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Dude, where's my bike?
Patrick Symmes had a bike. Then it got stolen. So he got another bike, and that got stolen, too. He discusses his journey delving into the underground stolen economy of bikes.
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Kai Ryssdal: Consider for just a second the urban bicyclist. Two wheels are increasingly popular as a mode of transportation in big cities. But now, consider the bike. Increasingly popular as a thing to steal.
Patrick Symmes' bike was stolen, as was his next one and the next one, and four more after that. So he decided to do something about it and he told his tale in this month's Outside Magazine. Patrick, welcome to the program.
Patrick Symmes: It's a pleasure.
Ryssdal: This was -- the only word that comes to mind -- is an epic saga. Seven bikes -- New York, San Francisco, Portland, cross-country, police. It's crazy.
Symmes: I was burning up with rage! I got my bike stolen, then I got another bike stolen. I just couldn't sleep at night. I was staying up late watching the surveillance footage of my bike being stolen 'cause there are so many cameras in New York City. Finally, I thought I had stumbled on a solution, a way to catch bike thief in America.
Ryssdal: All right, well go ahead because there a lot of bike thieves out there as we learn in the course of this article. Tell us what you did.
Symmes: We are entering the age of cheap GPS trackers -- and they're getting tiny, they're getting cheap. So I started putting them under the seat of bicycles -- effectively bait bicycles -- and leaving them out. And what happens, the bike gets stolen, you can actually track them on the Internet (assuming it doesn't short circuit in the rain, the device doesn't fail, this happens sometimes). But in the end, I was able to deliberately get seven bicycles stolen around the country and track down the thieves sometimes.
Ryssdal: The thing that struck me about this piece, the thing that I really learned, was the degree to which bicycles are one of the main currencies out there in sort of an underground economy. You have this great line: You've got cash, sex, drugs and bicycles fueling this economy -- only one of which is left outside locked up.
Symmes: Yeah, we're a little careless about these bicycles, starting with me. I put these sort of thin locks on them and then, boom, you're just contributing to somebody's drug habit. Police told me 90 percent of the thieves they catch are drug addicts.
Ryssdal: The thing that resonates to me about this story is that everybody's had a bike. Even if you don't ride now as an adult, you had a bike when you were a kid. You know that, the feeling you get when you're on your bike and you're just going and you can do whatever you want -- and then somebody takes it.
Symmes: It's an innocent, sweet feeling. And getting robbed of a bicycle is so personal, it just burns people up. As I worked on this story I was amazed over and over again -- everyone sort of went hugely out of their way to help me. They're like what can I do to help catch bike thieves. It's just a very personal crime. It's one of the most common forms of valuable property crime now.
Ryssdal: Tell me about your bike number six. This is the one, if I remember right, you bought it in San Francisco, right?
Symmes: Yeah. The San Francisco police officers will routinely bust bike thieves, but there's a shameless open-air market. Within a minute of arriving, I was being offered bicycles. I found a kid with a bike that was about the right size for me, a track bike, pretty fancy machine. I tried to bargain with him a little bit, and he said, 'I looked it up, this is a $700 bicycle.' So he wasn't even pretending to own the bike. So I got it for $125 cash, which the police in San Francisco told me was about $25 too much. I was never able to track down the owner of the bike notably 'cause the serial number is not listed anywhere. I still have that bike sitting in my garage and I wish I could find the owner.
Ryssdal: Well yeah, that's what got to me. You actually do a shout out in this magazine piece. You say, listen if you lost this or if it got stolen, call me with the serial number. We'll get it back to you.
Symmes: It's a black IRO Mark V, people.
Ryssdal: Patrick Symmes, his article in Outside magazine is called "Who Pinched My Ride?" Patrick, thanks a lot.
Symmes: Thank you, Kai.
Ryssdal: Read Patrick's article here.
I started taking the commuter train near my home and started riding it to the station. I've never had a bike stolen because it always looks like a real junker and would take too much work to make it presentable for re-sale.
http://ayunksyah.blogspot.com/2012/09/sepeda-motor-bebek-injeksi-kencang...
Yeah, I've had a few heisted. (and shame on me, heisted one off a porch in LA back in the 60's. Ain't karma a brioche?)
When I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig, I annotated the title page with: "The first reguirement for motorcycle maintenance is a sturdy lock."
