The GTS Chronicles - Getting Two/True Sportscars - Delivery Adventure - 2020-2023

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Thursday, August 3rd, 2023 - Recovery Ops

Seek and Ye shall Find?

The dread and angst about the gear loss. The hot and sticky night with no air conditioning. The flying biting things coming in through the open (and screenless) balcony door. Needless to say, I did not get a good sleep. I spent much of those sleepless moments going over the day before in my mind, flipping through memories to see if I could remember a glimpse of the camera bag. Luke reviewed his photos, and determined that the last photo he had taken where the bag was present was back in Vars, so that was the logical starting point (Vars was the town we had stayed at the previous night). And so, as we got up and made breakfast, I decided to reach by phone back out to Davide from the Hotel le Monte Pente back in Vars.

courtesy LWard

Luke's last definitive Bag Shot

Since I had already had a couple of phone calls with him over the logistics with gaining access to the hotel, I had his number in my phone. And when I gave it a ring, happily, he answered. He remembered me instantly.

I explained the situation to him and repeated what I had outlined in the previous night's email: if he could look around the hotel - in our room, in the breakfast area, outside where the cars were, etc. I also asked him where he thought I should call. The usual stuff. In any case, he said he would have a look when he got to the hotel, and call me back.

It was an anxious thirty or so minutes at our apartment. Our plans were up in the air: proceed onwards, go searching, drive back to Vars ... it wasn't a good feeling. And I kick myself now as I write this that I didn't take more photos of the morning and our glum faces and just what the apartment was like. I should have asked Brian to film, film, film. I understand why there's no motivation to film or record when something bad happens, but in retrospect it is so surprising to me how thoroughly that mindset takes over your mind. My words of wisdom: if you absolutely hate or despise or fear the idea of filming or photographing something, that's *exactly* when you should film or photograph it. Record that moment. It is what makes the story!

My phone rang. It was Davide again. He regretfully informed me that he saw no sign of the camera bag. He said he would keep looking.

It was time to make the agonizing decision: drop all pursuit and accept the camera bag and all of its contents as lost, or expend a valuable day of The GTS Chronicles trip to go searching for it, with no guarantee (in fact, I felt it was low odds) of getting the bag back. And if that was the outcome, then we would have lost the bag AND lost a valuable day.

I am a sucker when it comes to not leaving things behind or lost (if you've read the "Lead-up", you'll know we spent a lot of time and energy to recover my crashed drone from the depths of the Ottawa river during media pitch filming), and I chose to go for an attempt at recovery. Luke and Brian put up no resistance and agreed (many thanks to them for doing so).

Luke's Thoughts

[on the decision to go bag-searching...]

We discussed and decided to go back fast to our hotel from the night before where I have a photo of us actually having the camera bag in hand - it shows Andrew putting it into his car. Handy because now we know we don't need to go back any further.

Andrew has found the shortest straightest route so we can make good time. We aren't optimistic, as we feel it Must be on the side of the road somewhere where we stopped.

But there's enough of a tiny spark of hope that maybe it's still there, or maybe someone picked it up and turned it in. There are still nice people in The world. Interestingly, Brian would leave it in place, whereas I would take it to the nearest manned sign of civilization. A rest stop, inn, gas station, whatever.

We packed our gear into the cars and checked ourselves out of the Relais des Alpes. Looking at the map, I charted the quickest, shortest way back to Vars, and one that also avoided that hideously expensive Frejus tunnel. Fortunately, there was such a route, that went over a relatively obscure border crossing and would deposit us directly into the Durance Valley and to the town of Briançon. And from Briançon, we would stay on main arterial valley routes, which would bring us back to Vars. In all, this route would require a much shorter time than the time it had taken to get from Vars to our current location the day before. Of course, sadly, with much less fun road segments. But ... c'est la vie, right?

We headed out from our lodgings in Giaglione shortly before 9am. The total distance back to Vars via the shortest route was not really all that far - 175 kilometres. Our route took us southwest, into a high branch valley of the Susa (the Alta Val di Susa), and from there, up a low pass at the frontiere back into France - the Col de Montgenevre - the MontGenevre Pass. there were a few decent twists and turns leading up to the pass, but nothing really out of the ordinary or outstanding. A pleasant enough route, with generally nice mountain scenery. But not like the grand passes we had done over the past two days.

Over the low pass and down towards the Durance Valley, and on to the mountain city of Briançon. From Briançon, we stayed on the main Durance valley route, which was fast and straight, and by 11:00 am, we were already heading up the side valley towards Vars. All in all, fairly speedy.

The photo before the loss

We arrived in Vars at about 11 a.m. - it had taken us just over two hours to make the journey back here, which was very respectable, considering we had taken about ten hours to lolligag our way between the same two points the day before. We had told Davide that we were making our way back and would be doing a search, and he met us at the Hotel.

