Our Crazy Weekend

I did not obsess about the committee very much this weekend, even though I was fully expecting to. There was just too much else going on to obsess about.

Thursday evening, Anthony mentioned that he'd seen a tandem for sale that was just like the Black Bomber (our stolen tandem). I asked him if he thought it was ours, but he said no because it had different tires and different saddles and such. We talked briefly about buying it and I fell asleep thinking, "Does it have a rear seat shock post?" The reason for this thought is that a rear seat shock post is standard on this model of bike, but we took it off of ours so that we could put the seat low enough for Davan to ride it.

Friday morning, we discovered that our neighbors were having a garage sale and decided at the last minute to put some stuff out ourselves. We didn't do well at the garage sale and should have saved ourselves the effort, but oh well. We also spent the morning getting ready for an overnight bike trip. Davan had been wanting to do a bike trip on her own bike, so we planned a ride out to my MIL's place. The route out ended up being 8.6 miles and back was 7.5.

Anyway, just before we were going to leave, I decided I'd better check my email and see if Freecycle needed any attention (I'm a moderator on a Freecycle board). Anthony decided to take another look at the tandem for sale, as I was online already. We discovered that it's our tandem. It is missing the rear seat shock stem and, even more importantly, it has our trailer hitch on it.

Anthony called the guy, pretending to be interested in buying the bike, and the guy didn't know a thing about it - age, size, nothing. He claimed to have bought it used from "some guy". Anthony set up a time to go see the bike, in his effort to make the call seem real. Then he called the police who said that they could do nothing for us without the serial number, even though there are distinguishing characteristics which let us know for sure it's our bike. I doubt there's another bike of this type and size in Oregon, much less with the modifications we made. Anthony also sawed off the ends of the handle bars to make them fit Davan better. It's possible that the thief changed the handlebars, but you wouldn't know unless you took the grips off.

Once the police said they weren't interested, we decided that maybe we should keep the appointment Anthony had made with the guy, take $200 with us and tell him, thanks for finding our bike - here's a finders fee and just leave with the bike. However, Anthony had made the appointment for 4:00, which is well after we were supposed to leave on our bike trip. He called back to change the time to 2:45 and we made arrangements for Davan to go to a friend's house.

On the way to drop off Davan, though, Anthony realized that he'd actually said 3:45 on the phone, so, after dropping Davan off, he called back on the cell phone to try to reschedule again. The guy couldn't make the changed time. After some deliberation, we opted to just pick Davan back up, proceed with our bike trip and try to come up with a plan.

We had a nice trip and Davan did really well on the ride. We had her two older cousins camp out with us in the yard and a good time was had. Then we came home Saturday morning and it was time to tackle the bike issue.

My MIL had the idea to look at other things this guy is selling, so we did. We did a search on his phone number and discovered that he's selling three other bikes - one other is particularly high end. Now, seeing as how he knew nothing at all about our tandem, he's not a collector. He's just plain stolen these bikes. It was our hideous bad luck to have the tandem out in front of the Winco when he was there shopping and he took advantage (is my theory).

I opted to call the police again with this new information. The officer we spoke with did take more information from us, but after having to respond to two different emergency calls during two different phone conversations, finally called back to say that we were pretty much out of luck. He did say that he'd talk to his supervisor to see what could be done.

Meanwhile, we called Anthony's friend, Matt, whose cell phone Anthony had used to call the previous owners when he first bought the bike. We're trying to see if Matt can get the phone number record so that we can call up that owner and say, "Hey, by any chance do you have the serial number off of that tandem you sold us?" If we can get the number, then the police will intervene.

Also, in the meantime, we formulated tons of different plans, ranging from confronting the seller to just taking off with the bike during a test ride. On Sunday, Anthony even called the seller to set up a time to see the bike, planning on just taking off, but ended up talking to his wife. After that fiasco, though, we were both so worried and keyed up that we changed our minds. A few issues...

