Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

Hello Everyone,

A strange thing happened today as I came out of a 3 day mountaineering from Mt. Tom Taylor. I arrived back to my Delica parked at the Bedwell Lake Trail parking lot and someone had found my hidden key on vehicle, pumped veggie oil out of my tank, took a rubbermaid (my guess is to hold the "borrowed" veg oil) and then left $20 and a note and with the following:

"Sean, great to see you here, we ran into a problem, we borrowed some veg oil, please accept the $20 for the tote"

Nothing else was taken but the note was not signed. I have called a few people from Courtenay upon my arrival back and no one knows anything about.

Now the fact the people that left money and knew who I was (unless they looked in my wallet to find my name) is fine but it is a bit of mystery. So just putting the word out there to see if it was anyone from here. I don't mind helping someone out in a jam but would like to ask a few more details like what kind of "problems" they might have had. Why did they just not run deisel out? etc. etc.

This may go down in the books as just a mystery never to be solved but over the last 2 years this is where I have many questions answered, especially when it comes to all things veggie. It may not even be someone who has a delica but you never know.

Thanks for any leads.

Sean

Odd they wouldn't leave a name or number.

What would have happened if that's all the fuel you had and they siphoned it all out ?

Wierd !

Who says there isn't "honour amongst thieves"? Now I'm not calling the person a thief, per se, but taking without asking... well, that's just not cricket.

Definitely sounds like someone you know, especially considering they know where your 'secret spare' key was hidden, or took the time to look for it. There's having a friend, and then there's having your friend. Sad to hear that you've been taken advantage of like that.

Not cool.

Mystery solved. Some friends were out in a non converted diesel Pajero and realized they forgot to fill up and were essentially on empty when they arrived at the parking lot. Being over 90KM from a gas station they say my vehicle and said "Thank god!".

I definitely told them to next leave your name! The one who was left in charge of the note writing is not known for his diligence with details. so that was a bit ridiculous...but at least I helped out some friends by only being in the right place at the right time. And they said they did check my diesel gauge to make sure I had enough to get myself back.

I did say that I am going to find a better spot to hide the key though...

Sean

I'm curious, why do you hide your key and just not take it with you? The extra 20gram in your backpack shouldn't slow you down uphills...

This is standard practice for many mountain folks. The thinking is that is an accident happened Ie. someone fell off cliff, the key is not on their person and accessible for anyone in the party to access in the case of an emergency. If one person ran out to the car to get help (cell phone reception is very limited on Vanouver Island) and the key was not there, it would pose a problem. So we sometimes hide it on the vehicle and sometimes we hide it near the vehicle under a big rock or something like that.

Sean

Interesting practice. Haven't seen anyone doing it though. I'm in the mountains quite a bit too. I just hand out a spare key to my partner

sean wrote:This is standard practice for many mountain folks. The thinking is that is an accident happened Ie. someone fell off cliff, the key is not on their person and accessible for anyone in the party to access in the case of an emergency. If one person ran out to the car to get help (cell phone reception is very limited on Vanouver Island) and the key was not there, it would pose a problem. So we sometimes hide it on the vehicle and sometimes we hide it near the vehicle under a big rock or something like that.

im still waiting for the 'phantom' to FILL my veg tank and leave a note:
"your deli looked thirsty" or something...

that would make my day!

I am one of the outdoors people that does the same thing. I won't go into details, but there is a specific type of outdoor pursuit where you can be nearly guaranteed to have spare keys on each of the sets of vehicles. I won't name it as I don't want the word getting out of how to steal a certain type of outdoor persons trucks! (Many of us own Delicas as well!) :)