Van Life

As you may have figured, chronicling our misadventures is one of my favorite past times.  Did the string cheese bandit strike again? As you may or may not have heard, our less-than-pristine 2006 GMC Savana van went missing. It was stolen right off the lot of the brewery while we brewed away. It took us at least 2 days to acknowledge it wasn’t just a prank. Seriously, if you have seen that van, you know what i am talking about. Here was our first attempt to find it.

ISO: a beaten up 2003-ish GMC 3500 utility van, with a bunch of dents on it. The back door handles should be broken, making it nearly impossible to open them without using a vice grip (or really strong farmer hands) ideally, the passenger side doors don’t really open or close all that well either; they should dangle just enough that it appears closed, but when you are driving down the road, you know those doors will fly off with just enough wind or if a semi-truck passes you. Also, it would be nice if the fuel gauge didn’t work, so that we would have to guess how much fuel is in the vehicle at any given time, because that makes road tripping so much more fun. The inside of the van should have a beautiful mixture of rust and permanent beer stains on the white metal floor. Of course, there should be at least 4 holes in the floor, so one can see the road from inside this bad boy. In addition, wood splinters from pallets used to hold kegs should be in the van, along with someone’s 7-11 beef chimichanga wrapper crumpled up in the corner. Despite all this, the van should be able to hold about 10 1/2 bbl kegs, weighing 165 pounds each. In truth, it doesn’t need to drive that far, just from one end of town to the middle of town. Willing to pay $5 extra if it happens to have an Iron Horse Brewery logo on it; which will make replacing our stolen van that much easier.

Nothing came up. Hmmm. So we finally did what normal people do and reported it stolen. Well, it was found. Apparently by a woman playing Pokemon Go. No surprise there, those people find everything these days.

Well, after about a week of it missing where did it turn up? In a ditch? Over a cliff? In the woods with a dead body in it? Nope, it was found at an apartment complex which caters to college students less than two miles from the brewery. Boooring. Also annoying. Whoever took a joyride in the brewery van across town took the key out of the ignition. Now, i’m sure you are going to say “yeah Greg, that’s what people do when they get out of a vehicle.” You are right. But this was a stolen vehicle so I don’t think the argument for habitual behavior is valid unless this person habitually steals vehicle.

So why does this annoy me? The number one reason is had they left the key, someone else could have had a joyride of their own. Seriously, pay it forward you self-centered miscreant. You get a free lift across town and apparently the socialism stops there, everyone else can fend for themselves. Pick a side and have a good argument for when the police show up. If the police roll up on your doorstep and you had left the key in the ignition you had two arguments “i was borrowing it and now someone else can” or “i’m done with it, if you want it back why didn’t you just start it up and drive away?” But oh no! You took the key out of the ignition which leads me to annoying aspect number two. Now we have a $200 tow bill and an immobilized vehicle that will probably cost us another $300 to get a new key or ignition switch to get it running. That is at least half the value of the vehicle. So, how about you just run that key by here and save us all the hassle and explain to us what in the hell you were doing?