A tale of two bicycles

It is really hard work riding when it is cold. But the wind today was less and I also felt a little better. I got my mileage back above the average for so far this year but still below the average goal for the season. It is a process.

I passed this piece of the permanent sculpture collection of the UofM Farm Campus while on my ride today.The one in the rear is a department store bike, a Roadmaster Mt. Fury. The partial bicycle in the front is an actual bike shop bicycle, a Trek 4500. I took a pretty close look at both of them and based on the stage of rust on the only steel part of each bicycle, the chain, those bicycles have been there about the same length of time. The rust was very much the same for both.

The Trek was sold by a bike shop at the Rushmore Mall in Rapid City, South Dakota (the shop tag on the downtube was intact). The Roadmaster was probably sold at Target. Both bicycles have one of those Kryptonite U-locks which apparently a clever thief can pick using a Bic pen as a tool. The locks themselves retail for about $80 which to my eye is more than the value of the Roadmaster.

No one wants anything off the Roadmaster, even after a winter at the bus stop, that POS is completely intact. Conversely, someone took the wheels, the fork including the front brake, the handlebars, the stem and the shifters and brake levers from the Trek. The Trek is nothing particularly special, the missing parts are all fairly low in the Shimano and/or Bontrager parts hierarchy. It was a suspension fork which may have influenced the appropriator. I did a search of eBay and found a pretty much brand new Trek 4500 recently sold for $520. That makes it a little too nice a bicycle to be abandoned. On the other hand the value of those parts is not high enough, in my opinion, that they should be attracting a thief. It is an OK bicycle but certainly not a top of line model.

So what did I learn today? Not much. Even thieves know that a Trek is a nicer bicycle than a Roadmaster.