Rabbit Holes: A stolen bike's journey home

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You should write about my life, the bike theft said, as we rode under the freeway, trucks roaring above us.

Maybe I will, I replied.

I'd gone in trying to get a stolen bike back to its owner.

But now, I realized I was in over my head.

The path was empty. There were no pedestrians, no other cyclists.

Just the two of us next to a muddy creek with trolleys in it and concrete pillars tagged with an old graffiti.

As he hung off my back wheel, I wondered what a bullet would feel like.

Whether you hear it before it hits you, whether it was worth it for story about someone else's stolen bike.

Hello and welcome to Rabbit Holes, a podcast from Escape Collective. I'm your host, Ian Trilor.

Each episode of this podcast takes a deep dive into a story from somewhere in the world of cycling.

And this one is a bit of a hair-raising one.

I went a little bit Gonzo journalist exploring the bike theft economy

and tried to get a stolen bike back to its rightful owner.

In the process, I bought some hot goods and I went for a bike ride with a criminal

and found myself in a pretty dicey situation.

This is the story of one stolen bike's journey home.

Chapter 1. The Psychic Wound

A couple of years ago, I walked out of a bar and found my bike had been stolen.

There were a few phases of grief that I went through in the aftermath, anger, denial, bargaining.

But after that all settled down, I ended up with a kind of numb acceptance.

I think the best way to describe it probably is like a kind of psychic wound.

In the time since, new bikes have come and gone, but the wound remains.

And a ritual has developed. Most days, just on the off chance, I take a quick skim through Facebook Marketplace.

In the hopes that my trusty, crusty old Canon L will show up there.

Maybe clumsily, rattle can sprayed, maybe stripped to parts.

But regardless of condition, I'm certain that I'd still recognise it anywhere.

Probably always will.

My bike hasn't shown up, but in the process I've seen how many other suspicious deals there are.

Bikes that are way nicer than they should be for the prices asked.

Bikes where the seller doesn't really seem to have any clue of what they have.

Now there's a small sliver of this cohort that are just elderly and bewildered.

I got a dusty old canondale from one such guy and I fixed it up for a mate to ride.

That was fine.

But usually there's a combination of indicators that make clear that a bike has probably been stolen.

The photos are usually out of focus and poorly framed.

The details in the listing are limited and the sellers often have recent accounts under fake names.

And whenever such a bike pops up, I look at them and I wonder.

I wonder where the bike came from and how it ended up being sold for a fraction of its worth.

And the kind of desperation that led to it being stolen in the first place.

But there's another part of me that just sees the bike as like a screen on to which the hopes and dreams of the rightful owner can be projected.

And I see these little flickering CPU adventures that they took together.

I mean, I see a bike, but I imagine the owner going through the same emotions I did.

Sad and angry with a psychic wound of their own.

So the other day when one such obviously stolen bike popped up on Facebook Marketplace,

I decided to do what I'd hoped someone else would do for me with my bike.

I decided to try to help that bike find its way home.

Chapter 2. The Listing

When I saw the ad, it was less than an hour old.

I'm not sure what it was that met as algorithms soaring it to bring it to my feed.

There was an asking price of $200 and just four blurry pictures, not one of them showing the bike in its entirety.

There were no sizing details or brands mentioned.

The title of the ad said, quote, graphite mountain cruiser, whatever that even is.

Everything about it seemed deeply fishy.

And then the description read, deep breath, that it was,

twin disc with excellent tires and new type of gear change to make it easy to go up or down roads.

It's very light and only clearing out my garage so grab it as it's price to sell.

That's all one sentence, no punctuation.

But there was some branding, the wheels were from Curve.

The fork looked like it was from Curve 2.

Because the pictures were basically useless at identifying any other specifics,

I then had to make some informed guesses.

The mini tube steel of the frame looked a bit like a Curve,

but with sliding dropouts that I know the brand had last released a bike with about a decade ago.

But even so, despite how rough the pictures looked,

it was obvious that this was worth more than the $200 asking price.

And there were these little purple valve caps in the pictures that told me that once,

it had an owner that loved it.

And there was one other tiny clue to follow.

There was a little round sticker half visible on the frame,

which looked like the branding of a bike shop on the other side of the world.