Searching turned up nothing. Our old room, the restaurant area, the parking lot - even the spot across the road that Brian had gone to to take a picture of the hotel with the cars. We discussed possibilities with Davide: did the Hotel have a Lost & Found? maybe the Police Station? Then Davide thinks.... "maybe the Tourist Office"? He proceeds to give the office a call. At this point I'm feeling pretty despondent. No bag and we had wasted the day. But then, we hear Davide's voice talking with the person on the other end of the phone, now with a slightly higher pitch, a slightly more excited one: "they have your bag at the visitor center!", he exulted. Apparently some passer-by had picked up the bag on the shoulder of the main highway opposite the hotel, and had brought it in.

At the help desk

Ahhhhh ... so that's what had happened. In the morning, before we had left the Hotel Le Monte Pente, Brian had gone off to get a good vantage point back to the hotel, with our two Porsches parked in front. Somehow, in the course of taking shots, he had put the camera bag (out of which he had taken my camera) down on the ground. And then, I guess ... simply had walked back across the street to the hotel, camera in hand, and not noticing that the camera bag was left on the ground. We didn't do any sort of inventory before leaving, and so there it had stayed, until a wonderful French Good Samaritan had happened upon it, and had wisely decided to take it to a place where most tourists go .... the local tourist information center.

Luke's Thoughts

[on the joy of bag recovery...]

Wow. Amazingly, we return to the hotel and meet the manager Davide there again (super nice fellow). We search, to no avail. Andrew suggests calling the police station, which makes Davide think of the tourist office. He calls them. Lo and behold, someone dropped it off!!! Incredible. They found it, and took it to the tourist office. We rejoice.

Thank God for that Good Samaritan. In barely a moment, my mood - our mood, had transformed from glum acceptance to joy. Of course, this did mean that we were going to have to retrace our steps back to Vars, but in that moment, I did not care.

With springs in our steps, we hurred to the cars and then drove up the road to the lot near the Office de Tourisme of Vars, and walked in.

Finally coming to my senses about recording trials and tribulations, I asked Brian to record the recovery moment, but after a few moments, an uncomfortable staff member asked us to stop filming. More importantly, though, after I presented my ID and a description of the contents, she produced the bag - and a quick inventory of the contents revealed that everything was still there: lens, car key FOB, memory cards. Oh, how I wish I could have given that Good Samaritan a hug.

The Bag is Retrieved!

And with that, we walked out of the office, victoriously holding a bag that frankly, I mostly thought I'd never see again. We drove back down to the Hotel Le Monte Pente and stopped in to say hi to Davide. I went up to him and gave him a big hug and a handshake. He had done us a solid, and I thanked him profusely. We talked for a little bit, expounding on the next parts of our GTS Chronicles adventure. I gave him some GTS Chronicles business cards, encouraged him to follow along, and then thanked him once again. Now, why, oh why, did we not take a picture of this thanking? SMH!

But whew. We had actually managed to retrieve the bag and its contents. I was still amazed. Amazed but happy. Now, it was time to re-focus on our journey.

Once again we drove north out of Vars. Once again we stopped at the very pretty and scenic Vars lookout rest stop just outside of town. This time, however, we had our picnic lunch here. While eating, we once again gazed at the mountains of the Barre des Ecrins to the north of us.

Eating at the Vars lookout

We had a hard deadline for the evening: we had to reach the cities of Bern and Zurich in Switzerland. We were scheduled to do our next GTS Chronicles official crew swapover, dropping off Brian at the train station in Bern, and then picking up crewmember Hatko from the airport in Zurich. Fortunately, we did have time to make these scheduled departure/arrival times, but it would mean no more wanderings. We needed to take the shortest route between where we were, and Bern.

The shortest route involved going back north, through Briançon again (for the third time). Surprisingly, and I guess a little happily for us sports car enthusiasts, the shortest route went back over the Col du Galibier, and the excellent twisty roads on either side. From there we would be on the same route as yesterday up until we hit the Maurienne valley, at which point we would head down-valley (rather than up-valley, as we did the day before). That would take us to lower and lower ground, eventually exiting the High Alps, and from there, standard expressway Autoroutes and Autobahns would bring us past Geneva and on to Bern and Zurich.

The route north to the Col du Galibier was fairly uneventful. We were certainly familiar with the roads by now, and enjoyed the little bit of twisties north of Vars more spiritedly, now that we had become familiar with the road's curves. The drive through Briançon was actually starting to feel repetitive. The drive up the Lautaret was pleasant, if a bit busy.

Up the twisties to the Col du Galibier. Same busy traffic as yesterday. Near the top, we elected to go through the tunnel shortcut - a narrow, high-arched thing that clearly was built way before the era of the modern mountain tunnel. On the far side, we hoped to enjoy the excellent twisty descent to Valloire, but it was not to be. There were simply too many road cyclists for us to attack the roads in any sporting manner. I'm sure the cyclists thought they were being super fast - and they were, for the regular putt-putt tourist - but for us it was very easy to maintain our gap with them. There was no use trying to pass them, as they generally stayed in the center of the road and took wide racing lines around all of the hairpins. Effectively, they made safe passing impossible.

Galibier Tunnel

Unpassable Cyclists

Retracing our steps

Down near the Maurianne valley, we stopped at one of the set of picnic stops we had used the day before, and had an afternoon break and snack.

