The story of the day I lost (almost) everything

It was Friday morning of the Memorial Day weekend in 2014. I had a great plan. I was going to work one hour in the morning to accomplish some quick tasks, then head down to my parents’ lake house for a four-day weekend.

And I was going to do it all on my motorcycle, as it was easier to maneuver through the DC-area traffic on the high-volume holiday weekend than if I drove my car.

I packed up everything I needed for the weekend in my backpack…it was stuffed…the zippers almost wouldn’t close. It had some clothes, running shoes, my Kindle tablet, my GoPro camera with a variety of accessories, and more. I also put my cell phone in it.

Around 7:15 a.m., I put on my motorcycle jacket and put my wallet in the jacket’s pockets. I put my work ID lanyard around my neck, zipped up my jacket, put on my helmet, and grabbed my backpack.

I walked down the stairwell of my condo building to the garage where I secured the backpack to my motorcycle’s passenger seat with an elastic cargo net. I was riding a sportbike, so I didn’t have the traditional saddle bags that many of the cruiser motorcycles had, so the cargo net was my best option. I couldn’t bring my electronic devices into CIA headquarters, where I was working at the time, because of security reasons, so I figured that if I had to leave my backpack on my bike, I might as well put it there and leave it there.

I hopped on the bike, turned it on, and made my way out of my condo complex. When I merged on to the highway, in the middle of rush hour traffic, I noticed something was wrong. My motorcycle was starting to surge…uncontrollably. Surging refers to a vehicle that speeds up and slows down, seemingly arbitrarily, even though the driver wasn’t doing anything differently. I was holding the throttle (a motorcycle’s equivalent of a car’s gas pedal) steady, but still, the bike would surge forward then slow down. The bike continued to speed up, then lose power and slow down. It was like I was being pulled forward then pushed back almost instantaneously.

As this was happening, I was in the center-right lane, with cars speeding past me. This was getting more and more dangerous. The surging continued.

Until it stopped.

And when it stopped, I realized my motorcycle’s engine had died. It shut off. The engine completely stopped. The bike had no power.

What was I supposed to do?

First, I engaged the clutch which allowed me to keep coasting, but with each second passing, I would lose more and more momentum and eventually be stuck in the middle of the highway with cars speeding past me at 60 mph while I was sitting there still. I could be killed.

I had to make a move. I looked in my right-side mirror and saw that I had an opening before cars were approaching. I quickly swerved to the right and made it on to the shoulder of the highway where I came to a standstill. I tried restarting the motorcycle multiple times. Nothing worked. The bike was dead.

But then I noticed something even worse.

My backpack was gone. The cargo net remained, but my backpack was missing. The surging of the bike must have shaken it loose, and it fell at some point. But where was it? Was it on the highway? Did someone run over it? Did it fall off before I got on the highway?

I looked ahead and saw that a Virginia State Highway Patrol officer had pulled over an 18-wheel truck. I pulled in the clutch of the bike and quickly pushed it up to his patrol car. When he was finished with the truck driver, he came to me asking if I needed his help.

I explained the situation: my bike had died in the middle of the highway. He was understanding and courteous and directed me to walk my motorcycle along the shoulder and he would follow me from behind in his car with his lights on, providing me protection from oncoming drivers.

About a half mile later, we reached an exit. Exhausted from pushing a 350-pound motorcycle 2,500 feet, I thanked the officer and finally had a chance to tell him about my backpack.

I explained how it had my cell phone, valuable electronics, and more. He radioed to his fellow patrol officers and asked them to make a sweep of the route that I took and look for a blue and black Dakine backpack…that might just be in the middle of the highway.

After about 10 minutes, he reported that his fellow officers didn’t find anything. By then, my motorcycle was able to start up, so I told him that I was going to head home. The officer gave me a card with his contact information and said he’d be willing to help more if I needed anything. I thanked him for his time and nervously hopped on my motorcycle and made my way home using non-highway roads. I made it back home without incident, hopped in my car, drove to work, and made it to my desk.

My first action was to call my cell phone. Maybe someone had picked up my backpack, right? If my phone’s ringer was on, which I thought it might be, I could call my phone and maybe the person would answer and we could get in touch and I could retrieve my backpack and get my stuff back!

I dialed my mobile phone number. It was ringing! The phone was still on! It must be somewhere. It went to voicemail.

A few minutes later I called back again.

This time, it went straight to voicemail.

I was immediately saddened. If it went straight to voicemail after ringing the first time I called, that meant that someone had it and had made the decision to turn off the phone or at least disconnect service. That, to me, meant that the person who had my belongings had no intention of returning my backpack.

In effect, my items were stolen.

I called the highway patrol officer and informed him that I wanted to file a police report for stolen property. He filed the report shortly after and gave me a case number, which I used to contact my insurance company to file a claim to replace the belongings.

Smartphone. GoPro camera. Running shoes. Kindle tablet. I estimated I had about $1,300 of stuff in that backpack. And it was gone.

When I got to the lake house, I pulled my car into the driveway and walked around to the back of the house, getting a view of the beautiful lake. That’s where I broke down. I collapsed on the grass and began sobbing.

I just had valuable items stolen from me. My life had been disrupted. Even in 2014, much of our lives were done through mobile phones, and I’d have to spend the time replacing mine, in addition to all the other items.

I cried for several minutes.

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I spent the entire weekend at the lake, no cell phone, no GoPro camera to document my waterskiing or trail running with the family dog.

And looking back, it was fantastic. It was one of the most care-free and stress-free weekends I can ever remember. I wasn’t looking at a mobile phone, responding to updates of social media posts or news alerts. I wasn’t focused on capturing moments on a video camera. I just was. I was just there. I was enjoying the moments I had, free from the technological chains.

After the weekend, I went home and got a new mobile phone, new GoPro camera and running shoes, and went back to living the life connected to technology.

Even today, I still wish I had the opportunity to completely disconnect for a period of time. I don’t think that’s possible, with my responsibilities as a husband and a father of two small children. But I still think about how I can do it again some day, and the positivity that can come from that disconnection.