Confederacy of a Dunce - In broad daylight

Thursday, June 22, 2006

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Yesterday at lunchtime I was leaving my office with a small group of co-workers, and saw myself a curious sight. Three young gentlemen of the bike thief persuasion, wandering around the area. I had a feeling they were up to no good just by looking at them: two were on bikes, one on foot and all proceeding in a very casual, wandery sort of way. The odd thing was that the one on foot was wearing a pair of heavy looking work gloves (with shorts and a t-shirt). I sort of hung back to see what they were up to, and not much at all to my surprise they were up to no good. Two of them stopped their bikes at the side of the street, while the third went over to the railings and began to tie his shoe in the sort of manner you adopt when you're not at all actually interested in tying your shoe. Suddenly he had moved over just a couple of steps and began aggressively whacking (or something) at the lock on a mountain bike which was secured to the railing (correctly locked through wheels and frame, with double locks no less). I made a sort of approach and made some noises (perhaps a shout, it's hard to remember exactly) and just like that they wandered away (no doubt to find another bike nearby to work on). I figured they hadn't managed to steal the bike, and what more could I do (try to get into the building and ask around whose bike it was). So I felt really guilty when I returned later in the day and that bike wasn't there any longer (fortunately it was there again today; the owner or an associate must have seen the action and moved it inside to be safe).

I felt like I should have done something more, but what? Try to find a phone and call the police, when they were long gone and my description would have been very vague (three scrawny white kids in shorts and t-shirts, two of them on possibly stolen bikes)? Or university security (don't make me laugh)? Or charged in and attacked them (I felt like this is what I should have done, but wasn't carrying any sort of weapon besides the various parts of my body that are registered as deadly weapons)? Or maybe just followed them around to make them nervous? Instead I chose to continue on to lunch (and fret about whether I should have sawed off their legs or something).

Anyway, I was very surprised at their nerve, doing this in broad daylight, while loads of people were walking by (and seeming to ignore their antics completely). It's not really a surprise then that so many bikes disappear, and it makes me even more pleased that my workplace has a good quality off-street bike parking area where the bikes are not even visible to passersby.

bike

Thursday, June 22, 2006 2:03:52 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)