burgled, and a remembrance
This past Friday, someone got into my garage and took two of my bikes. I found out about it from an early morning call from my neighbor on the next block Benita, whose 2-door-down neighbor found my Surly in their driveway. I went out back to find my main garage door open and the two bikes gone. No other bikes (no kid bikes, thank goodness), and no tools or anything else seem to be missing, thank goodness, just the u-lock that had been in my Surly’s saddlebag.
The missing bike is a 1991 1990 (edit: found the manual) Bridgestone MB-4, repainted white in front, green in the back, with the original MB4 sticker on the seat tube. Here’s a picture of it as stolen, except it now has riser handlebars:
I bought the bike new, and it was my only bike from then until about 4 years ago when i got back into road bikes. It raced the 24 hours of Afton twice, did a few other races and countless miles commuting and riding around the cities and surrounding bike trails. Countless because though i often had a cyclometer on the bike, i didn’t track miles then like i do now and have no idea how many it has.
The only thing that didn’t break or wear out over 16+ years is the frame. The last to go was the fork, just last year, when the threading for the top nut of the headset stripped out and it wouldn’t stay tight. The only parts worth a damn, really, are the brakes (Avid 2.0 V-brakes and levers, a wedding present from friend Ted) and the wheels (Ritchey Comp rims/Deore LX hubs); the rest was solid but non-flashy stuff. Oh, and the almost brand-new Superflash blinkie on it. And good Continental/Michelin tires. Damn, those were pretty nice tires.
It’s also ironic that this is the bike gone missing because this bike was itself bought with insurance money from another bike theft long ago. While in college living in a duplex, some miscreant broke into our place and stole not only 2 of my bikes, but some of my clothes and my roommate’s stereo gear. It’s not even like i had really nice clothes or anything, that part is just mystifying. One of the bikes stolen then was my 6-month-old Specialized MTB, and since i didn’t bother replacing the clothes (and couldn’t, sentimentally, replace my dad’s Robin Hood 3-speed that was also stolen), the insurance check covered the Bridgestone which, though it was a middle-of-the-line model, handled much nicer than the one it replaced.
I have replacement coverage, but it’s not really worth reporting. The deductible would eat up half of the replacement cost, and the risk of higher rates aren’t worth it. It’s just a bike, there are millions of others in the world, and all that. I set up the old Lotus i have as a singlespeed dirt bike, and i’ll give that a try, but with its Raleigh Roadster-like angles it just won’t have the snap that the B’stone had through the twisty stuff.
So… if anyone has a decently quick-handling 21-22″ or so rigid steel mountain bike or frameset laying around, i might have a couple hundred bucks to trade for it…
7 Responses to “burgled, and a remembrance”
Total drag. An MB4 was my first good bike, the year they were blue and white (1992? 93?) and before they went to suspension forks. I think I paid $550 or so new for mine, and it had wonderful bartop thumbshifters. My only regret was not scraping together the cash to buy an X0-1 instead.
Talk about quick handling, you just kind of thought about turning and you turned. Plus, they were beautiful looking and solid for being relatively cheap.
Even keeping cheap bikes in a garage is risky.
I’m in the midway, and I have bikes in my garage, and I’ve very sorry to hear your story.
I’ve been thinking of setting up some cameras…
I’ve lived in this house for 8 years now, and every 2-3 years there seems to be a handful of garage break-ins, presumably from a restless band of kids passing their early-teens who then grow out of it or go to high school. This is the first problem i’ve had with the garage, so i guess i’ve been lucky until now.
Another neighbor reported that there have been a couple of other cases in the last month where kids took bikes for a joyride and dumped them soon after. Since it seems to be another one of those summers in the rogue youth cycle, it’s worth double-checking those garage doors. I might add a deadbolt to the service door, actually.
I don’t keep any bikes (or much else of value) in my garage these days, except the rickshaw. After reading of your experience, I U-locked the front wheel to the frame yesterday. The garage doesn’t have a service door, and the main door is padlocked.
If it’s mischievous teenagers, a bike lock will probably make a difference. If it’s professional-grade thieves (doesn’t sound like it in this case), they can be hard to defeat. heard a story awhile back from a woman who had 8 expensive bikes stolen from the garage. They were hanging from the rafters and cable locked in place. The thieves cut the rafters and took the bikes.
A guy on the Bikelove forums recently lost a bike that had been locked to a steel ring on his porch. A college friend had his bike (also a Bridgestone, actually) stolen when someone cut down the tree he’d locked to. A determined thief will always find a way.
That sucks–sorry to hear that Bill!
That’s a bummer man! I’ve pondered, off an on, coming up with a simple system to lock bikes in a garage and make them harder to steal but at the same time convenient to get at for the owner. I’ll probably go back to pondering again after reading this.