Ie, My bike.
My trusty dusty red bike got stolen yesterday. After almost two years of being all over Chicago, she finally caught someone else’s eye. It’s a great bike. It’s an old bike. It’s been hit by a bus. I can ride it miles without touching the handlebars. But I always knew I didn’t have a very good lock on it. I just thought that no one would ever want it. It has more emotional value than anything else.
Truth is, though, a bike is a bike and sometimes someone else wants it. I will miss it so much. This bike has gone miles and miles with me, since sophomore year of college in 2006. I used to ride it all the way from Hopkins to Minneapolis on the LRT trail so I could go volunteer at the East African Women’s Center. I ride it to downtown Chicago sometimes. It hung out at a firehouse for a while when I was stuck on crutches. I’ve riden it to the Gary Comer Youth Center, and Aldis, Trader Joes in the South Loop–thru nice and dangerous areas of this city. It’s always been locked up in the same haphazard fashion.
Sadly, it got stolen out of the SPR parking lot. In fact, I park it on the handicap parking sign right in front of the door. (Except during services when people will actually use that parking spot.) Brazenly, someone really stole it right from under the window.
I always thought that it wasn’t worth anything. I thought for sure no one would steal it (and no one did for a long time) because it had literally no market value. However, I’m looking at craigslist, and people are trying to sell bikes like mine for hundreds of bucks. Granted, they’re all Schwinn’s… but they look just like mine, haha. I even thought I found mine that same day, but it was so much nicer. And I studied the picture and it turned out to be the wrong bike.
Anyway, Chicagoans, keep your eye out for my baby. I want it back something fierce.
