For All The Stolen Bikes I've Known Redux

One of my all time favorite pieces of writing is Tim's blog post For All The Stolen Bikes I've Known (click the link and scroll down to the third post). Why do I remember this now? My bike was stolen last night. Unfortunately, my tale lacks a heroic ending.

I was woken at 5:45am by a friend who had noticed that my garage door was wide open when he drove past on his way to an early flight. My surfboards were still in there so Malcolm may have saved them from an opportunistic early morning thief.

I initially thought that my neighbor (we share a two-car garage) had carelessly left the door open but it turns out she was out of town for the weekend. I hadn't been in the garage for a while and had walked past it a number of times since then so we are certain that they broke in somehow. The lock seems fine so we think they mimicked the signal from the electronic door opener. I lost my 3 month old bike and my neighbor lost 4 boxes of old and valuable comics. Life in the big city. Think I might buy me some renter's insurance (closing the garage door after the bike has bolted, so to speak).

I'm not too heartbroken. The bike was new but it wasn't super expensive and I didn't like it all that much. It had an aluminum frame (these are light but don't absorb shocks well) so I sometimes felt like I was riding a jackhammer as I cruised along San Francisco's potholed streets. I'll see if I can replace it with a mountain bike with front suspension at least.