A British stockest of Curve called gyro cycles.

Now I had no idea what the frame was or how it had ended up in Australia,

but there was at least one lead of where to start looking for its owner.

Within 50 minutes of the listing being online, I was messaging the seller,

who for the purposes of this story I'll call Jack.

I asked for a single clear photo of the bike,

and if he had any idea about sizing.

His response dodged both questions.

He said,

it's pretty good and I'm in Glenroy.

That's a gritty industrial suburb I've never been to on the opposite side of Melbourne.

I asked again for some more pictures,

explaining that I was pretty keen,

but didn't really want to drive for an hour on the basis of almost no information.

No response.

The next morning, before 6am,

a message pinged into my inbox.

I will text you if not bought as I have two people's,

one in this early day and one around two is okay,

and two hundred down in my pocket before travelling on my bike test ride okay.

Thumbs emoji.

As chance would have it, I was up early,

a child had made the night-time shift to the big bed,

her pointy elbows had working me up.

But before that,

it hadn't been a good sleep even so.

You see, I'd spent half the night thinking about how I had this rare chance to help this bike,

find its way back to its home,

and now I realised it was close to slipping away.

I sent another message to the seller.

I would take it sight unseen.

He asked for me to transfer the full amount over to hold it,

which I didn't love,

but we reached a compromise.

$50 deposit,

and it's yours, my friend, he wrote.

Please don't waste my time.

So whoosh went the money from my account to his,

and the deal was done.

Chapter 3,

Into the Unknown.

After dropping the kids off at school,

I checked his profile one last time.

Saw a post he'd made about being,

quote, a gun-licensed outlaw,

Yikes.

And drove for an hour through suburbs

that never been to, over near the airport.

The roads got flatter, less tree-lined.

Finally, I pulled up outside a white brick house,

with a small wire fence separating scrubby grass from the road.

A car with no engine,

sat stripped in the front yard,

a tarpaulin sagged over its missing heart.

An empty cat box sat on the curb beside some steel drums.

The rusty corrugated fence

of the house looked familiar,

as the backdrop from the photos.

I knocked,

and through a thick screen door,

heard movement.

How's it going,

I called into the gloom?

I've been better, said Jack,

as he shuffled outside.

Now I should say I'm not interested

in stigmatizing the addicted and unwell,

but Jack had clearly had a rough life.

As he pulled the bike out from behind the gate,

he immediately led with how he'd got the price wrong.

My brother's gonna kill me, he told me.

Jack was supposed to sell it for $600,

he said,

but he'd listed it for $200.

Everyone wants to buy it,

he said,

pulling out a phone with a cracked screen

that he scrolled through his Facebook messages on.

Look here,

graphite, graphite, graphite,

he said,

pointing out the one by one with a shaking finger.

You've got a bargain, he told me.

I was drunk when I listed it.

Anyway, you fucking owe me $400.

I don't know what to do, mate.

What do I do?

Give you back your money?

I was a bit taken aback.

So you don't want to sell it now, I asked?

No, really, I don't, he said.

I explained that I'd driven for an hour

and that we had a deal.

And then I reminded him that he'd asked me

not to waste his time,

and I expected him not to do the same.

To diffuse the growing tension,

I asked to take the bike for a spin to check its condition.

He asked for my car keys as insurance.

That felt a little bit dicey,

so I gave him the three-folded $50 notes in my pocket instead.

After a quick up and down the street,

with the deals still hanging in limbo,

we chatted some more.

While I'd been riding, he'd popped inside

and emerged with a white coffee in a plastic cup,

and a half-ed and pack of hot cross buns.

Trying to change the subject to bring some normality into it,

I talked about how good hot cross buns are.

Fact check, true.

And he asked if I wanted one.

I said I wasn't hungry,

that I'd just brush my teeth, that he insisted,

and reached in to break one off in the pack,

passing it over to me.

It was a bit stale,

but I picked out it slowly.

At one point, when I stopped eating

to adjust the bike with the folding tool I brought in my pocket,

he noticed, coldly observing,

you're not eating your bun.

I explained that I needed both hands to work on the bike.

After a curdled pause of a few seconds,

he gave a smile to accept my response.

