Sunday, August 6, 2017

The Return of the Silver Surfer

My bike got stolen, and I languished over that for long time, but I never gave up the hunt.  I thought that it was gone and I was OK with it but still, I kept a picture of it in my pocket and continually scoured the pawnshops wherever they may be, which is a pretty common tendency for me, I cannot resist the fantasy of the pawn shops.  Guitars mainly, but there's always a good array of stuff to wet the whistle.

The Silver Surfer is a hybrid road bike.  The Trek 7700FX, with a weird spoke design, and a weird shifting mechanism.  The seller told me this thing was an amazing bike, "It was built for climbing hills! ", he said.  I'd never owned a higher end road bike, but I needed a really good bike to tackle the road between Home and Mickeys Cues & Brews.

The test ride confirmed, the geometrics of this bike bike were spot on for a shortass like me, so I bought it for $350.  I hadn't owned a road bike since the ol' Roadmaster model of 1986, the days when I used to strap a hockey stick to it and pedal the 10kms all the way down to Flatlands to play ball hockey.  I even biked to Campbellton twice.  I put a lot of hard kilometers on that 10 speed.  And this... this Trek was something entirely new!  A newfound power!

When you push your weight into this bike, it pushes back in propulsion.  And I know that might seem obvious to the layman, but it RESPONDS in propulsion.  And on these skinny little street tires this thing fuckin' SKATES across the pavement.  It's exciting, and it  is the best bike I've ever had for sure.

So, you will know when I tell you that I came out of the Pool Hall one night, and there it was...  GONE.  Lock and all, gone.  Just gone.

Let me tell you a little more about me.  I wear my heart on my sleeve.  Sometimes that's ugly, and I had a little meltdown right there at Mickeys.  I got over it after a bit, but that was rough.  I got myself another very cool Trek which I liked, but it wasn't the Silver Surfer.

The thing was, I never stopped looking.  I love pawn shops anyway, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to hit even more pawn shops to keep up the search.  But I figured it was long gone.

Then one day, 4 months later, I go in to the local pawn shop AND THERE IT IS!  Hanging on display  right in the lobby!  I took it off the rack and exclaimed to the next man in line that this was my bike and showed him the picture and everything,  I was so excited.  That was unbelievable, of anyplace that bike could have been, that it came back to me.

The pawn shop wouldn't release it to me without having the Police involved, so I called them up and arranged for the transaction.  I had a whole bunch of pictures I'd taken of the bike when I'd originally gotten it, so I could prove that it was mine.   The officer took all my evidence, and went in to talk to the pawn shop guys for a while, and when he came out he said, "Mr. Jones, that is not your bike."

WTF.....  I was dumbfounded.  NO, that IS my bike!  We went back inside and checked, and I looked at the serial number on the bottom of the frame, and it did not match the picture I had in my hand.  It was missing a spoke, it was covered in stickers, the seat post-ring was a different color, there were too many inconsistencies that just maybe, maybe miraculously there were two of these bikes out there.  The seed of doubt set in.

All these things would become clearer later on in the night, whilst stewing over this.  I mulled the fuck outta that.  Even it by some miracle that wasn't my bike, I still loved the bike, so it was worth the $240 to get it back in my possession.  I went and bought it back the very next morning.

I spent Sunday cleaning it up, revealing the mystery.  The scrapes on underside of the frame were bothering me.  That doesn't happen to road bikes.  Only mountain bikers and rail riders scrape down there.  That's why they put those manufacturing stickers in that spot, where they don't come off.  And when I inspected the bike closer, I noticed a barcode sticker neatly placed above the serial number.... and upon even closer inspection, I found that the sticker was OVER the original serial number.  They had stamped a new serial number into the frame and put a barcode sticker over the old one.  Well fuckee-beee Meee!  You fooled both me and the cops once, but now we got you you muthafucker!

I had to arrange the Police to come once again and oversee the transaction from the pawn shop, as I took the bike back with all my photographic evidence to get my money back for it.  And the Universal recourse for the dude who sold them the bike is that now he has a warrant out there with his name on it.  Good on you Mate!  Idiot.

Its good to have the bike back.  It is a superb machine.  Thank you Universe, you have provided for me once again.

Thanks for reading.

TRJ

























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