BLACKPIPES

I Got My Bike Back!!!

Ok, so this happened today, and I swear to God it is all true:

 I was enjoying my afternoon, eating Mac n Cheese and watching How I Met Your Mother re-runs on Lifetime with my roommate, Rob.  Just as Ted’s date was about to tell Marshall about how Ted and Lilly slept together back in college, I received a text message. It was from my neighbor, Max. It read: “Did you ever find that moped that got stolen? And if not what color was it?” (I had a Garelli GranSport stolen from my back yard in September. It was reported stolen and I had all the documentation that went along with it.) I replied back that no, I hadn’t ever got it back and that it was orange.

At that instant, we heard a moped outside. Rob’s head perked up at the same time because, unless it is one of us, there is no reason for a moped sound to exist in our neighborhood. He looks at me and asks, “Is that a moped?” I answered “I think so, and Max just asked me about my stolen Garelli…”

Just then, my phone rang. It was Max. “Get the fuck out here now! There is a black dude cruising around on your moped!” I yelled at Rob to put his shoes on and to get outside with me. “Come out back!” Max said on the phone. I ran around back to see my other neighbor Eric running toward the front of my house. He yelled at me “He just went around front!” I sprinted around the corner to see that it was, in fact, the Garelli that had been stolen from me 7 months previous. It still had the registration sticker and the fucking deer skull I had zip tied to the front forks. There was no question that it was mine.

I have never been in a situation like this before, so I was a little slow on the uptake, but one of my neighbors that was out front yelled “Chase him!” I got in my car, yelling at Rob to get in. We took off, but not nearly as quickly as Max; He was on the fucking case.

All the streets in my neighborhood are one way, so as the thief was going, there was only one way he could go. I decided to head him off. As I reach the intersection, I see Max’s Durango shoot past me. He apparently noticed the thief riding down the sidewalk, the opposite way of traffic, at the same time I did, because his brakes locked up and he dropped it into reverse, tires smoking backward as his car still had forward momentum. He shot backward, the wrong way down a one way, at full speed and backed past the road a block away. I pulled onto the road, nose to nose with Max and right alongside the thief. I slammed my brakes as the thief pulled off the sidewalk into the road and noticed he had a two year old (estimated age, based on the kid’s size) on the bike, sitting on the floorboards. Fuck.

As I stopped right in his path, the thief made a panic turn, feet splayed, and slammed into the side of my car. He kept going, around the back of my car and tried to make it down the road that Max had backed past in his Durango. Max was not having one fucking bit of that. He shot forward, slamming his car into the curb and cornering the thief, who ran into the car and the curb, stopping him in his tracks. Right about this time, Eric’s Trans-AM screeched to a halt right behind my car.

I got out of my car, but not as fast as Max. I looked up to see Max running toward the thief and fucking clobbering him. He punched him right off the moped. The bike fell, the thief got up and started screaming “I got my fucking kid!” to which Max responded “I don’t fucking care! Don’t steal mopeds in my fucking neighborhood, Motherfucker!” The thief swung a wide, impotent punch and then, apparently, noticed he was surrounded by three 3 big dudes and me. The kid started crying, and the thief picked him up and walked away. Several teenagers riding bikes came up and asked us who the thief was and told us they had never seen him before.  I picked my bike up and assessed the damage.

The throttle cable was demolished and the rear shock had been unattached from the swingarm but other than that, my deformed, ugly, frankensteinian baby was back! She was mine again! I walked her the block back to my garage, with Eric and his Trans-AM close behind.

I pushed my bike towards my garage, put the bike on the kickstand and turned around. There were three men walking towards my driveway. I was by myself at this point. Eric had gone inside to look for ammo for his gun, as he had spent it all at the firing range that very morning, Rob was on the phone with the police, who informed him to stay in the car at the foot of my driveway and Max…Well, Max had gone into hiding.  One of the approaching three was the moped thief, one was his Father and I have no clue who the other one was. And this is where the story gets even more ridiculous.

The moped thief was holding a FUCKING KATANA. You didn’t misread, motherfucker had a FUCKING SAMURI SWORD. He was screaming about his son, looking for “That motherfucker with the Mohawk” (Max). He demanded to know where he went and I told him I had no idea. After a few minutes, a woman came up behind the thief and wrested the katana from his grip. I breathed a bit easier.

The father was a bit more rational though. He was, with good reason, worried about his grandson.  I explained to him I didn’t hit his son OR his grandson and that it was my moped; it had been stolen in September and I offered to produce the paperwork. He said he would like to see it, so I went in to get it. I had the police report taped up on my wall, like a monument to police inadequateness, so I pulled it down, and walked back downstairs. I gave the father the police report, he looked it over, handed it back to me and they left. They got about 300 ft. towards their house when the police showed up.

 The picture here is from really far away, as I was not about to run over there and exacerbate the situation, but there were two cars, an undercover SUV and a Van on the case. After about ten minutes, a sergeant, a regular officer and some weird crash investigator came over and asked if I was the one with the moped. I said I was and offered them the registration form and the police report. They had no interest in my paperwork. They said that the thief had told them that he was going “about 60” when we stopped him. I told them the bike only goes 25, tops. The sergeant rolled his eyes and said “That’s what we figured”.

The crash investigator wanted to assess the damage to my bike and asked to see it. I took him back and he looked the bike over. I had to inform him that, yes, the handlebars should look like that, and yes, the dents in the fuel tank were there and that everything else wrong with the bike was, in fact, how I wanted it to look. The only thing bad that had happened was the bolt attaching the shock to the swingarm had snapped and the throttle cable was destroyed. He said “…Ok”, and walked away. The police officer asked me if I wanted her to report the moped as recovered and I said yeah. They asked about “The guy with the Mohawk, where did he go?” I said I didn’t know and that was the end of that. They didn’t seem to want to find him at all.

I don’t know what happened as far as charges for the thief. I didn’t press charges as A.) According to my police report, stealing a moped is only “Petty Theft” and I really didn’t care to inconvenience the thief with a $100 fine and B.) I don’t want some stupid grudge and for them to come back seeing as they know exactly where we all live. I got my bike back; I just wanted it to be over. I think the cops saw him with the katana, but they didn’t arrest him, because we saw he was walking around outside his house when we drove by later.

I just know I got my bike back. Vigilante Justice. Word.

-NRG