The return of the Madone

Without my road bike it's been a frustrating week. Beyond commuting and a few laps at a demo day at Jim's Trails on Monday, I simply haven't ridden much.

Then on Tuesday I got a call from Homer, my outside sales rep at Trek. It went a bit like this:

"Hey Andrew, Homer here."
"Hey Homer! What's happenin?"
"You used to have a Madone 5.2 Pro, right? 58cm Carrera blue?"
"Yes, I did. Until it was stolen."
"You want it back?"

Monday morning a man named Kevin (whose last name I don't even know) was biking to work from his house in the Atwood neighborhood, when he passed the corner of Atwood and Dunning, where he saw a very nice road bike leaning against a dumpster, unattended and unlocked. It looked lost, and Kevin knew that such bikes do not attend to themselves.

He stood in thought for about half an hour. Something about this situation seemed wrong. So he called his wife saying, "I think I should grab it." After she agreed, they called the police, although each agreed, the police probably wouldn't do much. They asked if the police had a database, and they said no. So they called Machinery Row Bicycles.

And that is where bicycle karma struck with brilliant force.

The folks at The Row told Kevin they hadn't sold the bicycle, but they could give the serial number to their inside sales rep, Homer, who was standing in the shop when Kevin had called. After hearing the description, Homer (who knew my bike had disappeared) thought it might be mine, and so he ran the serial number through Trek's system and found that the bike had been shipped to Boehm's cycle in St. Paul, Minnesota. The same shop I'd worked at for two years in college.

Thursday evening I drove over to Kevin's and picked up my bike, completely intact and functional, save for some torn bar tape. What a strange series of events, that Kevin would go to such lengths to get it back to me, that Homer would be in the right place at the right time.

I owe them both quite a lot. Tonight I'm doing a victory lap.