step up on the theif. I put my wallet in my bum bag so it would come with me when I went skiing, and left the doors unlocked so I wouldn’t get another hole in my door. However, I stopped for gas on the way to the parking area, and so my wallet made its way from my bum bag to my work pants, so didn’t come with me on the ski. I came back to find my wallet had been emptied once again. Buggeration.
Funny you should mention this – I was looking at my flightbag on the floor of my car yesterday and thought the exact same thing – what if someone broke into my car and stole it?
Replacing a logbook and all the entries in such would be a frustrating experience.
And the person who stole it would probably just throw it in the trash in the end.
I hope you’ve made photocopies of your log book, at least up to when you passed the checkride. If you lost the book, you’ve lost a lot of memories, but also you’ve lost your last proof that you actually deserve that certificate in your pocket.
At least on this side of the border I learned that a students PTR stays on file at Transport Canada indefinately, and up untill my checkride it matched my logbook almost 1 for 1, except for a few fam-flights and sightseeing flights that I logged as dual, but weren’t eligible towards my training hours.
Worst case scenario I can recall the PTR to copy it to a new logbook…but everything since, including little personal annotations for things like PJY, OSH, first-passenger flights, notable passengers, etc…would be all lost.
I think I’ll start keeping my flightbag in the house except when I’m actually planning to fly.
Here in Belgium we’re having a break-in wave. They target cars with GPS brackets, because most people leave the bulky thing inside the car.
Even if they just steal the documents (to modify a stolen car and make it into a legal clone of yours) it is a pain.
Since both Laura and Stevie were known to not lock their doors when they were passenger’s in Vicki’s or my cars (in much the same manner that fish are known to like to swim in water)
Or maybe we stopped doing that when we were 5.
my worthless but irreplaceable log book
I sat down with a banker-type one day and had them make notarized copies of every page of my logbook, which I placed in my safe deposit box.
My convertible Firefly was broken into twice during the 1990s, once when it was in the driveway and the other time when it was parked in a parking garage near work. The first time, the slashed the roof, slashed the seats, stole the handset for my carphone (useless without the bits they couldn’t steal) and my music. The second time, they slashed the roof and stole the faceplate for my CD player and some other trivial things. Both times, it was a horrible thing to discover, even though nothing irreplaceable was stolen.