Recently, I was binge-watching “Succession” with my daughter, who’s visiting from Vancouver, and she said to me, “Dad, do we have any popcorn?”
“No,” I replied, “but I’ll run over to Shopper’s and pick up some.” It was about 10:30 p.m., pitch-black and raining so hard that nobody would be out, other than a father who wants to make his daughter happy.
Backing the car out of my garage in the pouring rain, I decided to leave the garage door open, so I wouldn’t have to get out of the car and open it when I returned, which I figured would only be 15 minutes or so. By the time I tracked down Orville Redenbacher at Shopper’s Drug Mart, it was 20 minutes.
As I drove home, the heavens opened up. I’m glad I left the garage door open, I thought as I turned into my driveway. Seconds later, when my headlights shone directly into the garage, I was, like Robinson Crusoe when he discovered a footprint on his island, thunderstruck!
There she was, Traveller, my Norco mountain bike, the best bike I’ve ever owned – and I’ve owned many, including My Old Savage, a made-in-New Brunswick classic, and the legendary Yellow Screamer, the ten-speed I had when I lived in Montreal – gone! In her place, a beaten-up old CCM, so old it looked like a three-speed I had in the 1960s.
As I walked towards my apartment, the rain dripping off me, I felt like crying. Traveller – I called her Traveller after Robert E. Lee’s horse – had gotten me through the pandemic and all the existential angst that came with it. She was my lifeline. She helped me lose 40 pounds and get back in reasonably good shape in less than a year and a half. And she helped me deal with that awful loneliness when my kids were so far away, and I couldn’t see them.
By the way, for anyone who might take offence at my audacity for even mentioning the name Robert E. Lee, I’m pretty sure mentioning the name of his horse is okay. While we can agree that it takes all kinds to make a horse race, we can also agree that you can’t make a horse racist. Traveller, I suspect, held no views on General Lee’s beliefs.
“Bicycle thefts are definitely on the rise,” says Matt Savage, owner of Fredericton’s Savage’s Bicycle Centre, Canada’s oldest bike shop. For him, there’s no doubt that addiction and mental health issues are at the heart of increased bike theft.
Savage believes that it’s the owner’s responsibility to ensure that their bike is safe and secure, including investing in a high-quality lock and registering their bikes with the 529 Garage app, available for free from The App Store.
“Leaving a bike securely locked in locations that are visible and have video cameras, and bringing the bike inside when not in use are essential,” Savage says. “Never leave your bike unlocked and unattended.”
Savage thinks municipalities should increase the number of bike racks available in public places and video surveillance of those places. “If we want people to use their bikes as an active mode of transportation, we need to create safe and secure bike parking.
“Bike theft isn’t going away. Effectively, it’s low-hanging fruit for those who have addiction and mental health issues. If, as a community, we give better help to those in need, I hope we can begin to focus on the upstream issues of addiction,” Savage says.
Utterly baffled by why anyone would steal Traveller, I tried to put the whole sad affair out of my head that night by making the best popcorn ever, with extra butter. Sitting down to resume watching our show, my daughter looked over at me, smiled and said, “Whoever took it Dad, I hope they really needed it; I hope they’re enjoying it.”
“Me too,” I said, nodding my head in agreement while reaching for a handful of popcorn. “At least I got a story out of it.”