At this point, we branched off west and north, starting our descent out of the Alps. As we descended through ever-widening valleys, the peaks around us became lower, and gentler, lower and gentler, until eventually they were just small hills. We were now in a lowland of considerable population, with expressways and cross-roads going every which way. In our focus on staying on the correct Autoroute, Luke and I somehow fell afoul of some speed camera somewhere, but rest assured, it was not some sort of high-speed demon-run. It was some sort of situation where we missed the change from 100km/hr to 80km/hr and back to 100km/hr on an expressway section. Fun.

Dropping off Brian

Once established on the main A41 Autoroute, it was simply a matter of setting the cruise control at 135km/hr and jetting our way north towards Switzerland, into which we crossed on the outskirts of Geneva. With our speed now lowered to Switzerland's strict 120km/hr limit, we continued on various different bits of Swiss autobahn until we reached the city of Bern, at about 6pm. We made our way to the central train station - a stately old building among other stately old buildings, pulling up in our shiny two Carmine Red Porsches and trying to not get in anyone's way for too long (although we did elicit a "wooow" from a little kid passing by). Brian quickly got his stuff out of Luke's Boxster and shook hands. We thanked him for his service and he was off on the next leg of his own European vacation.

And thus ended our journey through France. To commemorate the completion of this leg, here's the Instagram post that summarizes the French leg of The GTS Chronicles Euro Delivery adventure. Or you can view it in wide-format here in this page:

The GTS Chronicles IG Post 089 - "The French Alps (Wide version)"

Picking up Hatko

Continuing with the day's logistical choreography, it was now time to speed off to Zurich, some 130km away. Hatko's plane arrived at roughly 7:30pm, so we had no time to waste.

Fortunately, the route from Bern to Zurich is all autobahn, and traffic was not heavy, so we managed to arrived at Flughafen Zurich around 7:40pm. We had coordinated with Hatko to meet in the passenger pick-up area, which necessitate an entry into the larger parking garage complex.

Luke's Thoughts

[on the uplifting chatko...]

We embark upon a fast drive on the autobahn to the airport where Chris is waiting. A cloud seems to lift, as we begin the next chapter of the journey. Andrew is instantly more animated. Like within 10 seconds. Chris has us both laughing practically instantly. Great stuff!

(to read more of Luke's thoughts from this day, check out his blog post)

On the positive side, there was Mr. Hatko, striding up with a big smile and already wearing his GTS Chronicles CREW shirt, ready to get to work. A round of shaking hands and a few admiring glances at the 718s, and we were off. On negative side, we were ... charged a parking fee - simply for entering, scooping up a passenger, and then immediately leaving. We had assumed that if we were in and out within a few minutes, we wouldn't have to pay the minimum 8 Swiss Franc parking fee. We were wrong. Nice money grab!

So, crewmember Chris [Hatko] was now safely with us (actually, Crew Chief, because you know, he simply couldn't agree to being a crewmember without having some sort of higher rank). Mr. Hatko is an interesting guy, ostensibly all about efficiency and value but maybe with a wee hint of enthusiast in him. Just a wee.

courtesy LWard

Hotel Höri auto-attendant

We headed north from the Zurich Airport. In one of our picnic stops, I had perused the internet and had discovered a reasonable place to stay for the night. It was called the Hotel Höri Inn, located in a small northern satellite community of Zurich. It was not a place like the rustic farmsteads, historic castles, or alpine rifugios we had stayed at. Instead, it was a place kind of emblematic of modern Switzerland: a modern, clean, vaguely-tech-y sort of apartment-style building, four or five stories high, situated in a sort of pleasant light-industrial-park kind of neighborhood. The access to the rooms was completely automated. We interacted with our booking and room entirely through an electronic display near the main door. It did everything - collected payment, gave us access to our room, had self-help screens. All very efficient. A bit coldly efficient, but nevertheless efficient.

We hoofed our overnight stuff up to our very clean and pleasant enough room, then headed out for a much-needed dinner.

Debrief Dinner

We looked at the map and simply chose one of the closest pub-like restaurants we could find. That turned out to be the Restaurant Frieden, an unassuming street corner establishment across from a Swiss military facility of some sort. We left the Porsches at the hotel, and walked to the restaurant, which was only about a kilometre away on foot.

Over Beer and Radler accompanied by some tasty plates of schnitzel, we brought Hatko up to speed on the highs and lows of the trip, to-date. There was a lot to go over! and we toasted to an interesting and fun set of days to come. Welcome aboard, Mr. Hatko.

Interactive trackmap with photo points - August 03 - click map to view

Interactive trackmap with photo points - August 03 - click to view

August 3 - Drive Data

Start Time: 9:20a.m.

End Time: 8:43p.m.

Duration: 11h23m

Distance: 662.41 km (411.6 mi)

Average Speed: 58.2 km/hr (36.2 mph)

Start Elevation: 4564ft (1391m) *

Max Elevation: 8292ft (2528m) *

Min Elevation: 806ft (246m) *

End Elevation: 1370ft (418m) *