But bikes were a great leveler,

and he invited me through to see the others in his garage.

A new-ish tractor-money, two sizes too big, probably stolen,

and an old truck downhill bike, probably not.

Among the talk about how much travel his bike had,

how you can climb up a wall with the gearing,

the conversation would occasionally

be here towards the violent or the surreal.

At one point, he showed me bullet holes

and a tin fence from a time someone had tried to steal his watch.

He had guns, he said.

Tell me, you don't know who I am, doesn't concern you,

but I could have legally shot the blow

and got away with it.

And then he mined how he'd fumbled the gun as the guy took off

and Jack had gone after him shooting down the road, bang, bang, bang.

I'd later learned that this probably wasn't provato.

Standing in the garage next to the downhill bike

he actually seemed to love.

He's a unicorn, he called it.

Jack told me how his phone was tapped

and that his brother was probably going to spend the money

from the bike on two and a half grams of crystal meth.

I didn't know that was the bike twice exchange rate.

I offered in response.

He dunked his bun in his coffee

and then wet crumbs,

dropped onto the floor.

For another 20 minutes or so we kept chatting

about parenthood and bikes

and some stranger tangents too.

He liked my mustache.

He said that the secret to youth

was to think like a child

and quote,

lose as much blood as you can like women.

It's like changing the oil in a car.

If you take the old blood out, new blood comes in.

After a while with a conversation

heading in increasingly troubling directions,

he pulled the track road bike out of his garage.

As he did so,

I noticed that the little purple valve caps

had moved over to it.

And then he told me that we were going for a ride

down a nearby trail.

I wasn't that keen,

but it didn't sound like a suggestion.

Chapter four,

a bike ride with an outlaw.

The path along the ring road

that he'd wanted to show me

wasn't much to look at.

Cracked bitumen patched

with the reveallets of tar,

dumped mattresses in the grass on the side,

not many people around.

Jack started hanging off my back wheel

and I'd look behind every so often

to see him soft pedaling 10 or 20 meters behind

in my periphery.

Occasionally he'd catch up

and tell me to tell him how smooth the bike goes on was.

Then he'd try to argue the pricing again.

When we were waiting for some traffic lights

to cross a road,

he asked about my sunglasses.

And gently suggested

that I give them to him as compensation.

I declined.

Soon after he wanted to show me a lake

under a freeway bridge,

and with the traffic noise from the trucks

wishing by overhead

and the lack of people around,

I realised our isolation.

From there it was a short step

to wondering what a bullet would feel like.

I'd read once that when you're stabbed

it's like a punch.

It's only when you're bleeding

that you begin to understand

what's actually happened.

Is it bullet the same, I wondered?

Would I hear it before it tore into my body?

Now I didn't get shot.

He'd wanted to show me

where people sometimes come fishing.

But I did drop him on the hill

back up from the lake

after it fumbled a gear change.

And when he caught up again,

he seemed happy

about the fact that we were outriding.

Nothing like it, he told me.

That moment of connection

abruptly pivoted

towards some other conversational gambits.

How COVID is a hoax,

how everyone he knows,

who's had five jabs is dead.

I opted not to volunteer my own status.

And how organs turn from human tissue to jelly

thanks to the vaccine.

In one sentence,

he pivoted from the Epstein files

to how he'd seen a video

of someone eating a human lake once.

He spoke about how his friends

were all dead for one thing or another.

And how he'd put a curse

on the parents of his best friend

after they'd refused

to replace all his blood

and switched off his life support

when he was in a coma.

At one point,

he asked what I did for work.

I'm a writer, I replied.

You should write about my life,

he told me.

Maybe I will,

I told him.

Sounds like he'd done a bit of living,

had a few adventures.

And misadventures, he added.

After half an hour of soft pedaling,

we got back to his house.

And I loaded the stolen bike up

in the boot of my car.

As I took the front wheel off,

he told me that part alone

was worth more than I paid him.

True.

And muddied that it was a shame

I wouldn't even give him another hundred

or my glasses to make up for this absolute steal.

But in the end, we shook hands

and said our goodbyes.

I climbed into the car

and did a three-point turn

as he stood in the gutter,

watching me.

