vanished

I’ve never had a bike stolen from me before, so my heart skipped a few beats when I stepped out of the training room at the Department of Administration for our class’s morning break and the first thing I noticed was that my bike was no longer parked in the corner of the lobby where I’d left it. There was no note and I’d taken the precaution of locking a cable through the front wheel and the frame, although there was nothing in the lobby to lock it to, so anybody could have picked it up and walked off with it.

I wandered through a couple of different offices until I found someone who helped me by trying to contact the office in charge of building maintenance to see if it had been just removed instead of stolen. She couldn’t get hold of anyone and I had to get back to class, but she said she would keep trying to call and I said I would check back with her at lunch time.

When I got back to the lobby I found a note taped to the wall right next to the door of the classroom, letting me know that my bike was in the bike rack in the parking garage, and giving me directions on how to find it. That was a huge relief. I’ve had that bike for more than ten years and I’ve ridden it in Colorado, Lincolnshire County in the United Kingdom, and through the countryside around Misawa, Japan before bringing it here, but I didn’t realize how much I’d miss it until this afternoon when I’d thought for at least ten or fifteen minutes that it might be stolen.