For all the stolen bike emails I get, it’s always exciting to get one like this. Matt Goyer spotted his bike on Craigslist one year after it was taken.
He detailed the saga on his blog, including how SPD sort of bailed on him and left him to handle it on his own.
Chelsea spots the ferry, then the guy. Still no sign of the police. I call again only to find out that they’re still busy and haven’t dispatched anyone. So much for Sunday mornings being their quiet time! I drag my feet a little more then head over to 1st and Columbia on foot to meet him.
I meet the guy who is 6’4″ according to his ad for the bike (surprise, my medium frame didn’t fit him!), in the navy and christian (according to his Facebook page). He actually seems like a nice, decent guy. Almost right off the bat he suggests I take it for a quick spin which I do. We then chat and I ask him a bunch of questions he doesn’t have good answers for like, “what year is the bike?”, “what size frame is it?”, “did you build it yourself?” What I do learn is that he allegedly bought it off his buddy a couple months ago for $2k and that it doesn’t really fit him. He figures the bike is worth $5-$7k.
After stalling for as long as I could I check my phone again. Still no word from the cops. So I suggest another test ride, he agrees, I hop on, and never look back!
I duck down to Western and pedal furiously to Western and Lenora, call Chelsea and arrange a rendezvous at 1st and Virginia. I load the bike up and hop in drenched in sweat.
My phone rings.
I don’t answer.
Comments
14 responses to “Man steals his own bike back one year later”
I just had a bike stolen last Friday but I certainly won’t go that route to recover it. Especially not in downtown Seattle — I’m probably too cautious in traffic to actually get away.
I assume the city has a bike registry, and I hope I don’t have problems recovering my bike because it wasn’t in it. I should look into that for my other bikes…
When I was at college, someone I knew had a rickety old bike that she didn’t lock, altho she had a lock on it. One day she came downstairs planning to ride it to class, and it wasn’t there.
A couple years later, she came across it at a park about 10 miles from college. It still had the lock on, and she still had the key – so she locked it, and left.
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Al, that sucks! Be sure to register it with the stolenbikeregistry.com.
my bike just got stolen Matt! so bummed, love that you got it back!
I just watched the news about this man’s bike here from Ottawa Ontario Canada.Out here in Ottawa he have a lot of downhill mountain bikers and what makes it worse is our bike thieves.We ride $3,000-11,000 bikes and they swoop right off our eyes,parked outside for a moment to enjoy ourselves at a bar.Then coming to our bike stolen. So our cops made a sting ring by rigging high end bikes and watched a full eye without a thief knowing. He won’t get far because there is a missing chain link :P But ask your police to start something like this because a bike is persons life.
Andy
Wow, that is a great story! Hilarious.
Weird the individual works for me and after this incident, I have seen reciepts for his purchase and the purchase of the upgrades. It is nice to have a blog that does zero fact checks on anything posted.
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