My bike was gone
I recently came across an old photograph. A photo of my room in residence my first year. A room I shared and in one corner there was a bicycle. Nothing fancy and I cannot tell from the photo whether this was a yellow bike or a blue bike. I can guess at the colour because it is an incidental detail. I was not deeply attached to the bike as I had only owned it for a matter of months. And I remember how easily it left. One of my neighbours in residence who is still around wanted to use the bike to go in town check out the clubs. Of course I said yes. The next day the bike was gone. I did ask and the rider told me that he had come back and placed it against the wall of the building but that the idea of locking up a bike was foreign. He came from a much smaller town and that was something that they only had started to learn about. And so I crossed the bicycle from my inventory list and carried on with my life. I did replace it with a very similar model a couple of seasons later. My need had grown and the price had not. Such is life with a cheap bike. And after that, as my investment in my bicycles grew in value I became more particular about locking it to a fixed object. Something that would turn my bicycle from a distraction into something I would still have. It is a very good thing that I have never owned a car because I would have probably been just as easy going if someone asked to borrow the car. I was going to school in a very small town and the idea of walking a mile into town was hardly something monumental. Obviously, neither was replacing the bike or holding someone else responsible for its disappearance. We all learn lessons in life and my lesson is that you should not make someone else walk when you did not want to do so yourself. I should point out that reporting the serial number of a stolen bicycle to the local police is a wasted effort. I speak from experience here. They do not have the time to go from bicycle to bicycle with a magnifying glass trying to find the magic numbers. As it turns out police departments are just as easy going about stolen cars. The economy does not roll on pilfered bikes.
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