Lessons Learned

After thieves made off with a bunch of cycles from our condo parkade on Jan 25/26 I learned a whole whack of things about the criminal element around Panama City Beach, Fl. Bike theft and other petty theft here is rampant. It was an organized job as the culprits had to have scouted the job, determined there was no video surveillance, what cycles were worth taking, and when there was no staff on site. The only clues left were a bunch of neatly severed security cables.

(They left my old MTB neatly locked to the rack. It had a heavy cable "good quality" lock on it that I had lost the key for. It took me a week to get far enough out of my blue funk to cut it loose for a ride. Took 30 seconds with my $6 hacksaw to free it. So much for locks.)

The morning after the theft a bunch of cycle owners were standing around in shocked disbelief wondering what to do. The police were called and investigated without offering much hope anything would be recovered. It seems this is a pretty common occurence here with the cycles probably gone to another city to be parted out or peddled.

I scoured Craigslist and Ebay looking for listings. No luck todate. I reported the theft to bikeindex.org who posted it on their network as stolen. Maybe someday it will show up, but not so far.

I raged, stewed, plotted revenge, cruised the streets and the internet before in a moment of quiet reflection I realized I am so more fortunate than quite a number of family and acquaintances who are facing real critical life problems. Why am I wasting my time stewing about a few pieces of metal and rubber. Put it behind me and order a new one. What's the saying, "I'm going to run out of time before I run out of money."

The insurance covered most of the replacement cost. Would have covered it all if I had been bright enough to buy full coverage,  but hey no one was going to steal it anyways,right?

What to buy? There was no restriction from the insurance as long as the replacement  value was at least at a level of the lost unit. I had ridden the Rover over 500 miles that one month so I must know by now if I wanted something different. There were some options, but honestly I was well pleased with the Rover and the options I might consider, like larger wheels and Big Apple trires could be as easily and cost effectively added to a Rover as any other make or model.

In the end TerraTrike offered to help me out a bit, so I called Taylor  and placed my order for a new Rover 8 EXT. It arrives tomorrow. It's already insured but it will be spending the evenings watching the TV with us in the livingroom.