Vandals! Thieves! Crooks!

It may come as a surprise from the title, but today's post is not about politicians.

I went to take Maggie out for her morning walk only to find our doormat had been moved significantly. While I was thinking the words "I wonder how that...." I noticed that our bike rack that we have on our porch had been moved to the other side. I knew instantly that something was stolen, so I looked over and - sure enough - there was only one bike there.

It turns out that Marie's bike was stolen. Mine, oddly, was still there, though on closer inspection I discovered that it had significant damage. Fortunately it's all repairable/replaceable.

Here's what I think happened...

We park the bikes in the bike rack rear-end-in so that we can lock the rear tires to the bike rack. This is so people can't remove the front tire and steal the rest of the bike. We use one of those big-honkin' cables made specifically for bikes to lock them to the bike rack. It looks like they pulled on the bikes to get them out and - possibly - tried to disassemble the bike rack, only to realize that it wouldn't buy them too much. So, they somehow managed to cut through the cable and pulled Marie's bike out, but only after having made mine unrideable (which, I assume, is why it was still there). Not that Marie's was rideable because the seats (which had been stolen on Easter morning) were not on the bikes!

Anyway, the tire on my bike has been disconnected from the frame, which is repairable, but will require adjustments that I'm not capable of doing (Am I?). They also managed to rip apart the wires for my odometer/computer, but that's the least of my worries at this point.

Marie called the Police while I took the dog out and, not too surprisingly, they were neither surprised nor really cared. I guess I understand. I mean, they probably had a lot of crime last night and ours is just one bicycle. Still, we're going to file a report tonight when Marie gets back from work. We'll also see if the guy two houses down that has video of the street may have those pieces of sh..... I mean.... the criminals on his tapes.

There is one thing about this that makes me laugh... We bought Marie's bike for about $100 at Target several years ago. The bike they left behind, my Fuji Supreme, is worth about three times that and is fewer than two years old. Ha HA! Take that you thieving garbage!

(P.S. I just have to mention that the spellchecker on blogger.com found the word "doormat" above and suggested that I change it to "Toronto". Take that you theieving garbage! ;)