Recovering a Stolen Bicycle Takes Luck
Expand

Radar

Recovering a Stolen Bicycle Takes Luck

Perhaps you remember when my Geekhouse touring bike was stolen from my house in Silver Lake? Well, that happened, for those of you who missed that note. It sucked. I wept and I was very, very pissed off. Especially since we had video of the dude and the cops weren’t being any help. Granted, this is Los Angeles and real crimes happen every day. Then, a few people sent me a link to the app Offer Up where a seller had my bike. I went to the police station, showed them the app – which they had never seen before – and told them I wanted to go down there with a few people and get it back. They laughed. Rightfully so, but they were also assuming I had no “street sense” or something, I forget what they said exactly.

The thing that sucked though was when this popped up, I was getting ready for a flight to London, so I had little to no time to do this. I just wrote it off, not wanting to endanger myself or my friends over a bike. Then a miracle of stupidity happened. Kyle met Geoff McFetridge and Nicholas Haig-Arack for a ride on a Saturday, when the thief rode passed on my bike, prompting Kyle to chase him down, knock him off the bike and steal it back. All while the thief was yelling “I just bought this bike for $500.” A lie. The video footage we had as an identical, 100%, match to the dude riding my stolen bicycle.

A victory! But with a lot of luck. Unfortunately, the bike had a few dents in the TT, parts were missing and other things were wrong with it, so I called up Marty at Geekhouse, who said he’d be stoked to repair the frame and make a few key changes to it, which I believe he’s in the process of doing right now. Stories like this are so few and far between when it comes to bike theft and with the latest surge happening across the US, I thought I’d share some positivity to the mix… Thank you, Kyle, Geoff and Nick for being such rad dudes!