What's the Opposite of Van Magic? (Andre)

So, a few days ago we posted an entry talking about the unexpected and pleasant instances of ‘van magic’ we have experiences along the way in our travels. I also posted earlier about the idea of hubris and the gods stomping silly humans back into their place for getting too uppity and all. Well, we are still ahead on the plus/minus meter, but we woke up to a rather unexpected and unpleasant surprise our first morning in New Orleans – let me tell you the story…..

When we park at hotels or parking lots in general, we always try to park off to the side as our vehicle is rather large and tends to stick out of regular spots. We booked a hotel room – our since first Tallahassee almost a month earlier – in Gretna, LA, right across the river from New Orleans. We got to our hotel early evening after a fun stop at Abita Brewing north of New Orleans. As is our tendency, we parked on the outskirts of the parking lot along a fence and out of the traffic flow and people’s way.

Well, we forgot or were not thinking about, the people who might like access to a van, parked right alongside a fence, and out of the main flow and sight of those on this side of the law.

I suspect you can see where this is going. (But, in the spirit of the George of the Jungle movie, in which the viewer is warned in the midst of a calamity that no one really gets hurt, no one, including the bikes really got hurt.)

In the morning, Laura went out to the van to get something. She hurried back into the room and said there was a note on the van to inquire in the hotel office about a missing bike tire and an ‘incident’ with the van. It seems, in the middle of the night, someone or someones, appreciated us parking our vehicle with decent bikes on a bike rack on the back of the van out of sight and along a dark fence.  Thankfully, hotel security heard a commotion and rousted the would-be perpetrators from their work. Security retrieved a tire from the individual(s) which they had managed to wrest from one of our bikes but they could not pry the bikes from the Thule bike racks – I guess that is a bit of an endorsement. (Thule, please send checks!)

This was not what we wanted to wake up to as we were busy anticipating a fun day in New Orleans. Beyond the feeling of violation, thankfulness that the bikes and bike tire were in-tact, we realized that one of the bike racks was missing a crucial part without which the rack was unusable. Here is where the good guys come in. We found a local independent bike shop – The Pedal Shop of Gretna, LA – no checks required for this endorsement, who did some quick and inventive work to repair the damaged bike rack.

As someone said – or wrote, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ The bike is fully functional. The bike rack is repaired for now and we are hoping the hotel insurance will cover a replacement – still working on that one. We only lost a couple of hours from our day in New Orleans. Our feelings of violation are fading. And, we learned and hopefully will remember to think of things other than traffic flow and being out of the way when selecting parking spaces!