I rolled down the window,

raised a hand in a wave,

and thanked him for the hot crossbow.

Thank you for the hot crossbow as well.

When I looked back

in the rearview mirror

at the end of the street

he was still standing there,

watching me drive off

with a stolen bike

in the back of my car.

Chapter 5.

The Owner.

With the bike now safe,

I braced myself for the long game.

I'd looked up contact details

for the people at gyro cycles

and had visions

of tracking down the owner

through their store,

working out how this strange black bike

had found its way from London

to the south of Australia.

As I drove homewards,

I thought a bit delusioningly

about uncovering

an international bike smuggling ring,

and wondered if this one bike

was just the tip of the iceberg.

In the end, I decided on a kind of hybrid approach.

I'd stopped by curve

on the way back to my place

as it was kind of on the way

and see if they had any record

of the fork or wheels.

Any little clue

from a little sticker

of a bike shop

to a serial number on a fork

could be the difference

between this stolen bike

staying lost

and being found again.

As I rolled the bike in

through the open doors of curve,

a cluster of employees

standing in the workshop

looked up at the ticking of the free will.

What I wasn't expecting

was the tallest of them,

looking at me

with a bit of disbelief to say,

oh, that's my bike!

He clearly recognised it

from a glance from me

to his way.

Cue pandemonium.

Standing there,

we, by which I mean

all the curve folks,

half a dozen of them,

not just the bike's owner.

We all traded stories

about how this needle

in a haystack

had come to happen.

They'd all seen

the graphite mountain cruiser

pop up on Facebook

at about the same time

that I had,

recognising it from a glance,

and had been messaging

Jack about picking it up.

When he was scrolling

through his phone

to show me all the interest

there was,

a chunk of those

buying with me

for the purchase

were from Curve.

The bike had been stolen

from the company's headquarters

six weeks ago.

A thief,

who from CCTV images

I saw,

didn't look like Jack.

Had snuck in

behind some other customers.

And while the stuff

were occupied there,

had ducked into a storage

area of the showroom.

The first bike

that the thief grabbed

had been mid-build

and was unrideable.

So that got quickly

thrown to the side

and this bike had been

grabbed as the plan B.

The guy had been in and out

without anyone

even realising

until the end of the day,

when the bike's owner,

Oli Jones,

Curve's social marketing manager,

went to ride home

and found his commuter

was gone.

Oli has been in Australia

for 18 months

but was originally

from the UK,

where he was a curve

ambassador,

and Jiro Cycles

was his local shop,

hence the sticker.

But the bike hadn't

come from there,

it had been designed

and built up in the room

I was standing in,

with a hodgepodge

of components

from the parts bin.

There was a nice bike,

certainly,

but also an extremely

distinctive one

with some interesting,

kind of weird choices.

And there had been,

as I suspected,

since it had been stolen,

a clumsy,

rattle-can paint job

on the bike.

But I thought

that they'd probably

removed some markings

on the frame.

I learnt that the

frame set never had a

head badge,

or any other markings

on it to begin with.

There was an unreleased

prototype.

There were just a few

in existence.

All of them in the hands

of Curve staff

who were writing them

for testing purposes,

to see if they were

putting into production.

A road beautifully,

I offered.

It reminded me,

like the company's,

steel adventure bike,

the Kevin of Steel,

with sliding dropouts.

My original plan

had been to ask the guys

at Curve to look

up the serial number

as a way of tracing it

back to the owner.

But with this particular bike,

that would have been

a bit more complicated.

Here's Curve's

tech lead,

Jimmy Ruslin.

Our factories

will have a record

of all the serial numbers.

So we can track them

down to the batch

that when they were sent

here, if they were

sent to our Taiwan

warehouse or whatever.

But then every single

bike that goes

out of here,

a frame set,

complete bike,

whatever, we write down

the serial number

of the frame and the fork.

And against the

sales order number,

which is then linked

to either a shop

or a customer.

So if this,

if this bike,

if I hadn't come in today,

and I just said,

this is the serial number,

is this you would have known

immediately what

what bike it was

and who it belonged to?

If it was,

if it was a commercially

sold bike,

then yes,

we would have.

Whereas this was kind of

a prototype special run.

