carless in the burbs

It's been a month since our car was stolen. For the fourth time. The second from this address, from our covered parking spot. We've never seen any of them again.

Apparently, Israel is the number one country in the world for car theft, according to the Israeli Insurance Association.

"The increase in car thefts was fueled by the Israel-PLO accords, which were signed in September 1993 and took effect in May 1994. According to the London-based Sunday Telegraph (5 July 1998), Palestinian and Israeli car thieves cooperate, and Israeli police say many of the cars end up in Palestinian-controlled areas. According to one Palestinian car thief, "I can have any car you want within a few hours, I'll just call the Israelis I work with."

Hmmmm...

Each time it happens, insurance covers the current value, not the replacement value -- what we'd get if we sold it. So it still costs us a few thousand dollars to drive again.

But that's not all. It takes at least a month to get the insurance money, and during that time you're lucky if you have a 5-year-old, standard-shift, torn upholstery, sub-compact replacement. We got lucky. But today we had to return the little Punto, so now we're hoofin' it.

The problem is, the insurance check isn't in our hands yet, so we can't close the deal on another car until the money's in the bank.

But the weather has been cooling off a bit, thank god, so I didn't completely melt on my way home laden with groceries.