Dear Fellow Letterboxers ,

This is a tale of misery, and bad luck, if you are looking for
someone to share their happy letterboxing experiences, stop reading
now, do not read any farther, because the this clue will fill you
with despair, this is your last chance, despair begins at the very
next sentence.

Those poor Baudelaire orphans! We tried to rescue them, tried,
meaning of course, that we failed, but failed attempting to do it
and not sitting on the couch at home watching T.V. and scarfing down
cheetos.

When we tried to leave Oregon for California, it seemed were plagued
with the bad luck and misery of Sunny, Violet and Klause. First the
car broken down at the bottle of the hill, bottom at this point
meaning the lowest part of a very large and miserable hill one must
climb in order to get to the top. Pandora was stranded. A quick
call to the Mechanic sent someone out to figure out what the problem
was, a dead battery, no big deal, oh how wrong, the misery, agony
and unpleasantness of trying to find a battery at 7:00pm on a Sunday
night was about has bad has hiking through overgrown paths in Oregon
where little bugs bite you merely to suck the blood out of you! When
fixing this dilemma in our journey we were informed by the Mechanic
who I am sure broke it on his own in an attempt to aid Count Olaf,
that the alternator on the car was shot, shot meaning of course, not
working at all. So an overnight delay and the time it took to get
that replaced in the morning set us way behind on our mission to
rescue the miserable orphans. Once that problem was fix the
following morning it appeared that the orphans bad luck and misery
had worn off on us a bit, because when driving home to finally get
on our way, we discovered that we could not tell what time it was or
listen to music, which would surely make this trip even more
miserable than we had imagined. In investigating this problem we
discovered that the car radio had put itself in theft lock mode when
the battery died, and now required a secret code to unlock it.
Required meaning of course that it was absolutely necessary, and
secret meaning of course that only the person that originally owned
the car had it. So delayed again, we headed to car toys to have the
stereo replaced with one that would work, work from hear forward
meaning it would play music that pandora could sing to in order to
make the trip full of even more misery and agony for Iron`Bear who
would have to listen. We were finally on our way, headed, though
terribly delayed, to California to rescue the orphans. If there is
a silver liningmeaning, of course, a sliver of hope that something
good has come from such tragedy, it is that the $500 it took to get
everything fix saved us from the car getting broken down in the
miserable, hot area between Oregon and California where we would
have been stranded on the side of the road and 50 miles out of any
town.

We finally arrived in California to find that there was a mistake in
our hotel reservations that left us searching for a new hotel at
2:30am yet another most unpleasant experience. But we finally got
settled and slept, ready to wake up in the morning and finally
attempt to rescue the poor orphans. Sure enough we found the
location where the orphans had been hiding, but much to our despair,
no sooner had we found it than we saw Count Olaf himself breeze past
us with the orphans in tow. We were too late! Ahhh the misery and
unpleasantness, the despair and broken heartedness we suffered was
too much, too much meaning that neither of us could really handle
it. But it seemed there was a little ray of hope a note from
Lemony Snicket in the back of the log book giving us a time and
place to find more information about the orphans. We rushed back to
the car and headed straight to Kinko's where they charge you and arm
and a leg to use their computers, in a hope to figure out where
Lemony Snicket wanted us to go. But alas, we could not decipher his
directions.

We gave up for the day, filled with unpleasantness, and headed back
to our room to clean up and have dinner with some local letter
boxers. After that we visited family, which trust me fellow letter
boxers, makes the whole adventure yet even more unpleasant.

The next morning we decided to go back to the location that the
orphans had been at and take a picture of Lemony Snicket's letter in
case it actually was a clue, and perhaps something we could un-
riddle and figure out another time. After grabbing a photo of the
note, we decided to hit some much more happy and pleasant
letterboxes and put an end to this series of unfortunate events that
had befallen us on our quest for such an unhappy letterbox as the
one planted by Lemony Snicket.

We hit several boxes in the area and finally found ourselves at a
box in Oroville California. We grabbed the box quickly in an effort
to go expose ourselves to more misery by visiting family again. We
stamped in on a near by picnic table and then I rushed off to
utilize a most unpleasant port-a-potty. Iron`Bear re-hid the box
and off we went.

The next morning we had one last box to grab in Yuba City, before
hitting the I-5 and heading home, nabbing a few boxes along the
way. We got to the park and I got out and started looking for the
box, Iron`Bear was at the car getting the stuff. But he starts
hollering to me, "pandora where is the book and stamp?" "You had
it last," I informed him. After a few more minutes of him looking I
walk over and he says, "I can't find it." That is when the worst of
it all began. My heart sank to my knees; I felt a lump in my throat
as I asked him. "When I rushed off to the bathroom last night and
said, I'm going to the bathroom the stuff is on the table." Did you
get the stuff? Iron`Bear just looked at me, and shook his head, "No
I didn't hear that part." Oh the agony! The misery! The bad luck!
The misfortune!

We jumped in the car and immediately headed back to the park in
Oroville; we searched frantically in a desperate attempt to recover
even a smidgen of our journal. But to no avail it was gone, along
with our signature stamp and a few of our dauber duos.

We sat in the car for a moment, staring off into nowhere, trying to
figure out what to do, and I think, just understanding the
disappointment and despair each on of us felt. We had just lost not
only the last 95 images we had collected, but also the last several
series that we had planted, stamps that made all others we had
carved pale in comparison.

But the worst of it all, the most dreadful, was that the journal
contained both the Lemony Snicket stamps in Washington and
California. Iron`Bear and I looked at each other and decided we
would figure something out. Luckily for us most of the stamps we
had our friends had gotten with us, we could color copy their stamps
and only have to return for the ones that they didn't have. But we
had all those California stamps in there! So we would get them
back. We made a mad dash through Oroville, Yuba City, Nevada City,
Grass Valley, Auburn, and Willows and visited the Lemony Snicket box
for a third time retrieved every stamp we had gotten in the past
two days, plus two more and then hit the I-5 had started making our
way home. However, even what we were able to accomplish didn't
quite help the sting we felt, and we where sure now, that it was
some evil plan of Count Olaf who was trying to keep us from having
any evidence that the Orphans were ever there, and trying to destroy
the image of him that we had gotten as he ran by with them in toe.
Why he had to take our entire book and signature stamp too we will
never understand, but chalk it up to what an evil man he is.

We write you dear fellow letter boxers and Mr. Snicket, to tell our
tale of misery, despair, and tears and to warn all others that go
for these letter boxes that they are quite well named, quite well
described and really seem to instigate a series of most unfortunate
events.

Sincerely,
Iron`Bear and pandora{I`B}