"The Lost Treasure of Juan de la Vega"

Synopsis: When a magazine about a lost pirate treasure falls into Verne's hands, he decides it would be a great idea to go back to when the treasure was buried and collect it himself. After selling Jules on the idea, the two boys plan to sneak off with the DeLorean late one night and return without anyone noticing their absence--and, hopefully, much, much richer. Marty and Jennifer, however, stumble on the boys as they're preparing to leave and Marty invites himself and Jennifer along on the ride. Jennifer isn't very pleased with this, but comes along anyway, mostly to postpone an upcoming language exam at school. The trip is hardly an hour old when disaster strikes and the group is kidnapped and brought aboard a pirate ship--the same one, coincidentally, that Verne had been reading about. Now, Jennifer finds herself at the unwelcome end of the pirate captain's affections, Verne is drawn into the dangerous and exciting world of pirateering, and Jules and Marty are made virtual slaves on the pirate crew. Can they all escape and get back to the future before time runs out?

Length: Approximately 68,000 words

Written: February 1998 - August 1998

Revised: August 1998

Author's Notes: This story started to gel together in early July 1997, while I was working my summer job. (I seemed to get a bunch of ideas then.) I can't recall the precise form of the inspiration, but when we were doing a scavenger/treasure hunt one day, I thought about what might happen if Doc's kids came into posession of a treasure map. I'd always wanted to do a "pirate" BTTF story, but since the cartoon beat me to it, I postponed the idea indefinantly. Plus, I'd had no real premise before. Yet once I was struck with this idea, everything else gradually clicked into place. Tales of buried treasure have intrigued me a great deal, as well. In my junior year in high school, I did an entire semester project on the "Money Pit" of Oak Island, in Canada. When I was about Verne's age, I read about that particular treasure hunt in a couple different science magazines and was totally hooked for a while with that--I even remember checking out books from the library on it! It was quite an interesting tale that is still going on to this day. Like Jennifer, I, too, am currently struggling through Spanish in college. With the choice of taking a lauguage or math to fulfill either a B.A. or B.S. requirement, I chose the lesser of two evils--a language. I mean, while Spanish may be hard for me, I've got practically no science or math side to my brain! Anyway, I found writing this story a "fun" way to practice with the language--though I can't say it helped me with my memorization at all! According to some of my research, pirates really did roam Caribbean seaports at night and kidnap unsuspecting citizens to bring aboard pirate ships for labor. That I did not fabricate. Some observant readers may notice that one of these characters has been visited previously in an earlier story--specifically, the pirate captain, Juan de la Vega. My friend who inspired the character, Izzy, kept bugging me to put his character in another story after "The Pair O' Docs," but I didn't plan to until I got the idea for this story. Once I'd decided to do that, I also decided to populate the pirate ship with other characters inspired by high school pals. I've never revisited a character of my own creation before in these stories, until this one. I allowed my friend Izzy to chose his character's name when I first created the character in the spring of 1996--about the only time I've done so. At the time, I was unaware of a funny coincidence which has since turned up as I was researching this story. Turns out there used to be a town in Jamaica near Kingston called "Villa de la Vega"--and today it is known as "Spanish Town." Izzy, when I pointed this out to him, was unaware of the town's old name and he got a great kick out of it. The character of Katherine "Kaylie" McClain was based on another friend of mine. I allowed my friend Kimberly some input on her character with the first name (which went through, like, three incarnations that included Kassie, Kamilla, and something else I don't even remember!) but her last name I chose with the in-joke being that the name of my college dorm is McClain. This was a difficult story to write in many ways, because there were so many parallel plot lines; so many things were happening at once to different people! It reminded me a little of writing "The Pair O' Docs" in that I felt frequently as if I were juggling a ton of objects in the air and trying not to drop them, hoping they would slip in the right spot. Oh, my analogies are bad! There are a few reasons why the construction of this story took so long--in the spring '98, I was kept quite busy and close to a nervous breakdown by the most hellish educational experience of my life: a little pre-journalism class called "Information Gathering." I'll spare you the gorey details of the class (which is so traumatizing that people who took it 20 years ago still have vivid memories of it!), but the 10 week long class kept me tremendously busy during the spring term of my freshman college year. Thankfully, I did pass with a decent grade, so I'll not have to take it again! Another reason why this story took so long is because of what I like to call my "fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" writing style. I hate making outlines for chapters, etc, and often will start writing with the concept and first couple chapters laid out alone. Many times this works; often times, however, I become stuck with the question of "what next?" I know that I want to get from Point A to Point B, but the road there can be very faint a times. So then I'll stop writing on that story, perhaps for a couple days, and do my best to think like the characters. Or sometimes I'll actually write the characters conversing about what to do next, and then one of their suggestions (so to speak) will be the hook I need. This story was filled of such incidents. Some stories practically write themselves; others are a struggle the entire way. This was also an interesting story because it marked a first--the first time both Doc and Marty were not together on an adventure! It wasn't really intentional, but by the way this plot evolved, I didn't see any way to involve Doc Brown at all. It's kind of strange, in a way--I've always believed Back to the Future isn't Back to the Future without both those characters, which is one reason why "....The Ride" is a disappointment to me in some ways--but I promise that Doc WILL be in the story after this! :-)

CHAPTERS 1 - 8 CHAPTERS 9 - 16