Hard Lesson Learned

Well....as a cyclist living close to a city, I'm afraid it was just a matter of time before the inevitable happened to either me or someone I know and unfortunately, it happened to me.  It pains me to report, but my beloved Redline mountain bike was stolen yesterday from my locked bike rack at the RTD lot in Englewood.  If the heart-breaking sight of an empty bike rack (which was still locked by the way!) wasn't traumatic enough, when I called the police to report the incident, I quickly learned that I didn't properly prepare for such an occasion because one of the first questions the officer asked was if I had the serial number, which of course, I didn't.  To be honest, I never even thought of writing it down and nobody ever mentioned it to me.  The officer was extremely nice and highly recommended that, regardless of the item (bicycle, laptop, etc), to record the serial number and keep it in a safe place.  I didn't realize that whenever these scumbag thieves take your precious item to a pawn shop (which is most likely where they'll end up), if the item has a serial number, the pawn shop must enter that into the system, at which time, a stolen item will be flagged and must be reported.  

So please please PLEASE...if you do nothing else today, tomorrow or this weekend, please write down the serial number of your bike and put it somewhere safe.  Do not get caught in the situation that I found myself in yesterday.  Also, both the officer and security person advised to post pictures of the stolen bike on Facebook, Craigslist, Twitter and every other bulletin you come in contact with, because the best chance you have of finding a bike is by someone else seeing it and contacting you. 

And if you happen to see this beautiful Redline D660 hardtail 29er, please contact me immediately.