Bye Bye Bikey 2

July 29th, I bought a new bike. It took three months minus one day for it to get stolen.

I got home last night around 10pm, and as I have for the last three months (minus one day), I locked my bike to my roommate’s flat-tired, rusted-out bike, which is (well, was) locked to a giant concrete pillar.

This afternoon around 2 when I went to ride up to the pool, I walked into the garage to get my bike, and both bikes were gone. No clipped lock on the ground, just gone, like they’d never even been there.

I thought for a minute the landlord’s people, who have been on a “let’s clear unused things out!” spree lately might have gotten a little overly aggressive, but the landlord denied it and the handyman who happened to be at the building mentioned that he’d seen the garage door next to mine had been left open for an indeterminate amount of time when he came back from lunch.

Thanks, neighbors! How nice of you to allow thieves to come in and steal my three month old bike!

My lock was a crazy Kryptonite U-Lock, but that security fell apart a bit with my roommate’s combination lock with a wire that apparently was entirely vulnerable to bolt cutters. The thieves apparently decided they’d rather deal with the U-Lock back at their den*, and just took both bikes.

I’m pissed, but I’m not HULK SMASH pissed, like I thought I’d be when I plunked down a good chunk of change for the bike and wondered how I’d feel if it got stolen. My thoughts run more along the lines of, “Goddamn it bike thieves, I had better shit to do with my weekend” pissed.

I filed a police report, I called my renter’s insurance company and found that I am covered minus a fairly reasonable deductible, and then I thought, well, I guess I still ought to go work out. And I got on with my unexpectedly bus-intensive day.

If the bike had been a bit less associated with injury, I’d probably be angrier. This is the same bike I crashed a month after I got it, and one of the gears up and bit me on the leg a couple days ago as I was riding to the pool – I’m going to have a couple little gear-tooth-shaped holes in my leg for a while as a nice souvenir.

And I suppose that having owned bikes pretty much since I left for college in 1999, having this be the first time I’ve had one stolen is something of a minor miracle.

All in all, I’m irritated, but it could have been a lot worse. It’s not like the time tweakers broke the window on my car right after I moved into my old place, where the financial loss was a lot lower, but cleaning up the mess was WAY more of a pain in the ass.

The bike is just gone, along with a chunk of money for my deductible and a new lock. But life goes on.

* – UPDATE 10/30 – Actually, as my roommate discovered as she was walking to the bus to go to work Friday, they took both bikes to a nearby alley, tore her bike to shreds to get mine off of it, and still ran off with mine. No sign of the remnants of my lock, which means it’s apparently a pretty good lock if it stayed on while an entire bike was disassembled around it.

Also, my renter’s insurance company is awesome and has already initiated a direct deposit for the reimbursement, which means I went out and bought a new bike yesterday, which is exactly the same as my old bike except that for now, it remains unstolen. Hooray!