This week, I loaned the wheels to a neighbor in distress and lo, and behold it was snatched from the convenience store. I'm still sore about it yet when the neighbors ask where's the bike? I say it's in the shop... THE CHOP SHOP! Currently the bike was my usual transport, pleasure ride, and main health outlet. To quote the Memphis cop who responded to a minor wreck I once had in my van,
"Metal and plastic are replaceable, but human life is not."
Fabulous shows, Kii, I've listened for years to Marketplace... buy the lock FIRST!!
It's been two+ years since my bike was stolen and I still think about it. I had an old Sears bike that I hadn't ridden for some time, but then I started taking the commuter train near my home and started riding it to the station. It wasn't long before that old bike started breaking down and I went to REI and bought the most expensive bike I ever owned, $450, which is one of the least expensive bikes REI sells. I bought a $45 bull dog (or something) unbreakable lock and rode my bike in the park and to the train. After riding a cheap bike, I couldn't believe how nice it was to ride a decent bike. That all came to an end 6 weeks later when I stepped off the train and there was no sign of my bike.
I looked at local pawn shops for any sign of it and paid attention to every person I saw on a bike for a while thinking I might see it, but it is long gone.
I replaced it with a much less expensive bike from Target but I don't ride to the train anymore. I ride it in the park but this is the suburbs so I do what most people do and drive to the train.
I'll be amazed if this story doesn't generate dozens of replies.
I, for one, was one of those hapless victims of repeated bike thefts and, just like Patrick, I was obsessed with trying to find those bikes each time.
I particularly recall my all-time favorite bike being stolen right outside my bedroom window. It was chained to a metal balcony and I awoke at 3 AM after thinking I was dreaming of someone banging on pipes.
It was someone with bolt cutters nabbing my prized bike: I had ridden that baby all over Australia, Fiji and the North Sea coast from Holland to Copenhagen and had just returned from 6 months riding around New Zealand.
I was so upset that I rushed out the door, down the stairs and barely missed catching him, running down the street as he hopped on MY bike and rode away. It was only then that I realized I was stark-ass naked and barefoot... in a fairly-densely populated area of North Park, San Diego.
I was on the prowl for that bike for the entire duration of the time I lived in San Diego and I still fantasize about finding it.
I bet I'm not the only reader who finds your story generating some fantasies of my own - or at least some very entertaining mental images. ;) Took it off a balcony outside your bedroom - that implies it wasn't easily accessible with stairs and involved some serious dangerous climbing. Was either a very atheletic pro or a very desperate amateur crook, or perhaps had an accomplice who left with the ladder before he started making a racket with the bolt cutter.
Welcome to Beijing!! It's considered a rite of passage to have one's bike stolen in Beijing; as an expat you aren't really settling in until you've lost at least one bike. The better the lock, the higher the likelihood that your bike will be taken. At the large assorted vendors' market near my former apartment, there were "Bike Blacking" shops that would paint a bike in matte black, sell you a standard Chinese bike lock, toss on some dirt, and send you on your way if you wanted to keep your expensive bike.
Clever anti-theft solution with the GPS chip, but I won't be investing in it anytime soon. I only use my bicycle for getting around in a city, and thus can't see any reason to spend on a good bike ($100+ new or used) at all, when one can pick up a hand-me down no frills ten-speed for free or failing that buy one for $20 to $50 bucks, typically still with decent tires 'cause so many people buy them on a whim about doing more exercise & never get around to doing it if they commute by car. I almost always spend more on parts getting a "new to me" bike up to my standard of safety than I do on the bike itself. I only use the cheapest steel cable & padlock, and I mount all sorts of jury-rigged racks on it to carry my junk down low for balancing safety. I've never had a bike stolen because it always looks like a real junker and would take too much work to make it presentable for re-sale. I think the same strategy works reasonably well for autos or anything else you have to store outside, unless you are in such a poor area that having anything at all is putting you in the local 1% and everyone else is really desparate. While I might cry over a stolen car because of the $ it represents, the most traumatic thing about having a bike stolen for me would be the nuisance of being stranded somewhere and having to go to all the trouble to replace the bike with another junker. Neither bikes nor cars are my identity, they are just tools. Now my laptop is different - keep your hands off of that, 'cause its my livelihood & its got all my info on it which is even more irreplacable if stolen! I keep that on my person at all times almost without exception, and so far have been lucky.
