Bike Trading

This guy was on the front page of our local newspaper this week. I recognize that look. I've had it myself.

Railway Station

A dark brick building that is a central feature of most Belgian towns. Railways stations are vast bicycle dumps and places where you can swap your old rusting bike for one that has been neatly stacked behind platform one for seven years and whose owner has been searching for it in Mechelen for at least six of them.

Apparently the guy in the photo had his nice and expensive bike stolen. In his case it was not from the railway station, but from his house. Just 2 days later it was advertised for sale in the newspaper by a local bike store. Really? The price was €525.

So he and the police went down to the bike store and sure enough, there was his bike.

The owner of the store denies having anything to do with the theft and said he bought it honestly as a trade-in on a better bike. Of course, he didn't have the name or address of the new "better bike owner".

I just wonder about that. Although I scoured the newspaper ads looking for our stolen bikes when they first went missing, and this particular bike store is over an hour away from our stolen bike location, it still makes me wonder. Did that or some other store owner get €525 for each of our bikes?

I have to hand it to the lucky guy pictured above. The police did tell Ross "if you see them, let us know". We just never saw them again. Not even at the railway station.

Best to stick with the rusting bike nobody would think of trading for.