5 july 2001

The 4th of July is gone, and so is my wallet!  I was hanging out last night drinking a lot of wine when I got involved with talking to these guys from Spain.  We had great fun drinking and talking in Spanish.  They were nuts!  Two of the guys ride bikes, one of them, Pepe was pretty nuts!  Pepe was pretty funny.  I was calling him "Pepe Le Pieu" the famous French skunk.  Their buddy, who spoke some English, was named Caesar.  He was pretty cool as well.  I was asking them if they ever read Shakespeare!  We were all getting really trashed.  I remember talking to this lady from Scotland with one of the Spanish guys.  We also were talking to these other Aussies I think.  I was so blasted that most of the evening is a little hazy.  We were also drinking some whiskey and coke, I might have had some beer as well.  Some time during the evening someone managed to steal my wallet.  I was blitzed, I'm not certain when it happened.  It may have happened while I was passed out in my tent.  The fucking bastard(s) got some cash and my little notebook.  Somehow I managed to keep my pin, very curious that I found it in my pocket this morning.  All my credit cards and random phone cards are gone.  Most disappointing are the countless e-mail addresses and other random information I've lost.  As one might expect, the thief made their way into Firenze and began to charge like a madman.  It looks like the thief managed to charge about $1,000.00 on my MBNA Visa and about $350.00 on my Wells Fargo ATM/Checkcard.  I had forgotten I had the card until later in the day when I was surfing the 'net for some other info.  I managed to close the Wells Fargo account even thought they tried to thwart me at every turn.  That transaction was a nightmare, and it reminded me why I'm leaving Wells Fargo.  MBNA is going to ship me another card to Certaldo.  Juniper won't ship me a replacement card because I'm overseas so I'm having them ship the card to Charley and Melissa so they can then ship the card to me in Certaldo.  What a pain in the ass!  I get to call my buddies over at Wells tomorrow to dispute the charges on my ATM card.  So most of the day was spent doing some foreign exchange, conforming my reservation with the Certaldo hostel, calling, etc.  I think I was still drunk until about 3:00pm!  It's been a real bummer having to deal with this crap.  Though I'm glad that the campsite has my passport, at least I didn't lose that!  Anyway, really depressing.  I'm heading to bed early tonight so I can do some foreign currency exchange and pay these people tomorrow morning.