Yesterday, at about 11:55AM, some 3 hours after my brother and I left Seattle for San Francisco, we stopped for lunch in Portland, Oregon. It should have been a harmless 20 minute lunch and followed by a blast to San Francisco in our cool looking For Escape rental. But it turned out to be the worst 20 minutes of my life to be followed by months and months of pure pain. Let me give you some background -
We were driving down to San Francisco to Schengen visas for our trip to Spain which was coming up in 2 weeks. We planned to get the visa, camp out in northern California and head back to Seattle. Unfortunately, in the 20 minutes that we parked our car, someone shattered our rear window and took away 3 backpacks that had all our documents, passports, immigration papers, etc in it. Here is a list of what we lost -
Passports, Immigration documents, visas, SSNs, bank account numbers – STOLEN
Our camping trip in California this weekend – STOLEN
Our drive to Calgary, Canada next weekend – STOLEN
Our week long backpacking trip to Spain in 2 weeks – STOLEN
Our trip to India from Spain (to surprise our family back home) – STOLEN
Our clothes – STOLEN
My Corporate IDs – STOLEN
Our vacation – STOLEN
Peace of mind for the next 6 months – STOLEN
3 phone calls and an hour and a half later, a cop showed up to take down our complaint, apologized for the loss, wished us luck for getting new documents and left us reminding that we should hate Portland by then. We cancelled our visa appointments after that, did the drive of shame back to Seattle with a shattered window and returned our rental car.
Under these circumstances, my brother and I did what every ‘Man’ would do. We said ‘Sh*t happens’ a few times, joked around that we saved a few thousand dollars on the vacation, that we were illegal immigrants now without papers, joked around that the thief got ripped off (he left the laptop behind, the road bikes, my wallet, etc). We came back home to Seattle, went shopping at Fred Meyers for some boxers, food and had dinner outside.
Came back home after that, researched about identity theft, now that the thief has all our bank account numbers and social security cards/information. Now, we are just sad. Going back to work today. 
Update: My brother posted more on the incident here.
(with great big SUVs, come great ego).
