I was walking to work this morning, and there it was, locked to a “no parking” sign. Different handlebars (no surprise there – I had these weird antler-lookin’ things that were like aerobars, but wider & longer), and there were now toe-clips on the pedals. Different wheels (I’d had high-pressure tubes that used to blow out all the time). How did I know it was mine? It’s an old Nishiki 15-speed my mom bought for me when I was 15, dark-blue-purple, Shimano shifters on the back (I changed ’em when I worked at K-mart when I was 18), and it still had the “Champion Cycle” shield on the back of the crossbar (a bike shop in Chilliwack that’s be gone for 10 years).<\/p>\n
I know it’s mine.<\/p>\n
So what do I do? I’m thinking going the “nasty note” route. Something along the lines of:<\/p>\n
Dear Rider. You’ve got my bike. It was stolen from the basement of my apartment building three months ago. The handlebars are different, but everything else is the same. If you stole it, I hope the karmic debt you’re trusting your life to in traffic doesn’t prove to be too much for you. If you bought it, you should know the person you bought it from is a thief. I suggest you return it to the building it came from.<\/i><\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’ll put together the note tonight, and see if my bike’s in the same place tomorrow morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was walking to work this morning, and there it was, locked to a “no parking” sign. Different handlebars (no surprise there – I had these weird antler-lookin’ things that were like aerobars, but wider & longer), and there were now toe-clips on the pedals. Different wheels (I’d had high-pressure tubes that used to blow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87613669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87613669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87613669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87613669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87613669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87613669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.geckotemple.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87613669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}