I Recycle

In an apartment’s basement next to the train tracks I found a little blue Raleigh bicycle (locked up by the front wheel which is attached to the fork by a quick release mechanism, practically begging to be undone) and I’m thinking about taking it. The lock that restrains it is one of those things with a big U that locks into another piece. They’re supposedly the best kind of lock you can buy, but I know that isn’t true. If you want to break one all you have to do is stick a car-jack in the middle, spring her open, and the bike is all yours- I saw it on Dateline. Breaking any other kind of lock isn’t hard either if you have a good pair of bolt cutters. Just wedge one end in your armpit and squeeze the other with both arms. The people who stole my last three bikes probably knew this trick.

Stealing is wrong, no doubt about that. When my bikes were stolen it put me in the kind of funk where I’d scope out everybody who rode by me, sometimes getting in their way to eye their ride. The first of my bikes to be stolen, an old Huffy, I found abandoned freshman year of college, used it to get everywhere, and planned to restore with my dad; the second, a BMX racer, I bought when I was 11 with my own lawn-mowing money; and the third, whose theft had me punching walls and throwing pillows, was a custom bobber (all chrome parts with a candied black frame, white wall tires, and huge handlebars that made me look like an ape) I’d spent months building, and rode it maybe a dozen times before waking up one morning to find its lock hanging, snapped and useless, from the bike rack. Of course I never found the culprits. I don’t want to put anybody through the kind of impotent anguish bike theft brings --the kind where if you go looking for sympathy people tell you not to get so worked up about a bike, or that I should have kept it inside, or maybe I should invest in less steal-able things. But honestly, I’m not too concerned about whoever owns the bike I want to take. It’s trashed, left for dead and rusting. The derailleurs can’t move, the brake pads are flaking, the chain has fused into an oval and will need to be hack-sawed off, the seat is ripped, the tires are flat, the rims are bent, the gear cables are frayed, and I’m afraid that when I take apart the headset and bottom bracket I’ll find that rust is eating the bike from inside out like that brain eating Amazon Death Fungus does to ants.

 Whoever owns, or owned the bike didn’t care enough to so much as wipe the road grime off the gears before sentencing it to an eternity locked to a bike rack in the basement of a high-rent student housing complex. Judging from the cracked cable housing (made of high density plastic that is never supposed to deteriorate), I’d say this bike hasn’t moved since Noah’s flood. And it’s a damn shame too; we’re talking about a mid seventies Grand Prix, the flagship of the Raleigh brand.

In 1956 my uncle bought one of a few Raleigh bicycles shipped to America that year. It cost him $250 and was the only ten-speed in Mukwonago Wisconsin, out of a handful in the state; the others being owned by professional racers and hard-core enthusiasts. My dad inherited the bike when his brother went to college. There has been a Raleigh bicycle in my family for 56 years. I am drawn to the brand. Through some kind of instinctual connection, the Grand Prix is calling for me, pleading that I rescue it, and I must oblige.

The Grand Prix is not the first bike I’ve rescued, or attempted to rescue. Aside from the old Huffy and the bobber that were heisted, I rebuilt a Panasonic and a women’s Schwinn. The pre-restored versions of both were given to me for a favor. The favor being that I steal them. See, I needed a bike, and my friend needed to get rid of this girlfriend who had a tendency to leave things at his house, including the old Panasonic and Schwinn. She thought that fixing up the bikes would be a great project for her and my friend to do together. He did not share her enthusiasm and saw the bikes as just another obstacle to breaking up with her. Anyway, I stole them, he said some random criminals did it, she drilled him, he admitted it was actually me and that he made me do it because he knew the bikes were just going to sit outside his house forever and perhaps he and her should maybe see other people. The happy ending is: after fixing them up, I sold the Panasonic to a needy physics student, and gave the Schwinn to my girlfriend, whose bike was stolen a few weeks before. My friend’s now ex-girlfriend, however, called me a bike thief last time I saw her and that kind of hurt.

