The Bicycle Thief

Life in New York has been completely, decidedly, mercilessly kicking my ass.  Ugh. Between work and trying to get back in shape, I've had no time or energy to write.  If you want to know what the difference is between life in New York and life in Stockholm, that's it in a nutshell.  New York eats time, devours it, snorts it up until, all of a sudden, you have been living here for ten years and you've only had one failure of a relationship in your whole life and the most expensive thing you own is your mattress which, by the way, needs to be replaced because of the single lonesome dip in its saggy center.

Ahem.

And the cherry on this bloody cake is that my Swedish bicycle got stolen last Saturday.



Here we were in happier times, riding the ferry over to Fårö.  That pannier on the side was lent to me by a sweet kid at the bike rental spot next to the ferry from Nynashamn who let me borrow it for free for a week, with only my word to guarantee that I would return it.

I originally bought the bike thinking I would sell it at the end of my time in Sweden, but I wanted to bring it back with me.  Alas, I knew she was too pretty to stay with me long in New York. 



Bike Snob says you should really leave details about how your bike was stolen as a service to others in New York.  I was reluctant to do so in my Craigslist posting, but I think I can say a bit more here.

I'd been leaving the bike in our apartment hallway because I didn't want to have to haul it up and down the stairs everyday.  I always locked it to itself, but I didn't lock it to anything in the hall because there was nothing to lock it to.  (This despite the fact that my friend Mike gave me a handful of rules when I started cycling, one of which was to ALWAYS lock your bike to something, even in your house.)

My friend Dom came over for lunch and left my house at about 4:30pm.  That's when I showed him my Swedish bike in the hall, locked the gate behind him and closed our front door. 

Later that evening, I heard a noise, some kind of metallic noise, and my heart literally skipped a beat.  My heart just squeezed for a second.  I don't know why, but I thought, "Somebody's stealing my bike!"  I looked out the window and saw a guy rolling a bike away.  I didn't think it looked like my bike, and he was rolling it away so I figured it couldn't be mine since I had locked it to itself.

Then, at about 9pm, I went downstairs just to check on it, and my bike was gone.  GONE.  I felt a little panicked. I went and checked our front door -- totally unlocked.  I knocked on my neighbors' door to tell them what had happened.

Turns out that they had had their toilet fixed just an hour before and the guy left the door open and unlocked.  We have two doors, a wrought iron gate door and an inner regular wooden door.  Often, my downstairs neighbor would leave the wooden door open but the gate locked.  I had been meaning to talk to them about closing the inside door so people wouldn't be able to scope out my bike, but I hadn't gotten to it yet.  (In case anyone's casing my place, we are now on total lockdown, so fuck off.) 

So maybe the guy fixing the toilet took it, though my neighbors don't think so.  Or maybe someone had been casing my place for a while, waiting for an opportunity to come in and snatch it.  I don't know if I'll ever know. 

Now I'm keeping my eyes peeled for my bike, which is quite distinctive looking -- for sure nobody else in New York has this bike.  Or it's extremely unlikely, because the only way it would have come over is if it got boxed and dragged onto a plane the way mine did.  I have a couple of parts for it in my house which I can't bring myself to throw out, so I feel a little bit like Prince Charming waiting for Cinderella to reclaim her glass slipper. 

Of course I'm mad that someone robbed me while everyone was home, and I'm pretty embarrassed, but I'm mostly pissed at myself for not heeding Mike's advice about locking the bike up inside.  I was too city to bike around Gotland alone, and maybe now I'm too soft to be vigilant enough for New York.

I mean, it's not that I was so attached to the thing, but it was maybe the third most expensive possession I've ever purchased, especially if you include the extra fee I had to pay to get it on the plane and all the accoutrements I tricked it out with.

I went and filed a report with the police, who happen to be practically across the street from my house, but I don't have much hope.  If I see someone on it, I am totally pushing them off.  I don't care if they stole it or if they just bought it off someone.  That's MY BIKE and I want to hurt someone. 

Some part of me wonders if Ice-T, my Brooklyn bike, put a hit out on the pretty Swede because I had been totally neglecting him.  I will say that Ice-T is slower and heavier, but probably a lot better for my shoulders in terms of symmetry, so that's a silver lining.  Still, I am trying to be Buddhist and practice some detachment over the whole thing.  Considering the fact that I met three people at a party that night who had had their bikes stolen in the last three weeks, I suggest you do the same. 

So...can someone remind me why I live here again?