Thief Attempted to Steal my Bike

Today's weather:   High = 19  Low = 14

Cloudy

 

The bad news:   This attempted bike theft couldn't have happened at a worse time.  If you've been following this blog for October and maybe a few months prior, you know damn well I am penniless.  I thought I was getting the salary oday, but no, it is delayed until Halloween.    I hate Halloween and it is the worst goddamn time of the year for me and always has.  I just want this day to come and go away. 

 

As for the bike itself, here's the recap of its history:

 

May 2010:   purchased a Yamaha YBR125 brand new bike in the hinterlands of Chongqing province.  Learned how to ride this clutch bike on the spot.  Shortly afterwards, I rode the bike to Wuhan where I was teaching at the time  (a 4-day adventure!) and then rode it around Wuhan during those two months.  Bike cost me about 9500 RMB

 

June 2010:   finished teaching at Wuhan then rode the bike to Shanghai where I started a new job.   This was a 2.5 day adventure

 

Sept 2010 to June 2011:   enjoyed riding the bike all around Shanghai and clocked up 10,000 km on it.   Put a lot of work into the bike, did some repairs, and acquired fake registration 'Hu A' plates for 300 RMB.   By the way, a legal 'Hu A' motorcycle license plate costs 50,000 RMB as a point in comparison.

 

July  2011:   took an official motorycle training course back in Vancouver and acquired a legal motorcycle drivers license in my home country.

 

Sept 2011:   sold the bike to a German friend for 5000 RMB.  Actually he first "rented" it during the summer to try it out, and he liked the bike.  We negotiated an agreement.

 

Oct 2011:   The German friend then went back to his home country for a month while he then lent the bike back to me.

 

Meanwhile, I put some extra work into the bike and he reimbursed for the cost of such work.  

 

Yesterday (Friday Oct 28) I came home from teaching and was extremely tired.  These days I'm a lot busier than normal as I'm working on a masters degree online and teaching at the same time.  The students this year have also been a handful and so work is a lot harder this year also.   Worse yet, this week was a killer due to all the apartment isues, moving, and so forth. Will get a blog post on that at some point!

 

To make a long story short, I rode home and took a much needed nap around 2:30pm.  I woke up at 3:30pm to discover a thief had attempted to hotwire the ignition but had failed.  As a result, he then smased the ignition lock, thus vandalizing it, and he also vandalized the U-lock on the wheels that was holding the bike.  As a precaution I ALWAYS lock the bike with a wheel lock and also lock the steering column with the ignition.

 

The good news is that the thief failed in his attempt to steal the bike.  What I need to do now is take the motorcycle in the back of a taxi van to the shop where the guy knows me very well.  Then he will replace the ignition lock next week and I have some more work I want done on the bike anyway.

 

Since, however, I am penniless these days, this task will have to wait until midweek.   The German guy knows about all this and he returned early to Shanghai from his trip back to to his home country.  We agreed that Wednesday I'll have the bike back to him.

 

The main problem now is that since the bike can't move until a few days, it needs to be secure in case the thief makes another stab (literally) at it.   To that end, I asked some biker friends for suggestions and I got two more locks on the bike, and deflated the air in the tires.  As well, the security guards in the apartment complex were alerted and I told them point blank that someone tried to steal my bike in broad daylight and only 50m away from their guard post.  The guards then said, "I will watch more carefully"

 

In order to test whether they would follow up on that statement with actions, I then wheeled my bicycle over about an hour later as I am still moving things from one apartment to the next.  Sure enough the guard took notice and asked what I was up to.  This was good enough for me.

 

I then said, "Since a thief tried to steal my motorcycle from this place in the middle of the day under your watch, and now I can't ride the motorcycle, I am thus riding my bicycle."    He apologized, and I then thanked the guard that he was taking a more vigilant role at that point.

 

Regretably, this is not the first time someone tried to steal a bike in front of my apartment door.  It  happened exactly 3 years ago this time of year when I was living out in Songjiang.  Very far away, but in a nice place.  At that time, I was riding a scooter and the thief was able to steal it right from under my nose.  At that time, yes, I was also tired and taking a nap.

 

Haloween may as well be the holiday of the devil, the way this kind of bad stuff always happens this time of year.  Thankfully this year they didn't get my bike, but it was a major frustration and hassle to deal with something like this at this point in time.    80 more days until the next holiday.