Lost Travel Memories

Lost Travel Memories

Imagine spending two-and-a-half years traveling around the world creating priceless memories, managing to carry them with you through country after country (even through situations like a military crackdown in Bangkok) only to have them stolen when you have returned home! That nightmare actually happened to the blogger behind Legal Nomads, Jodi Ettenberg, last week.In her own words, here is what happened:pageb

Yesterday evening, Craig's apartment was robbed in Brooklyn. He lost his laptop and camera and expensive DSLR lenses and a slew of other belongings. I lost my new MacBook Pro (my birthday present to myself) and my Canon G9. I had a lot of personal information on the laptop - invoices with my bank number, blog posts, journal entries. They also took all the hard-earned money from my summer of stoop sales - $1500 in cash that I was going to deposit today. But worst of all, they took my 500GB backup hard drive, my netbook with another backup of my photos and my 32 GB flash card with the 3rd backup of my photos. All of these were in different places in the apartment, and all are gone. I'm angry. I've been watching my pennies this summer and was happy to have made some extra money downsizing my belongings. But the worst of it all is the loss of my memories - they took handwritten Moleskins full of notes from Burma and all of my photos. With the exception of a flash drive I found on the floor with my photos from Burma and Cambodia, I've lost everything. I have the blog and photo galleries, but all of the full resolution pictures are gone, as are all the photos I never uploaded to any gallery.

[caption id="attachment_482" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="One of Jodi's great travel photos"][/caption]

This is every traveler's worst nightmare - to have all of your travel memories vanish. What struck us most about this story, however, was the incredible outpouring of support from the travel community that Jodi received. It's a great example of the core of what Tripping is all about - building a community and helping others. But it goes beyond Tripping, as it seems like the entire online travel community shares these values.

Check out some of the comments on Jodi's blog post about her loss. She got 85 comments, all with lots of support and/or great advice, which really speaks volumes about the global travel community. Here are a few of the comments, taken directly from Jodi's blog post: Barbara Weibel

How absolutely, horribly awful. I travel 4-6 months at a time, take a break for a month or so, and then go right back out, and one of my worst fears is losing all my photos. I carry an external backup and try to make sure it is in a different place from the laptop at all times, but even that did not make me comfortable, so I started looking into the cloud.

Sherry Ott

I know you've had a really difficult summer, but I know you'll make it through...hell...you are The Legal Nomad - if you can survive all those crazy countries, you can survive this. No one can take your memories.

Gord

Jodi, that's horrific. I feel ill just thinking about it. There are any number of backup services, but I'm in the process of uploading my pictures to a web host.

Reading the original blog post is a definite must, and please head over to suggest your favorite ways of storing your photos and memories while you travel. And it goes without saying, but if you have any way of helping Jodi recover her travel memories - if you have crossed paths with her and have photos, if you have a way to help her find her computer, or any other information - please help a fellow traveler out! -The Tripping Team