So I had to track down

the serial numbers

because this was the one

batch of serial numbers

that we actually didn't

have written down

because it was just

like a small batch of frames

for in-house use.

But I did track

those serial numbers down.

So yeah.

Detailed tracking

of serial numbers

is commonplace

in the cycling industry

for quality control purposes.

But there's often

a missing link

that only gets as far

as a retailer.

But there's no standardisation

of the process

beyond that point.

Some stores make a record

of the serial number,

linking it to the consumer

in their system.

But this is far from the norm.

And it puts the owners

on the end user

to keep track

of identifying details

and record them

for insurance

and investigative purposes.

Here's to you me again.

With serial numbers,

I guess we are another thing

that should be mentioned

is that you don't rely

on the shop

having your serial number.

Make sure you take

a photo of it,

write it down yourself.

Everyone should do it.

I think we,

yeah, as we learned

with yours,

like we didn't actually

write it down on yours

because it was just

like one of these

one-off bikes.

So yeah.

Learn the hard way.

So, record those serial numbers.

Without a serial number

or identifying markings,

which can be spray-painted over,

the risk of stolen bikes

staying stolen increases.

Chapter 6.

The Bigger Picture

And there are a lot

of stolen bikes

with many more people

if you want to know more

about the serial number

of stolen bikes

with many more people

impacted with this issue

than just me and Oli.

In my home city of Melbourne,

it's got a population

nearing five and a half million.

Bike theft has been

steadily on the rise

for the last decade.

According to Victoria's

Crime Statistics Agency,

there were 8,083 bikes

reported stolen

in the state last year,

an average of 22 a day.

And chances aren't good

of getting a bike

back when it has been stolen.

No matter whether

it's a serial number

or not.

Now, there are varying

degrees of professionalism

of bike thieves.

But most follow the formula

of the bike theft

recovery I'd just been

involved in.

A bike gets opportunistically

stolen, is passed

from one person to another

in exchange for currency

or chemicals,

and might eventually

show up for sale.

But while the scale

of the problem is substantial,

and the impact of it can be

pretty devastating

for the people who have

lost their beloved

possessions,

it's largely a non-violent crime.

And police direct

their resources accordingly.

This is Oli

from Curve Talking.

And with your experiences

with the police in relation

to this bike theft

or other bike thefts

that you've known about,

do you feel that there's

enough that's done

or is it kind of just like

a small problem that's

not looked into?

I mean, I guess that's

a pretty big question.

What, I mean, they seem

to be helpful

and it seemed to be like

responded to,

and I was dealt with

in a promptly

time manner

and everything like that,

as a

in terms of

whether I felt

that they were going to

recover my bicycle,

I'd probably have to say no.

I guess, again,

it's a pretty small issue

for them,

but I guess it kind of,

like I said before,

it comes into one

of those things that,

you know, my bicycle

is my livelihood,

it's my way to get to work,

it is a big issue

for a lot of people.

So it's kind of,

a bit disappointing

to say you feel like

they're potentially

not doing enough

for those smaller issues.

When it showed up on

Facebook Marketplace,

did you have like

an idea of how to get it back?

Did you try

and involve the police

in that sort of decision

or is it just like

vigilante trying to do things

yourself?

As soon as it popped up

on Facebook,

as a marketplace,

I went through to the police,

I gave them, you know,

the guy's name,

the link to the post,

all of these things,

and I said that

I was trying to

message him to try

and purchase it

and get an address

out of the guy,

to no response.

I mean, this was at

three o'clock

on a Tuesday afternoon,

so, you know,

and they were all busy

and it's towards the end

of the day,

but yeah,

didn't really hear anything,

and then updated them this morning,

saying it's come up

pending and sold,

which is obviously

yourself,

kind of as a bit of a,

like I think,

maybe we've missed the vote

on recovering this,

again,

to no response,

it's now,

almost two o'clock

in the afternoon.

But yeah,

I kind of had lost hope of it,

I guess,

seeing it sold, like,

you know, we didn't know

it was going to go.

My only next step

would have been

to probably offer

200 bucks

to whoever bought it

on a bunch of

Facebook pages

and see if anyone

owns up,

or if it had just kind of gone

back into the abyss

of Melbourne's

cycling lanes, you know?

