intermission

The following is an email that Paul sent to our families on 11 September. We found a good campsite in the Loire Valley with lots of grass on 8 September. Our first truly unhappy incident occurred on our second night here. At about 02h30 in the morning someone cut a small hole in the side of our tent, reached in, and stole my watch, phone, and car keys (missing my wallet though) from an internal pocket in the tent where I keep our valuables when we're asleep. Using the car keys the car was opened and our laptop, cameras, and passports were stolen. I heard nothing but Kathleen awoke and woke me asking if I'd locked the car as she thought someone was outside. I was certain I had, but thought I'd simply use the remote to unlock and relock to make sure. I reached for the keys, could not find them, and realised something was wrong. When I looked out of the tent the car light was on which could only have happened if a door had been opened. I got up to investigate, found no one in the car, but saw immediately that the laptop bag and the camera bag were missing. Later we realised the passports were also gone. It then dawned on me that all the photos were on the laptop and the cameras. I have been religiously backing these up to a usb drive which is on the key ring, but with the car keys taken, all the photos had been lost. Feeling very depressed we sat the rest of the night out in the car (taking turns holding Tim), as I thought the thieves might return for the car and Kathleen didn't want to be in the tent alone. At daybreak we realised an Austrian couple had been robbed in a similar fashion. They still had a car with keys so I joined them and we went to the local police station to report it (where I had a serious crash course in French, why did I not try harder at school?) When I returned to the campsite the reception desk informed me that a runner had found car keys, with a usb drive attached, on a path outside the campsite and handed them in. The joy of discovering they were mine is simply indescribable and the luck with which they were found quite unbelievable. This joy soon changed to anger at all the other stolen stuff and I had to remind myself that in the sad, dark hours of the early morning I had told Kathleen that they could have taken everything we have, just left me the usb drive.

We have altered our route now to allow us to visit consulates in Paris and are staying (in a hotel) in Versailles. We spent today in Paris and should all have passports by tomorrow, with the consular staff being very understanding (Kathleen managed to shed a few tears while applying and I took Tim on my own to the British embassy, holding him with his bottle, while talking to the staff). The cost of getting replacement passports so quickly is quite exorbitant, so we had a nice expensive meal afterwards to make us feel better. While in Paris I also plan to get the usb drive surgically implanted under my skin as the current on-person hiding place is rather unpleasant.

In Paul's passport was his immigrant visa to come to the US. Tim and I are in Colorado with my mom and dad getting spoiled. We arrived on 16 September. Paul's with the Lawns (thanks Jon and Tara) in London wading through the bureaucracy to get a new visa issued. Maybe he'll be here by the end of the next week, but that's a big maybe.

Entries for almost a month of our trip were saved on my laptop. I haven't had the heart to rewrite them, but have started to think about it, so the writing should follow soon enough. I still wake at night (thanks to Tim whose suffering extreme separation anxiety from his father) and play out different scenarios for the night of the robbery. Most of them end with Paul and I catching them and justice being done, but a few end with violence and I'm reminded that we are all safe and healthy and that he won't be in England forever.