This is the story of a very happy couple, engaged to be married, experiencing the best luck of their lives. Young, in love, working together in the online adult industry . . . Nothing could go wrong.
But after what’s happened these past few weeks—damn, we must have had some serious karma to pay off. Every detail in this story is relevant to the moral, so pay attention.
So Chris, my fiancé, and I are on our way to the Quebec Expo. We hardly had a reason to be afraid of going through customs. Everything we do is documented and legal, 100%.
Apparently, Canadian customs thought differently. On our way through customs, we did the usual presentation of declarations forms. The gal behind the counter eyed us and sent us to the exit, where the mustachioed officer took one look at our declarations form and instructed us to take a seat. Meanwhile, everyone else was waved through the coveted gate to freedom.
Police ushered us down a winding hallway to a back room. They put on blue rubber gloves and proceeded to search everything we had. Actually, I take that back. A woman searched my belongings, but a man searched Chris’ things inside and out—including his work laptop, where thousands of images of naked women live.
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For a solid hour, customs officers scrolled and clicked around Chris’ laptop, demanding that he show them his pictures, demanding that he help them work their way around his personal and professional documents. They asked why we brought our laptops. They took our passports to some secret room and kept our identification for fifteen minutes, making god only knows what kind of notes on us. They asked Chris if he had any pornography on his computer, and Chris wryly answered that he didn’t know anyone who didn’t. Meanwhile, I’m trying to cover my nervousness by looking calm but still somewhat frustrated at the ridiculousness of the matter.
Finally, the mustachio proclaims that they are done for the day, and that we are free to go. Would you like to know what saved us? Chris’ semi-functional Linux partition on his laptop. These officers, like a majority of computer owners throughout the world, were trying to do Windows-related searches on a Linux operating system. No go, and we were free. Scared shitless, but free.
This happened to be the same weekend that Hurricane Frances tore Florida a new one. We spent the weekend semi-involved in the convention, semi-frightful of our house and family of pets. Aside from these fears, we were nervous about passing through U.S. customs. I desperately tried to upload my work onto the server so that it wouldn’t be a complete loss, should we get stopped again in the States.
Unfortunately, the internet connection in Quebec was slower than dial-up (if that’s possible), and my connection timed out and aborted until I finally went to sleep at 4 am, with the alarm set for 5 am to catch our flight.
After countless delays, we finally landed back in Orlando, anxious to get home and check out the hurricane damage. I happened to turn on my cell phone as we were getting off the plane, and I get a message from my best friend, who had been taking care of the house and pets while we were away. “I hate to give you bad news…” were the first words I heard.
A tree had crushed our screened-in patio and punctured the roof over our bedroom. The holes allowed water to drip, drip, drip into the insulation and drywall, finally weakening the bedroom ceiling to where it finally collapsed.
Bad news.
So after an extremely long and tiring trip, we get home at about 11 pm to assess the damage. There was nothing we could do, so we stayed up late, drinking and playing cards.
The next day was Monday, and I needed to get to the office to do my update. My car was in the garage, though. Without power, I couldn’t get the car out from under the electric garage door. Chris let me borrow his car, and he decided to stay home and sleep off the stress.
I drove down our residential street at a normal speed, taking in the damage around the neighborhood as I drove. As I approached the only entrance and exit to our neighborhood, I noticed that the rain puddle that was at the entrance the night before had grown, but I could never have imagined how exponential the puddle growth was.
I started to drive into the water. Too late, I suddenly realized that the water was deep—very, very deep. I panicked. My body could not do what my mind was telling it to do, which was to stop and throw the car into reverse. I tried to step on the brake, but the forward momentum of the car and the depth of the water had already taken over.
I found myself in the middle of a 250-foot long, 4 1/2-feet deep lake, the car quickly sinking. The engine stopped. Water started pouring in through the doors and creeping up my legs. I began to scream for help, as there were about 30 or 40 people standing on the banks of this newly-formed lake. No one helped (whatever happened to “love thy neighbor,” huh?).
I finally got my wits together enough to climb out of the window and swim to shore. Soaked up to my shoulders, and watching as the car sank deeper and deeper, I cried hysterically as I ran back to the house. You can only imagine the utter fear I felt, having to tell my fiancé that his car was destroyed, and that I had done it.
When I got to the front door, I couldn't get inside. My purse, my phone, my keys, my laptop—everything was now flooded in the car. I knocked and rang the doorbell frantically. Chris answered and I was absolutely hysterical, trying to cough out the words. "Chris... your car...its floating in the lake..."
We lost his car. I also lost my laptop. My laptop. Stupid me, didn’t back anything up. Stupid me was so happy to have made it through customs on the way home that I couldn’t even imagine my work being lost. Stupid me didn’t come up with a back-up plan in case I couldn’t upload my work. I’ve had to start everything over almost from scratch.
The moral of this story has nothing to do with driving cars into lakes. The message that I’m bringing too you is: BACK UP YOUR WORK. Do NOT travel without an external hard drive, or without shipping your work separate from you and your computer. Any setback can be a serious, serious detriment to your job, your prosperity, your sanity, and your wallet. And domestic travel is no exception. I’ve been searched for no apparent reason, traveling from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. No one is immune, and we had to learn that the hard way.
Do not travel with anything that’s even the slightest bit incriminating!
And you probably shouldn’t drive your car into a lake either. . . .
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ATKCash proudly offers four of its world-class, high-retention family of websites to webmasters promoting ATK. Webmasters earn 50% recurring revenue for the life of each account. Since 1996, ATK has offered the best amateurs, the original natural and hairy girls, the finest exotics, and the most stunning artistic nudes. |
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