Kyle - 1, Dirty thief - 0

Let me break it down for you. On Saturday night we went to a bar called L'Ovella Negra (The Black Sheep) which has mess hall style seating and an old gothic look to it. We got home at about 5am so we were pretty hungover/tired on Sunday. We decided to make the trip to downtown Barcelona to meet up with a couple friends from school and shoot the shit.

We're casually sitting in a Starbucks in a pretty touristy area, but the 'bucks isn't busy. We're perched in the back corner. I have my back facing the rest of the store. Dave and I both have our backpacks sitting right in front of our legs. We're casually talking amongst each other and have been for about a half an hour. I look down and realize my backpack is gone, a woman sitting next to me starts to say something to me in Spanish and I instantly start sprinting out of the store like a bolt of lighting, I kid you not. Dave can attest to my reaction time. It took me about half a second to figure out what happened and I started running, fully ready to spear whatever bastard took my bag (which has my camera, ipod, sunglasses, and 1 of my credit cards).

I shove the glass door open and almost hit somebody in the face and head down a very populated street. I see a woman in an alleyway flagging me down. I sprint over and I see my bag sitting on the ground in the alley, unopened. This is where my mom comes in. She bought me 3 small, bright green TSA locks for my luggage before I left. I have been using one of them for my backpack religiously as we had been warned about the how crazy theft is in Barca, so my backpack was locked. For a reference point, there was an article about a guy who had been caught stealing 240 times but never punished. There is basically no consequence to getting caught so people never stop.

My adrenaline was pumping at this point and I really wanted to hunt down whoever took it and get a few shots in. Especially because it was during the day and everybody in the street would recognize what had happened and wouldn't care what I did to this guy. But when I saw my bag I stopped instantly because I saw the green lock. I knew for sure that nothing could have been taken and it wasn't worth my time. He could have kept the bag and cut the strings that the lock was attached to later, but thankfully he didn't. All this had occurred before Dave and our friends knew what had happened. They just saw me sprint out of the store without any idea what was going on and caught up with me by the time it was all over.

There was a big window in Starbucks where we were sitting, which also faced the alley where my bag was. I think the person saw me through the window sprinting after them which caused them to drop it and run. It was a combo of that and the lock, which prevented instant access to my stuff. I am lucky to have come away losing nothing and I'm very grateful to my Mom for buying me those locks and the two good samaritans. To summarize, if you do come visit us, don't bring anything important.