The Bike Theft Epidemic

Marketplace:

Patrick Symmes' bike was stolen, as was his next one and the next one, and four more after that. So he decided to do something about it and he told his tale in this month's Outside Magazine. Patrick, welcome to the program.
Patrick Symmes: It's a pleasure.
Ryssdal: This was -- the only word that comes to mind -- is an epic saga. Seven bikes -- New York, San Francisco, Portland, cross-country, police. It's crazy.
Symmes: I was burning up with rage! I got my bike stolen, then I got another bike stolen. I just couldn't sleep at night. I was staying up late watching the surveillance footage of my bike being stolen 'cause there are so many cameras in New York City. Finally, I thought I had stumbled on a solution, a way to catch bike thief in America.
Ryssdal: All right, well go ahead because there a lot of bike thieves out there as we learn in the course of this article. Tell us what you did.
Symmes: We are entering the age of cheap GPS trackers -- and they're getting tiny, they're getting cheap. So I started putting them under the seat of bicycles -- effectively bait bicycles -- and leaving them out. And what happens, the bike gets stolen, you can actually track them on the Internet (assuming it doesn't short circuit in the rain, the device doesn't fail, this happens sometimes). But in the end, I was able to deliberately get seven bicycles stolen around the country and track down the thieves sometimes.

This story reminded me of one of the two times I can remember that I was a victim of crime (the first was when my calculator got stolen from my locker in high school).  A few years ago, I was without a drivers' license for a period of time.  So I started to ride my bicycle around again.  I had a circa-1988 Schwinn lightweight racing bike which I hadn't ridden for a number of years.  One weeknight evening, I rode the bike to my favorite public house, to spend some time sipping Guinness and conversing with the proprietor.  I didn't have a bike lock on the bike, because I generally trust that people aren't going to just steal things in our medium-sized town. Especially since the bar was almost directly across the street from the city police station.  After a couple of hours, the owner walked out the door and looked down the street.  He told me that my bike was laying on the ground.  I didn't think too much of it, and thought he was just playing a prank on me.

When I left to go home, I walked over to the bike rack and found that another bike was laying on the ground, and my bike was gone.  I still thought there was the possibility that somebody was playing a joke on me, so I figured I would ride this bike home, and find out the next day if it was a joke.  It only took me a couple of seconds to realize that somebody came across my bike and decided to make a significant upgrade.  The gear shift levers were broken off, the brakes didn't work and the pedal crank bearings made terrible clicking sounds each revolution.  It took me more than an hour to pedal the six miles home, and I cursed a blue streak the whole way.  The next day at work, I told the story, with the anger still boiling over.  That provided endless entertainment to my co-workers.  When I returned to the watering hole to find out if the owner was playing a prank, the folks were either very sympathetic or very entertained.  I finally gave up the anger and accepted the event as a humorous story.  I went out and found a used bike for $50 and put on an old bike lock, but for the next couple of weeks, I kept an eye out for some kid riding my bike.  I never saw it again. 

The bike I rode home, I left in my garage, as a humorous reminder of somebody getting lucky to majorly upgrade their mode of transportation.  One day, I was walking down the back lane of the farm, and came across the bike laying in the bushes beside the creek.  Clearly somebody had taken it for a short ride, but I never found out who or why.  So go the mysteries of life.