1) We might be on fine moral ground by stealing the bike back, but we wouldn't be square with the law. This could put the adoption in jeopardy.

2) It puts Anthony (and all of us, if the guy manages to figure out where he took the bike to) in danger's way.

3) After stealing it back, even if we painted it, would I ever feel comfortable riding it again? I don't feel like I would.

So, we're back to:

A) Seeing what the police can do. We still haven't heard back from the cop after talking to his supervisor, so something may still happen there. Plus, we have the serial number plan in the works.

B) If plan A fails, we're thinking of calling him up and playing it straight. "That tandem is our bike which was stolen from Winco. We are offering a finder's fee of $200. Let's meet and make the trade." Chances are that he'll say no, but at least we'll have tried and then it's all on the up and up. Also, we're thinking he'll have a hard time selling it (due to it's size and special nature - tandems that are more in the main-stream size-wise, often take a month or more to move off the boards and even then, we don't know that they've sold). So, we'll also tell him that the deal stands and give him my cell phone number if he wants to get something out of it.

Plus, both of these plans are ones that we can share with Davan. This is also a moral guidepost for me. If I can't tell Davan about it, then it's dodgy. Also, we'd already written off this bike as a loss. Even though it would be ideal to get it back, free and clear, I don't feel happy with paying for it or with stealing it. I'd rather it go to someone else if those are our only options. We've been saving up for a new one anyway.

So, it was a weekend of a lot of pacing and worrying. Anthony and I were both quite drained by last night.

That wasn't all, though. On top off all of this, Davan's mouse, Suzie, had to be put to sleep yesterday. Suzie sustained an injury from one of the cats a few weeks ago. It was a fairly bad scrape across the back of her neck. The cat had gotten to her through her cage bars with her claw while visiting Davan in her room. We applied Neosporine a few times in the first few days.

At first it looked as though it was healing up alright. About a week ago, though, we realized that it wasn't healing anymore. Suzie had taken to scratching at it and was actually opening it back up with her claws. It was wider than it had been when she first was injured. We debated what to do, but Suzie is not a young mouse and we did feel comfortable with a large vet bill for her.

I opted for all the first aid I could do. We decided on buying some NuSkin - a liquid bandaid sort of affair, which is water proof and lasts for days. It was hard to get it on her, but we did manage it. By the end of the day, though, Suzie had cleaned it off herself. As she was eating it while cleaning, we opted not to put it on again. At this point, Suzie was still very animated - eating, drinking and playing.

However, this weekend I started noticing a distinct lack of energy on her part. When I finally got her in my hands and looked at her closely yesterday, it was obvious that something needed to be done. She was oozing blood and there was blood on her claws from scratching. The cut was much worse - deeper and going down her side. Her eyes looked like they were swollen and, after first, I thought she was unable to open them. She did open them as I was holding her, but things were bad. Davan tearfully agreed that the best thing to do for her was to not let her suffer anymore. It was a sad thing to do.

Davan spent the afternoon grieving on and off. The first hour or so, she spent laying down, crying off and on while being cuddled by her dad (I had the duty of taking her to the vet). We had a memorial service for her, where we talked about her and then had ice cream (because you always eat at memorials). Every so often, Davan would say she was thinking of Suzie and she'd be sad or crying. She ended up sleeping in our room last night because her room was too quite with Suzie gone. She spoke of her again this morning.

Between all of this, she's been playing normally. She's happy that the cats can come into her room now, and has made a few places for them to sleep.

All-in-all, it was quite the weekend. Although we're still in some limbo about the tandem, we're glad the weekend of high stress is over and we're comfortable with the decision we've come to regarding the tandem.

Tomorrow is the 4th and then next week, we're on to committee for Zach and Kohl! Speaking of Zach and Kohl, we tried to show Angie (SIL) their pics on the site this weekend, but they've been taken down. Zach and Kohl are on their way to being placed. With us? We'll see....