It started with a flat tire. Our very full car trunk had to be emptied out before we drove down to the recommended Discount Tire store on S. Milton Road in Flagstaff, AZ early in the morning. Twenty minutes later the tire was repaired. “No charge,” they said. You’re kidding?! What a wonderful gift. Thank you, Discount Tire!
No, that story was not the disaster. That was the warmup. Read on. Shortly after this, we opened our laptop computer to discover that 10,000 photos had disappeared, including virtually all our roadtrip photos. Totally, absolutely, gone! We tried to calm down. Since we had been routinely backing up the computer on an external hard drive, we knew this could be remedied with a restore.
At the time of this disaster, we were on our road trip in western Arizona and the nearest Apple store was in Los Angeles at the Brea Mall. We pointed our car in that direction.
Daniel was the Apple “Genius Bar” tech who would help us. He seemed to us a bit young. (We have that reaction more frequently as we age.) Would he have the experience to handle it? He tried one thing. It didn’t work. He opened the backup – and to our collective shock – the photos weren’t there. We were terribly upset. How could this have happened? Daniel gave us the bad news. The photos were gone, and he didn’t know how or why. All of our travel photos – GONE. We could see he didn’t want to give up (as Beth wiped the tears from her eyes). He continued to look. It took awhile, and a lot of persistence on Daniel’s part to keep at it, but finally he found them – all 10,000+ photos, hiding in a strange place on the internal hard drive. Also, on the external hard drive. JOY! Thank you, Daniel, for your persistence. You’re the best – and most patient — tech at Apple!
So, we’re here to sing the praises of great customer service at Discount Tire and Apple. It’s helpful wherever you are, but was a lifesaver for us while traveling across country.
April 2013
simpletravelourway 
Phew! I would now start drawing sketches to also backup your pics!
Very funny, as we would expect.
Thank goodness for happy endings and great service!
Oh man…have you recovered yet??? I have spent some time at that very Apple Store..and they are all far too young to be working but they do seem to now what they are doing. Hope by now you’re relaxing and enjoying your found photos.
I SO love keeping up with you as you journey. Wish I could be in CA for a visit. Kisses to all. By now you’re at Ground Zero for Apple…so you can go to the 12-year-olds right there and have cast a spell to ward off any demons for the next leg of your journey!
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Here’s the latest Ezra..big news is he went to his first drive-in movie on Friday! xxxxx