Good People

Last Sunday… two friends, rising sun, bikes loaded, coffee in hand… another epic morning on Tiger Mountain looming. We travel through Seattle, go East on I-90, past the calm waters of Lake Washington to exit 25 (Hwy 18) and discover my friends brand new $2400 Specialized Stumpjumper was missing from my hitch rack. Seriously.... gone. Did it really fall off? Was it stolen at the gas station? WTF? Okay, the dust settles and we drive all the way back to Fremont… then, back to Tiger Mountain. We were not so lucky to find the bike...or maybe it was better this way, as the bike was most likely destroyed.

Now what? An insurance claim? I learned a little something on that front. If you lose something off your car it is covered on your homeowners insurance, BUT, it has to be “yours”, not a friends. In fact if you are storing someone’s gear or anything at your house and it gets stolen.... it’s not claimable on your homeowners insurance. And, after your deductible (mine 1k) and the fact that you’ll lose any discount points, my out of pocket would have been $1600 for the claim. Hardly worth it for a $2400 bike. Too bad we all pay so much for insurance, when it basically takes a major loss to make a claim worthwhile.

The insurance dilemma resulted in procrastination, searching on the internet for found bike reports, calls to state highway patrol and WSDOT, all with no leads, until yesterday. Greggs Greenlake called my friend and asked him what happened to his bike? Of course, he was like, aaaaa huh? How’d you know? I feel stupid, etc, etc.... Turns out, a bouncer from Cowgirls Inc. was on his way home ealry (5:45am) on Sunday when he came across a bike laying in a intersection near Safeco Field. Surprised, and curious if a injured rider was nearby, he looked around, didn’t see anyone and decided to take the bike.... what a find! A brand new MTB. Sweet!! His initial reactions… This easily could have been the end of the story. However, the next day, realizing that this was a very nice bike. He did the right thing and invested his personal time to try and find out who’s bike he had found. He posted “found bike” ads on the internet and Craigslist. Stating where and when he found the full suspension MTB. And, the only way the rightful owner would get it back was to call him with the brand, model, size, color, components etc. Smart idea.... He also saw the Gregg’s Greenlake sticker on the bike. He called them with the registration number on the bike. Gregg’s tracked down the sale slip and voila… bike found. My friend met this guy last night, got the bike back (which had not been damaged from the low speed fall) bought him a drink, traded stories, provided him a small reward and finally got a good nights sleep.

This is a reminder to us all. Good people are out there. Honesty is a virtue and bike racks should be inspected often.