Good stuff and Not So Good Stuff

So, my buddy Anferny came over last weekend for some grillin' and chillin' and after a few hours of hanging out he mentions, in passing, that his house was broken into twice in the last week. Also, that they took his Bontrager 'cross bike (mid-90s vintage) and came back the next night to steal his Bontrager Race mtn bike.

He calls the cops and they cruise around and see some dude ponying a bike around. They flip the lights, he drops one and they stop to get it. A few nights later, they are cruising around (probably on their cell phones) and they see some dude on AY's bike. They grab him and get the OTHER bike back. He actually got the call that they got his second bike back while he was sitting on the back porch with me. Is that nuts?

Operating a few shops in the DC area, we see a lot of bike thefts. You could easily run a 'bike lock only' store based on the number of locks that we sell. We have been pretty good about recovering stolen bikes, despite a few hectic run-ins with some sketchy people. There has been shouting, cursing, threats, chasing, lots of police... The most important thing to do is call the police. They may never find your bike, but if City Bikes does, it's the only way that we can hold the bike. There has to be a police report number for us to hold it, even if it's an employee bike. We also give a 5% sympathy discount if you have the police number, which is pretty nice if you ask me.

Now the bad... I got a call from my buddy Charles who works at CP Bikes in CP. Charles lives even farther out of the city than I do. You just don't expect that kind of stuff out in the woods. Charles was rocking a custom IF 29'er singlespeed (popular in some crowds that are respectful enough to NOT steal bikes) so it should stand out. He called me from his truck whilst driving around looking for 'the punk-ass kid that stole' his bike. There was some other cursing but I'll spare you. Use your imagination. As of this posting, Charles has not seen his bike. And probably won't, I'm sad to say. The story goes like this: Charles shot out to the local singletrack ride early in the AM on a Friday and came back to the house to see the family. He jumped out of the truck, pulled his bike out of the back, rolled it up and laid it down on the ground in front of his garage. He had a few minutes with the fam then went back out through the garage to put it in the garage and the damn bike was gone. He estimates it sat out, in front of a van, on a dead-end street, in BF south AACo and somebody rolled it.

Crazy.

In other news, I looked a little closer at some of the 07 product stuff that I have and I thought that I would make a few notes.
New 29'ers: Cannondale geared with Lefty $1600ish
Jamis geared aluminum with sus fork $1300ish
Jamis 631 steel singlespeed rigid $1000ish
New mtn bike platforms: Jamis XAM 5 1/4" travel all-mtn frame
Jamis XCM 4" xc race full-sus frame
Cdale new carbon ht frame
Cdale carbon rush 4" bike
Specd Enduro SL aluminum AND carbon frames AND fork

It's crazy out there. There's at least three new bikes that I want. Rush for racing, Enduro SL for riding, 631 29'er for beating up on RickyD with... It's going to be a tough year for making bike-buying decisions.

Keep the rubber side down.