story number one...
the first story involves my former roommate, ayuchi. she had the cutest sweetest blue terry bike. notice the front wheel? it will become important later.
so ayuchi is a student, and students get very tired. people make mistakes. she locked up her bike at the 16th street bart station, and then when she returned after a day at school, it was gone. except for the front tire she locked to the pole. she came back with a lock and one tire. and a very sad face.
don't know if those outside of SF heard about a the sf police department discovering a lone bike thief who had stolen over 100 bikes. they posted these bikes on the internet. turns out, one of them looked very similar to ayuchi's. despite the blurry picture, you can see the bike is missing its front wheel. and had other similiarites to ayuchi's beloved terry.
long story short...look at who was reunited recently:
story number two...
this one involves plattyjo. i know her from g+, but other people know her as jenny oh. her beautiful ibis mountain bike got stolen recently as well.
she asked for people to put on social networking blast. i put it a couple of places on FB, including the east bay bike party group. someone from that group, jillian, went to make the flea market rounds looking for her bike before she went to work this past sunday. well, jillian didn't find her bike, but she did see jenny's and said she recognized the bike from an FB posting. not sure if she saw that particular post, but the point is COMMUNITY ROCKS.
read the full story here on jenny's blog.
with all that bikey karma, i think jillian will find her own bike soon. or maybe someone will find it for her and return it to her.
these stories are why i prefer to use the word "bike community" as opposed to bike culture. we look out for each other and take care of our own. here's to our little bay area bike community!
Yay for finding stolen bicis!
ReplyDeleteis the best gift ever!
DeleteNow we just need to get Declan's back, just on principal.
ReplyDeleteAnd why is Ayuchi's front tire so small? I always meant to ask.
i always thought it was because they had more stability in the head tube for shorter riders. here's what they say. looks like it's to prevent toe overlap. a problem i have on my current beauty.
Deletefrom their site:
Why do you use 24" front wheels on smaller bikes?
Some women specific design bicycles use 26 (650) wheels front and rear, but we use 24 in the front and 700C in the rear. A 26 wheel offers some advantages, but not the way its used by other manufacturers.
Everyone has the same goal when making a smaller bicycle for the smaller rider: make the top tube short enough! If you use a 700C front wheel, you can only shorten the top tube so much (to about 53 cm or 21 before the front wheel overlaps with the pedal, the dreaded toe-clip overlap. A 26 road tire is about 2cm smaller in radius than a 700C tire, so you can shorten the top tube just about as much (to 51cm) before there is overlap. A 24 road tire is about 5cm smaller in radius than a 700C tire, so the top tube can be as short as 48cm with no overlap. We use 24 in the front on our smaller road bikes (48.3cm and under) so we can have more latitude for good design. The 700C rear wheel gives you equivalent gearing.
What a great thing for the younger ones, and what a wonderfully safe way for them to learn balance. That was the hardest part of learning to ride a bike ever!
ReplyDelete