Lessons from a Bike Thief

Having our bikes stolen has taught me a few things about bikes. This is not the first time I’ve had a bike stolen, but it is the first time I’ve tried to address it through police reports and insurance claims.

Identification number: While I knew that all bikes had an identification number, across multiple decades of riding a bike (casually riding – not seriously or competitively) I have never been asked for the ID number or told it must be recorded and kept on my person. Vehicle identification and registration? Absolutely! Bicycle? Never. Things that no one told me, and I wish I’d thought of them myself before leaving on this USA-to-Canada vacation:

a) There are apps designed to register bikes in case they are stolen, such as: Bike Index and The National Cycle Database | BikeRegister and Bicycle registration for the life of your bike | 529 Garage (project529.com). If a bike is purchased new, the company may provide a registration service such as Bike Registration – Trek Bikes (CA). I can’t speak to the quality of each option; I just know they exist (NOW I know they exist!).
b) Do not expect the store that sold you the bike to maintain records or be particularly interested in helping, even if they do maintain records.
c) Allways include a hard copy of the bike identification number and registration details with the important documents that are required when traveling across national or international borders. If you are driving, then keeping a copy in the same location as your vehicle registration may be a good idea.
d) Even if a bike is recovered, if you can’t provide the identification number and/or proof that it’s yours, you won’t get it back. I don’t know what happens to these bikes but returning them to the original owner is wholly dependent on bike registration and identification numbers – even if you have video proof of the theft. This appears to be true for both the USA and Canada, possibly worldwide.

Insurance: My travel insurance claim remains under review, but all other avenues have come back with ‘sorry, we don’t cover bikes.’ Check your insurance before you leave. Consider purchasing insurance before leaving and/or keeping enough cash in reserve to cover the cost of replacing the bikes, new, if stolen.

Pictures: Take pictures for your paperwork and take more pictures before leaving. Photos of the bikes waiting to be loaded onto the bike rack and photos of the bikes on the rack, would have been helpful in this case.

Next time, I will have bike documentation ready. I will also change the bike rack to something more secure and/or ask about security and storage every-single-time I reserve a hotel room.

For now, the bikes are gone, a key aspect of my vacation plans are gutted, and I’m trying to find ways to modify (salvage) the biking portion of those plans. All I can do is learn from the experience and adjust in the future.

Strip Search Is Normal

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The bouncer was inspecting people’s bags and backpacks before letting them in. That was the only sign that something unusual had happened. No one protested—we’re all inured these days to being searched. Pretty soon, we’ll have to get undressed before we walk into our apartment buildings at night, and we’ll probably submit to that without a murmur.

Body Work (V.I. Warshawski Novels) by Sara Paretsky

I Will Get There

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Walk Beside Me

“Put one foot in front of the other
Steppin into the here and now
I’m not sure just where I’m goin
but I will get there anyhow”

“I got this far with no direction
Followed my nose to where I stand
My heart’s still strong, I know I’ll make it
Sit right down in the promised land”

“People come and walk beside me, until our pathways do divide
Nothin much but love to give you, even less have I to hide”

Here and Now by Tim O’Brien and Darrell Scott

Nothing In My Head To Say

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Train Song

“Traveling north, traveling north to find you
Train wheels beating, the wind in my eyes
Don’t even know what I’ll find when I get to you
Call out your name love, don’t be surprised”

“Nothing at all, in my head, to say to you
Only the beat of the train I’m on
Nothing I’ve learned all my life on the way to you
One day our love was over and gone”

Dark Was The Night, Feist and Ben Gibbard

Trail Magic

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There is a phenomenon called Trail Magic, known and spoken of with reverence by everyone who hikes the trail, which holds that often when things look darkest some little piece of serendipity comes along to put you back on a heavenly plane.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) by Bill Bryson

Accidental Friendship

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“The next day, the forest woke to a peculiar sight. Yeti and the bird were playing! And Yeti was laughing with a hearty roar nobody had seen before.”

Yeti and The Bird by Nadia Shireen

Treasures Earned

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I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn’t know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.”

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) by Bill Bryson

Perfection Earned

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Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment, the amazing complex delicacy of the woods, the casual ease with which elemental things come together to form a composition that is—whatever the season, wherever I put my besotted gaze—perfect. Not just very fine or splendid, but perfect, unimprovable. You don’t have to walk miles up mountains to achieve this, don’t have to plod through blizzards, slip sputtering in mud, wade chest-deep through water, hike day after day to the edge of your limits—but believe me, it helps.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) by Bill Bryson

Extraordinary Moose

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It is an extraordinary experience to find yourself face-to-face in the woods with a wild animal that is very much larger than you. You know these things are out there, of course, but you never expect at any particular moment to encounter one, certainly not up close—and this one was close enough that I could see the haze of flealike insects floating in circles about its head.”

No less pertinent is that there is just something deeply and unquestionably wrong about killing an animal that is so sweetly and dopily unassuming as a moose. I could have slain this one with a slingshot, with a rock or stick—with a folded newspaper, I’d almost bet—and all it wanted was a drink of water. You might as well hunt cows.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (Official Guides to the Appalachian Trail) by Bill Bryson