keesan
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response 100 of 103:
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Jun 19 02:16 UTC 2002 |
We were out admiring bikes Sunday evening, and noticed that in some parts of
campus ALL of them have been tagged with a piece of paper stating that any
bike without City of Ann Arbor Registration, and any bike left more than 48
hours on campus without removing the tag, will be impounded. Is this fair
to people who go on vacation for a week? What is the point of registering
a bike - do the police actually try to return stolen bikes?
They tagged bikes in perfect condition, as well as frames with no wheels or
handlebars.
In other areas, someone else had gone around taping notices about a Critical
Mass ride to anything resembling a bike, including the ones with missing seat
posts and bent front wheels.
We rescued some poor kid who had apparently left their brand new bike
somewhere with only the frame locked. The back wheel was gone, and there was
a small pile of brake parts under where it had been. Jim reassembled the
brake to be nice, and surmised that the thief was a dummy who did not know
you could remove a wheel by flipping back the cantilever brake. We left them
a note suggesting that they remove a wheel from a nearby obviously abandoned
bike (front wheel and seat were already missing). Then in a bush around the
corner we found their wheel, also in piece,s with the spindle pulled out.
Jim surmised that the thief did not know you could remove a wheel without
disassembling it. He put it back together and on the bike. Most of the other
bikes were also locked just to the frame or to one wheel.
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