I had a most amazing, totally improbable experience in my second VW, a 1968 beetle that I bought with a trade-in for my 1964 VW. My friend Steve and I took a mid-October hike to Lake Serene on the west side of Stevens Pass in Washington state. As we were leaving, I noticed Steve had left a pair of blue jeans on the back seat, and asked him if there was anything valuable in the pockets. He said yes, he had a 50 dollar bill inside, so I had him put the jeans in the front trunk so they wouldn't be visible. There were probably a dozen cars at the trail head. When we came back close to dusk, the last few cars were pulling out. Getting to the beetle, I saw that the driver's side window was gone, and that the car was full of glass fragments. One person just leaving told us that some guys in a pick up truck were caught breaking into cars. Someone tried to chase them but the pick up out ran him. So first we checked the trunk. Amazingly the jeans and 50 dollars were untouched. Presumably the thieves didn't know about the trunk pull-cable and couldn't pry the trunk open. I then cleaned up the glass and tried to start the engine, but it wouldn't fire up. Checking the engine compartment, we immediately saw the problem - the ignition wires were gone. Hunting around the area, we found the wires in the bushes, but we had no idea which wires connected from the distributor to the correct spark plug. Standing there perplexed, we waved down the last car that was just pulling out. Unbelievably, the driver was a VW mechanic. He had the wire connected in the correct order in no time at all. He also re-connected a thin wire to leading from a solenoid switch to the fuel pump - a wire I didn't even know existed. Had we actually gotten the spark plug wires connected in the right sequence by ourselves, we would still have remained stranded on a freezing night in the dark. As it was, driving 4 hours down the Forest road and then over Stevens Pass to Richland was cold enough. On the east side of Stevens Pass we managed to obtain a piece of cardboard and some tape at a roadside store, and in Leavenworth we stopped at a Safeway store that was open late, and bought some Saran Wrap. We used the Saran Wrap to make a window in the cardboard so I could look to the left side. That Saran Wrap window fluttered terrible at speed, but we made it home, feeling mighty lucky.