did you steal my bicycle
we moved to Asheville and then this happened
We moved to Asheville, NC a few months ago.
Two adults, two children, one dog, and one car. Shoulda been two cars, but my 2009 Prius, Onyx, did not make it.
Well, to be fair it wasn’t really given a chance - I was “asked” to sell it after several people who I thought I loved said it was “unsafe” to drive.
When pressed for details, these “friends” and “family” would rattle off insulting allegations that, while true, felt petty.
So it doesn’t always start, so what?
And sure, sometimes it won’t turn off unless you hold the power button for three seconds, let go of it, and then quickly - quickly! - double tap the power button? I’m sorry it’s not a frikkin 2027 Tesla supercar!?!
Also the dashboard just wouldn’t be on some of the time like it’d just be all dark but the car would obviously be driving if you looked in any direction you’d see that and since when do we actually need to know our exact MPH — what are you, a scientist?
Anyways I sold the Prius, which left me in Asheville with a two-wheeled, green and white steed of the Shwinn family.
I’d sweat profusely going anywhere and would always bring another t-shirt to my destination but then forget to change once I got there. Three months and one summer later, I acclimated. Also the climate changed.
Now I would sweat just in the pits and a little vertical hot dog shaped stain on my shirt. Normalcy had arrived.
Then, one day, out of the god damn North Carolina blue, it was gone. Stolen.
In my Asheville? The city had changed.
I’d become sensitive to how often people were saying that, the unsaid part being “because sweaty idiots from California are coming here.” But isn’t that sort of all there is? Do these places ever boomerang back around? Does anyone end up saying “ah yes, this is my Asheville. It’s back”?
I doubt it, not with this bike theft happening everywhere, all the time. “Not my Asheville,” I said again and again, only half joking.
Had I locked it?
No, but again, these are details. Minutiae for the pencil pushers (see also: turning a car off the ‘normal way’).
Point is, my bike was gone.
I’d just put $85 worth of tune-up into that bike too. Also the $15 I spent on a new tube after getting a flat and riding it with that blurping flat tire sound to a nearby outdoor gear/bike/ice cream shop (not my Asheville) and dealing with the embarrassment of trying to failing so badly to put in a new tube using the store’s that, out of mercy, the tall kind man who worked there ended up staying 30 minutes after the store closed to help me stuff the new tube into the tire only for us both to realize I’d punctured a hole in it and so yea it wasn’t going anywhere.
But hey I just moved here, wanna be friends?
Oh also it was raining, and right when Lauren arrived with the kids to pick me up, which was remasculating actually, the now empty mason jar I’d had my cottage cheese in slipped out of my shoddy backpack's water-bottle side holder and smashed down onto the concrete. A metaphor, but what phor?
I had nothing to pick up all that broken glass with so I left it there. I felt bad but what could I do? The city was changing and so was I.
Later that night, I came back to rescue the bike and remembered all the broken glass. Hello karma my old friend, I’ve come to not upset you again.
I collected all the glass into a dark green poop bag and stashed it into the car’s middle console where it would stay for weeks before I remembered it was there.
I’m no stranger to bicycle theft
In the year 2018, after an absolutely stellar improv comedy show in Los Feliz, Los Angeles (right next to Hollywood of the Hollywood sign), I waltzed with vigor and gusto both back to Vons, the local market where I’d stashed my bike, locked up, of course, only to find something had gone terribly wrong.
The seat. Someone had stolen the seat from my bike. This was, frankly, a bigger insult than taking the whole bike.
I’ll never forget that ride back home, uphill, chillier than LA oughta be, standing the whole time. On the Sunset Blvd no less! Every so often I’d forget the seat was gone and plop down onto the metal bar that made repeated attempts to enter my butt.
That bike had a name - “Just Mountain.”
Fast forward six years and here I am in the just mountains of the blue ridge, without a bike to call my own.
Not my Asheville
Two days after the bike was stolen, I walked outside to find Lauren talking to a neighbor.
“Look what I found,” she screamed. Lo! Behold! My bicycle.
A man named Tim who lives a block away had found it in his front yard.
In his fifties or very early sixties, Tim had glasses and a white tshirt with a cool band’s name on it, like a band you’d like if you lived in England, and he had a tattoo of what looked to be but definitely wasn’t one of those slot machine style cherries.
The first thing I genuinely felt was hurt. Rejected. Not by Tim but also, somehow, by Tim?
My bike wasn’t even worthy of theft. No, it wasn’t the bike’s fault — Asheville had changed, once again. Just days ago it was a place where someone would steal your bike and follow through.
Not anymore. Nowadays, people in Asheville stole bikes, decided they no longer needed them and just tossed them aside like an apple core into the wild. “Ah don’t worry, it’ll decompose in the suburbs, we’re not even doing anything wrong.”
If you're gonna steal the bike, steal the bike.
This was not my Asheville.
“They didn’t even think the bike was good enough to steal?” I for some reason said to my new neighbor Tim.
“Musta been all the locks on it!” he said and I laughed because he'd saved my bike, so sure I'd allow him to insult the amount of locks I currently had on there (3).
Three locks, and not a one used in the slightest to prevent my bike with no name from being bikenapped right out from under me.
What did I learn - not much, honestly, besides locking up my bike is a good idea.
I’m glad it’s back, though I’m not letting myself really feel that, just like I didn’t let myself feel sad when it got stolen. I almost cried a bunch at a coffee shop but then got back to work and forgot to come back to it.
More so I think my brain decides to prevent myself from feeling sad about things by not feeling them at all. Bike’s gone? Oh well let’s move on. Easier that way. That’s what I did with Onyx.
We move and we lose, so enjoy the cruise. That's what they say. A classic saying hence me bringing it up here.
Maybe I’ll name this bike Onyx 2. Or Just Another Mountain.
No.
Boomerang, because it came back, here in this town that might just one day, actually, factually, be my Asheville.
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Fuck it i’ll even throw in a 22% discount code!! Use the link below and pay that man his moneys (less 22%): https://botharetrue.substack.com/paythatman.
I know i’ve been slacking with responding to comments so today let’s bring back that old BAT vibe and chat in the gd comments section
In other words I will be responding to stuff so come say hi.
did you steal my bike? If so, why did you return it?
do you lose stuff often?
did you ever have a klepto phase? are you in one now?
hi
People sometimes say I’m soft spoken, but one time I put my bike unlocked outside a restaurant and looked up and it was gone. Bellowed and ran outside and bellowed. Everyone stared at me and said whoa. Turns out a waiter had just moved it several feet to the side. Anyhow for a moment there, it was not my Berkeley.
okay this is wild I am so glad it is back (maybe it is your asheville) but I must ask WHYYYY are you eating cottage cheez??