My friend Justin‘s hand-crafted recumbent handbike (with custom wheelchair tow hitch) along with his wife’s recumbent were stolen recently [Our Bikes Were Stolen This Morning… – Stolen Handbike and Recumbent bike Alert – Stolen Handbike and Recumbent alert].
Clearly a crime indicative of the squalor, desperation writhing in some wretched soul who (likely) struggled to find a way to sell two very distinctive and heavily customized rides as most people don’t prefer a hand powered bike. This sucks additionally because Justin is a super active guy effectuating positive change and providing a noteworthy role model for eco-conscious and doesn’t let a wheelchair slow him down (opposite really) doing urban gardening, activating for carbon reduction, teaching yoga, studying for an MBA and so on. Heck i saw him pluggin CTV the other night!
Stunningly, through the help of Bikerescue, who are ammassing good karma at an epic pace, their bikes are found and returned! A stunning end of the miserable story. This organization is clearly worthy of high praise and support.
Here’s the Bike Rescue blurb:
I have been buying and selling bikes for a long time and I have started a program called Bike Rescue here in BC. The program is all about getting stolen bikes back to their owners. Basically, we scour the area for ‘too good to be true’ bike deals and with the assistance of my local RCMP detachment, we try to get any stolen bikes back to their owners. This includes serial number checks, searching the bike sites for stolen bike reports and posting ‘recovered bikes’ lists at a few different locations that are bike centric (bike shops, some coffee shops, school campuses).
We have put nearly 120 bikes through the program, some of which are still in our possession because they are awaiting police check clearances or they cleared the police check and we are still checking around to see if anyone has reported a lost or stolen bike that fits the description and time frame.
As a victim of a similar heinous crime (over 10 years ago so i am starting to let go) when my beloved Mt. Klein #120 was thieved out of the back of locked van – greeting me with a ransacked booty and shattered glass for a dubious end to an otherwise lovely trip to Olympic Hotsprings.
in memorium
I’ll see if i can find out the back story with the hows/whys of how the bikes were recovered.