Translation of title: "They stole my two back tires!"
This blog entry also happens to be a little bit late... it recounts the events that happened last Thursday evening after the weekly Ultimate session at SUAPS (the something universitaire des activités physiques et sportives) hosted by the equivalent of the Health and Exercise Science department at the University of France Comté in Besançon. The students in this department are required to participate in a certain number of hosted athletic activities per month (or per week, I really don't know), and one of the activities offered is Ultimate, every Thursday night from 8-9:30pm. It's pretty low-key: we throw for the first 30 minutes and then scrimmage for the last hour. Usually a fair percentage of the participants are Friz'Bistonins (the Ultimate team I play for here), and last Thursday was no exception. I think we were 18 or 19 in total, and 16 of us were Friz'Bistonins. We had enough for 3 teams of six players (one sub, since you play with five on the court in indoor).
The evening was pretty standard and without incident, except that we ended up playing a little longer than usual. When all left the gym it was just before 10pm. Someone suggested we go out to Callahan's for a drink, and we agreed to meet up there. Colin was parked in the upper lot, near the track, and when we passed the lower lot, we noticed Lois was standing by the entrance, as if to signal someone. It's a good thing we stopped to see what was up, because it turned out the group wasn't going anywhere soon. Vanessa, who had parked in the lower lot (which during work hours it is reserved for the administration), emerged from the gym to discover someone had stolen the two back tires off of her car! The car was just sitting on the axles (I don't think this is the correct term, hopefully someone will correct me). Although the tires weren't brand new, they were snow tires and less than a year old, which explains why someone took them instead of the tires off of one of the four other cars parked in the lot (all belonging to people on our team). Vanessa called the police, but we had to wait nearly 45 minutes before they arrived!! (It was probably around -5 or -10 Celsius outside, that is approximately 23-14 degrees Fahrenheit). We were pretty annoyed that they took so long, but their visit was amusing because it turns out the officer in charge, Denis, knew one of the players from our team, Fred (who wasn't there). When we found out we were all part of the Ultimate club, he asked "Hey, isn't there an old guy who plays with you?" We thought he was referring to the professor who runs the SUAPS programs, but immediately started laughing when he mentioned Fred's name.
As soon as the police left, we took out Vanessa's spare tire and GuiGui's spare tire (luckily they drive the same car, and GuiGui happened to be there). This required considerable effort, considering GuiGui's tire was frozen into the trunk. Then we used two tire jacks to mount the tires at the same time, and fastened them with two of the bolts off of each of the front tires. It wasn't the most secure set-up, but Vanessa was able to drive home (Gaëtan followed, to make sure she arrived safely) and her parents brought over her summer tires the next morning. She filed a claim with her insurance company and should be reimbursed for the stolen snow tires. She has snow tires on her car because she works in Pontarlier, about an hour south-east of Besançon by car and they get a lot more snow there.
Everyone was pretty shocked that her tires were stolen -- the campus is normally very safe and this kind of theft is unusual. I'm glad that we were all there to help her too, because it made putting the tires back on much easier. Hopefully it's an experience I won't get to repeat again!
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