My Bike Gets Stolen
On Friday the 13th, October, 2000, I rode home from work at 3:00 am (oh yeah, the lifestyle of a Silicon Valley worker during the so-called boom), and parked the bike in my carport. I was feeling pretty bored, so I watched a movie till 5:00 am. Thereafter I went to bed (after giving serious considerations to whether I should go downstairs and do my laundry).
I woke up at 10:30 am and took a quick shower. I put the riding jacket on and started stepping down the stairs at around 11:30 am. "Cool", I say to myself, "No cars at all in the parking lot today - seems like everybody has gone somewhere".
I was still groggy, hence realization dawned upon me at the speed of melting ice cream.
"Sh*t!", I say to myself, "No bikes at all either! F**k!"
The bike was gone, I mean, no traces: broken glass, finger prints, foot prints, smell of bitter almonds or anything. Huh! Vanished, from my (so-called) highly secure, posh, insanely expensive walled apartment complex.
I mean my carport is "covered", for God's sake! I had locked the bike in the usual way (only handlebars locked — no chains or live electricity or nuclear devices attached). I don't think it would have mattered much anyway.
Uncannily, a friend of my friend Ted borrowed Ted's bike and "wiped out" (that is, crashed the bike in some manner) the same night!
It's really ridiculous. My apartment people used to charge a sacrilegious amount for a single bedroom. Moreover, there were "security guys" patrolling the area all night — at least that was the claim. To make things worse, I had recently had my car wrecked by two of my friends.
When I went up to the apartment office to inform them (mainly to garner some sympathy I guess), they just shrugged their shoulders. Maybe that's okay.
Update: Insurance paid me back a reasonable sum of money for the bike. Honda came out with a fuel-injected CBR600F4i for the year 2001. Hmmm ...
Update: I gave up on the bike. I am getting a car instead.