Alliteration Alert!

News reporters rarely, if ever, get to write their own headlines.  That can be both a good and a bad thing, as I discovered when I was writing for a local newspaper.

Sometimes titles bear little or no relation to the articles they accompany.  Other times, though, they can draw attention in a way the story itself might not. 

Case in point:  "Bavarian Bakery Bicycle Burglary". 

If I didn't know any better, I might wonder whether some thief took off with a strudel-maker's Kalkhoff  in Munich.  

Turns out, the perp robbed the Bavarian Bakery of Dover, Delaware and fled on his bicycle.  

Some time after midnight on Friday, police officers saw 56-year-old Samuel L. Curtis riding on the wrong side of the road with no lights or reflectors, and wearing dark clothing while carrying a dark backpack. When the cops tried to stop him, he kept on riding--until he fell off his bike.  That's when the constables collared the crook and, on him, found a box he took from the bakery and tools he used to break in.

Bavarian Bakery Bicycle Burglar

He was released on a $15,150.00 unsecured bond.  For that price, he could have gone to Bavaria--and a few other places!

 

What You Can Carry Isn't Necessarily What You Can Stash

Many of us ride with cute little "bike purses" tucked under, or between, the rails of our saddles.  In them, we might carry a spare inner tube, patches, a small multi-tool and, depending on the size of the "purse", a mini-pump and/or cell phone and/or wallet. 

There are larger versions of such "purses", including "banana" bags of the kind popularized by Gilles Berthoud and others, and small versions of boxier saddle bags, like the X-Small Saddle Sack from Rivendell.

And, of course there are larger saddle bags like those from Carradice made in sizes to carry what you need for a day or weekend trip, or even camping gear. Carradice's Camper Longflap almost seems to have been an exercise in carrying as much as possible without using panniers and an expedition-style rack.

Of course, when some people ponder the question of "how much" they can carry under their saddles, they are not talking about volume in liters or cubic inches or whatever.  Instead, they are talking about "street value."

At least, that seemed to be the case for  37-year-old  Mohamed Mohmoud Charara, who lived with his parents in  Windsor, Ontario, Canada.  He kept his bike in a common stairwell area where other residents of his building kept their bikes.  It seems, though, that he wasn't using his wheels to get around the city just across the river from Detroit.  He wasn't even using it to conduct business. Instead, he serviced his clients from a black Escalade SUV parked outside the building. The bike was just for storage.

And what did he keep under the seat?  Well, when he was busted, city constables found 24.7 grams of crack cocaine and 13.2 grams of powder cocaine. Together, they had a street value of almost $3800.

The cops also seized a few things Charara couldn't keep under his bike seat, like a digital scale, other drug paraphenalia, an iPhone (well, with the right bag, he could have kept it on his bike) and $1695 cash.

What if he'd tried to use that bike as a getaway vehicle?  Would he have ended up like this guy?