They never came back for it. There is sat, sadly, through the pounding rains of March and into April. Sometimes it would slide down the pole and sort of go cross-ways sticking out into the street and somebody would push it back up again. After a while, I started to idly wonder if I should do something about it, but it wasn't really bothering me and then it sort of seemed like a good experiment: What happens to a bike that is locked to a pole and then forgotten forever? I was wondering if it would slowly rust and degrade and eventually melt into the ground, like a very slow-motion ice sculpture or something.
Plus, I was hoping that it was bothering my parking-space hogging, garage-renting ridiculous request making neighbors, since it's more in front of their garage than my house. A man can dream!
And so it went, until this past Saturday. Whilst cleaning my house, I happened to glance out the window and THERE WAS A GIRL RIDING AWAY ON THE BIKE. I told The Wife excitedly about this development and she was all "What bike?" and I was all "You know, the bike that's been locked in front of the house for the past month and a half" and she gave me one of those looks that she gives me that looks like how you would look at someone who told you they were being abducted by aliens and subjected to strange tests. "Oh," she said.
I thought it was a pretty big development.
BUT WAIT. It gets better. Yesterday, I come outside and THE BIKE IS BACK. Locked to its customary pole.
WHAT THE FUCK. First of all, who leaves a bike chained to a pole for a month and a half, through pouring rain and freezing temperatures, comes back, rides it around for one day, and then locks it back to the same pole? WHO DOES THAT. Is that weird?
(Also, it's kind of amazing that no part of the bike has yet to be stolen. I live in a pretty safe neighborhood, but I didn't think it was THAT SAFE. Some places, this bike wouldn't last 15 minutes, let alone 7 weeks.)
3 comments:
I liked this. I just wish you'd found out more. I was waiting for Part II to comment. But since you're SO needy, I'll comment now. ;)
NOW I AM VALIDATED.
The fact that it lasted that long is incredible. Maybe she was on vacation! Or stole the bike, then felt bad and returned it to the exact same spot. OR uses it as part of her own private bike-share program with bikes locked up around the City waiting for her to use and just hadn't been in that neighborhood for a while.
And why must our better halves not understand the importance of these issues? Probably something about balance and healthy relationships, but sometimes you just need to bitch to someone about the neighbor's growing mountain of firely hazardous cigarette butts on his aircon unit on his lanai AND HAVE THEM UNDERSTAND...
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