And once it's in that

abyss again,

the bike theft victim

either gives it up

to stores,

or ends up,

like me,

faithfully scrolling

through classifieds

in the slim hope

that their bike will show up,

and then,

competing

with other opportunistic

buyers to get it back.

In a city of millions

of people,

with stolen goods

being shifted

from one place

to the next,

it's sheer luck

if you're able

to reclaim it.

And even if you do

manage to track a stolen

bike down,

as I was about to learn,

there are risks

in trying to get it back.

Chapter 7,

A History of Violence

I'd gone into the transaction

with Jack,

pretty clear-eyed

about the reason

why the bike was

in his possession.

But there was some extra

research that the folks

at Curve had done

that I hadn't.

They showed me a link

that looked up his name

on Google,

and found that he'd

recently been arrested

and charged.

After, allegedly,

firing sporadic

volatility of arrows

into a special needs school.

Police say

special needs students

were in danger

during a series

of attacks

over four months.

He's accused

of endangering vulnerable students

by shooting arrows

into a special needs school.

Did you fire arrows

at the school?

In a raid on the house

I'd just been to,

police had seized bows,

arrows,

and a slingshot.

Now that's obviously

pretty bad,

but it's also just,

just getting started

as I'd learn

when doing some

googling later.

2015 court documents

showed he'd been

in court 34 times

in the past couple

of decades

on 146 charges,

beginning at high school

with the stabbing

of a fellow student.

From there,

followed a litany

of brushes with the law.

Drug use and addiction,

traffic offenses,

a number of serious assaults,

some random,

some targeted,

some on police,

as well as serious

domestic violence,

threats to kill,

and years in jail,

often in solitary confinement.

Next month,

he'll be back in court

for discharging a missile,

willful damage,

and reckless conduct,

endangering serious injury,

relating to those

alleged attacks

on the special needs school.

In my time in Jack's garage,

we'd spoken about people

with disability.

It came up,

kind of, organically.

And he told me how,

quote,

I don't treat them any

differently to how I treat you,

they're the exact

fucking same.

And at the time,

that felt like a glimpse

of a fundamentally

kind man affected

by circumstance.

But with the benefit

of hindsight,

and that backstory

started falling into place,

perhaps that was

no reassurance at all,

but something more ominous,

an equal opportunity approach

to aggression.

At Curve,

Oli and Jimmy took stock

of their prodigal prototype,

returned after six weeks,

being shuffled between criminals.

How is the condition of it?

Is it pretty much as expected?

I mean, yeah,

there's a few

bashed up parts on there.

I had a,

like a nog tracking system

on the bottle cage mount,

which has been gone

through with a mallet a few times.

I think the seat tube has taken

a few pretty hefty knocks there.

And yeah, we were just uncovering,

they've spray-painted

over a bunch of stuff.

But generally,

it looks rightable,

which is pretty good.

I think it's going to be back

on the road pretty soon.

Maybe a bit of a clean,

and then we'll be back

into business, you know?

After the morning that I just had,

we agreed that's about

as good an outcome

as we could hope for.

A bike back in the right hands,

and nobody hurt.

A week later,

I still find myself drawn

to Facebook Marketplace

in search of my own

stolen bike.

I scroll through the listings,

looking for blurry photos

of a canondale

that used to be mine.

And I wonder

about the journey it has been

through in the time

since it was liberated

from my possession.

I wonder about the person

that took it.

And whether they ever

appreciated it,

or just saw it as a means

to an end.

Would I want my bike back?

Yeah, of course.

But then, I think

about my bike ride

with a self-proclaimed outlaw,

and how it could have gone,

and I wonder

whether it would be worth the risk.

And I'm not sure anymore.

Maybe it's easier

to survive a psychic wound

than whatever it takes

to close it.

Phew!

Thanks for joining us

for this episode of Rabbit Holes.

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And yeah,

I know I'm biased,

but I think it's the best

place on the internet

for bike stuff.

This episode

was written by me

in Trilor,

and produced

and edited by the team

at Redbricks Media.

Thanks for listening,

and we'll see you next time

down the rabbit hole.

.