Ethics and morality are challenging subjects when applied to bicycle restoration. I'm an especially bad student of principled decision making: my moral compass is easily skewed by magnetic personalities. When two of my good buddies suggested I join them on a midnight retreat to a post-Columbine-era elementary school I figured Hell, why not. We weren’t too clever about the whole “forced entry” thing. My friends had keys -I don’t know how they got them- but the school had infrared silent alarms. Using K9 units to flush us out, the police caught us without much hassle, but they were a bit frumpy about having to take time out of their busy policing schedules to arrest three dumb kids. (By the way, I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell too many people about this, it might hurt my future presidential campaign) So after being released to my parents, they assigned a juvenile probation officer to check up on me for the next few months. Since I was fairly low risk –student council president, honor roll, junior varsity soccer player- the probation officer they sent me was sort of brain damaged. Every time we met he’d say, “Scott, you’ve got book smarts, but what you lack is street smarts.” What he had plenty of was clichés, but what he lacked was the ability to understand my situation. I had street smarts: I walked a mile through barely-lit urban back-roads to successfully break into a locked government building in the middle of the night, after all. No, what I lack, and what the PO failed to define, is a consistent sense of morality. I see no reason not to take a bike that looks to have been forgotten. Bikes are made for riding, not for leaving in basements. Keeping the Grand Prix locked up is a disservice to the Raleigh brand and the skilled workers in Nottingham, England who hand-fabricated the frame using the most precise technology and highest-grade steel available. The problem, as I see it, is how to save the Grand Prix without alerting the authorities, who through some bastardization of justice will defend the Grand Prix’s former owner by impounding the bike and sending me to jail.

Now, the ethical question that arises is what right do I have to take something that technically isn’t mine. Well, what right do can collectors have to take my recycling when it’s sitting on the curb? Is that a bad example? Look, I’ve tried to find an ethical way of taking a bike and it’s brought me nothing but trouble. Some months ago I found some girl’s bike with a smashed rim, so I taped a note with my information on it saying I’d like to buy the frame from her if she didn’t intend to fix it herself. Here is our online conversation:

Gina: hello. i believe you left a note on my Specialized road bike this evening.

Scott: yeah, it's a cool bike, I was thinking of making it a fixed gear since teh rear wheel got smashed, but I found a different one that fit me better later lasst night. Thanks for messaging me, though. Sorry your rear wheel is messed up, vandals suck.

Gina: so you weren't the one to ruin it? you just go around looking for ruined bikes to buy from people?

certainly you must realize how suspicious this sounds.

Scott: if I really wanted your bike, I'd steal it. But I've had bikes stolen and vandalized before and I know how much it sucks, especially if it was a good bike. But to answer your question: no and yes. No, I don't vandalize personal property; yes, I do go around looking for ruined bikes to buy off people, then I repair them if possible, otherwise they go to the Bike Library. Which, I suggest, is where you should go to get a new rim.
I didn't mean to sound suspicious, it had been sitting at the racks for a while and I wanted to see what it’s deal was before the campus police got a hold of it. They only let you keep it there a month, you know. Then it gets taken to a warehouse to be sold at auction, and neither of us wants that. I'll revise my method next time I go bike scavenging. Whoever hurt your bike will get theirs.

Gina: my bike was hardly in danger of being carted off by the campus police; i rode it to campus on monday at noon, and left it at becker monday night, and monday night only. prior to that, it was in my kitchen. i'm not sure whose bike you were 'scoping out,' but it's curious that a bike you were admittedly casing ended up incuring such damage.
the frame is bent, meaning the bike is probably irreparable.
a police report was filed, and your note was turned over.

For the record, I didn’t hurt her bike. I was trying to be nice; I wanted to be a nice guy. I figured giving her some money for a messed up bike would be a nice thing to do and would benefit both of us. As she said, the bike was probably irreparable. I should have just taken it, now it’s in a scrap yard.

Moving the Grand Prix presents another challenge. Since nothing on it works and the lock necessitates the amputation of the front wheel, I’ll have to carry the bastard from the train tracks across downtown, past the police station to my house on the north side. What will I tell somebody who asks why I’m carrying a wheel-less, dilapidated, stolen, vintage road racer? Uh, I was practicing wheelies but the chain rusted over? Not like it matters, the only person I really have to worry about is the original owner, who I doubt would care enough to do anything.

So, with bike at home, I’ll begin the chopping process. Everything too broken or rusted to work it gets chucked, leaving me with a frame and handlebars. I make some deals with my bike shop friends (beers for parts) and with my wrenches and pliers pop out a Tour de France champion setup in about a day. Recycling the bike will free up bike rack space and reduce the waste of new bike production, constituting my good deed for the day. Through parts purchases I will help the world economy and give support to the bike industry. Once finish, I can travel longish distances without a car, reducing America’s dependency on foreign oil. And most importantly, I will be a hero for the people that value stuff and hate to see a good thing not being put to use. Champion of hard-working Middle American Virtues, yep that’s me.