I've been doing some remodeling and had moved my bikes from the garage out to my storage shed so I could store the bedroom furniture there. I came home to find multiple bikes pulled out and laid on the ground. The Mondia, Bottechia, my commuter, MB3...So I inventoried what was missing. I was a little upset that they passed over my vintage bikes just to steal a leaf blower. Now I'm riding this weekend and leaving the yard work until after I get out to Lowes.

Wow. How fortunate for you. Bike remain and now you get to get a new blower. If they only knew what they overlooked.

Were they at least respectful of the bikes in their placement on the ground?

Thieves aren't always the brightest of people. Glad you still have your bicycles. I would be so pissed if thieves ever stole my wife's lawn/garden equipment.

But remember... they might come back.

They were tossed with abandon... Got a few scratches on the Mondia. I now have the shed hooked up to the house security system but the bikes are back in the garage.

That's why they're thieves.

[MENTION=79743]curbtender[/MENTION]- I guess congratulations- you got lucky on this one- but as Dave mentioned- they know where your bikes are now- make sure that shed gets locked up tight.

Wow...congratulations on the luck! Or...as pointed out...the stupidity on behalf of the thieves...

When I was stationed in Yuma, some thieves broke into my off base storage unit while I was TDY to Fallon NV. Turns out most of the units at the base were out of town. The thieves broke in to something like 100-120 units and took just guns. They left motorbikes, tools stereo and band Hi Fi gear. Of course no one was ever caught but the cops and the storage people were sure it had to be someone from the base.


Too bad about the leaf blower.

Good Idea! I need to do that here as well.

Re leaf blower... Check neighbor's trash. :-)

I can take any bike I own and ride it uptown, park it in the street, and walk away--for hours. It's always there when I return. I feel very, very fortunate to have finally found this shangrila. I see many incidents of bikes being left out on the sidewalk, unlocked, overnight. Close call with the leaf blower incident. Congrats.

Well that worked out well.

Bay area native here, if you have the serial of it, you can most likely find it at the Laney college flea market this weekend.
Worth a shot if you go dead early before somebody else buys it, although they might scratch out identifiers.

Should've gone to Lowes on the 14th and bought a new leafblower and given it to your wife for VD. Kill 2 birds with one stone!

That was my first reaction, as well.

Well, after 30 years of picking trash, I'm sure they were a little overwhelmed by the accumulation. A neighbor confronted the lookout because she was parked partially into his driveway. I have a video from another neighbor of the car but not the thieves. I liked the system he had so that's the next purchase. He has access to all his cameras from his smartphone and I've upgraded the alarm to text any entry that's been made. The wife has been sleeping with a BBQ fork. So I guess they will be forked if they come back...

No animals to "monkey" around with them? I guess you take the good with the bad here. I'm heading out into a 70 degree sunny, windless afternoon.

Funny story about when my house got burglarized: the thief passed over the Gibson, the Fenders, a Supro Res-o-glas collectible and a really rare Guild bass and grabbed one of my homebuilt electric guitars, which was a nice enough guitar but would have had close to zero fence value with no brand name or identifying marks. But the REALLY funny part is after he grabbed my guitar, found a case for it, hauled it up from the basement, turning lights on and off as he went, he stopped in the kitchen for five-ten minutes to crack open a beer and drink it, standing in front of the open fridge, not in any hurry.

Long enough for the K-9 Unit to meet him as he exited through the back window he'd broken to gain entry.

I didn't even have an alarm system in the house, just a next door neighbor who heard the breaking glass and called the cops immediately.

That's to bad about the the burglers. My shed was broken into last year and they took my full purox torch set up. And steel and aluminum prob all for scrap. My leaf blower is a rake. Toro is red for v day.

When we were robbed a few years back, the thieves reached over a Vanilla frame set, bypassed De Rosas, and ignored a NOS delta brake set while grabbing a used $400 TV.

I hope they don't learn from their mistakes!

And here I thought my Schwinn Varsities were the only bikes no one wanted to steal. Sorry you got burglarized, and thankful none of your steeds went the way of Pee Wee Herman. Lucky!

Sorry to hear about the break in. When it happened to me, the loss of stuff wasn't the issue, but the idea someone was going through my house was upsetting.

As for passing over bikes, it is not surprising. Big, bulky, oversized toy that will get you $20 after looking for a customer for a while. A blower is smaller and an easier sell for the same $20.

Also, a thief walking down the street with all types of crap under their arm is conspicuous. A thief with one item under their arm looks less like a thief walking down the street.

I had an opposite. Just after the first snow of this winter, an almost brand new CCM Avenue 18 Speed with front suspension appeared in my backyard. I placed an ad in Kijiji hoping to find the owner but I never got a response. A bit small for me so I am going to donate it to the local bike coop.

You've only got seven months to autumn, but it's probably easy to find good deals on last year's blowers now

I'll bet you are truly broken-hearted, about having to ride, and not being able to do any yard work, too.

Hopefully you won't scare your wife while she is sleeping, that fork could leave a mark.....

Bill

Thanks, there is nothing like a ride to blow off steam.

When my brother's garage was broken into, the thief took the Bianchi that he had sourced for $60 at a garage sale, but left behind his/her own large duffel bag and didn't touch the thousands of dollars of automotive tools and diagnostics equipment that were in plain sight.

He seldom rode that Bianchi, a somewhat rusted Japanese model made from Tange Prestige, and he's just glad the bike stole the thief's attention.

When thieves broke into my garage one night in 1996, they put and left several good C&V bikes outside so they could roll my tool rollaway out the door.

I was later at the Pico Rivera Drive-In Swap Meet looking for my tools when I found my Pedersen, later turned into my race bike.