Because of recent events in my working life I've been seeking outlets to creating a better karmic debt for myself. In order to flow the rest of my life I think its necessary to flow other lives around you. But sometimes its less of an outlet but rather an opportunity to do good.
Take tonight, out busting around with Paula on our bikes, checking out the beach, the waves and the last vestiges of the beautiful warm sunny NorCal style day. I had to stop by the old house to check on some pending packages and it was just kind of fun to buzz around the old neighborhood to see who was out and about. On our way back up the street towards our house we stopped in at a head shop (yes Virginia, head shops are not only legal in California, they're quite plentiful).
The sell all kinds of funny stuff, I like the fact that they keep their porn right next to the four foot glass blown party hookahs with tubes and a bowl you could eat cereal out of.
There's also a pipe to smoke, and it says this on the box, "tobacco oil" which must truly be the nastiest stuff on the planet if it really exists.
Anyway, after having our look around, we were getting ready to leave and I noticed a mountain bike parked in the store next to the tattoo bar (believe me, they are super cool there). It was a distinctive kind of mountain bike, in fact it looked kind of like
(only an older model in blue and yellow).
A distinctive and rare bike these days, especially because a good friend of mine had the same kind of bike only it had been stolen recently. So I started looking at the bike closer and it became clear in a matter of moments that it was her bike. Whoever'd stolen it hadn't even bothered to remove stickers or do anything to mask the bike at all. After some inquiry to the staff at the store, I found out it "belonged" to one of the guy's who worked there.
I talked with him for a long time, including one of the other people who work there about what to do in this situation. I made sure to not accuse the guy directly of stealing the bike but questioned him about where he got it. He said he'd had it for a month (lie, it had been stolen a week before) and that he'd traded a tall white guy his bike, a sweater and some beer for it. I'd also been snapping pics some of the time, tying the store to the whole thing and trying to get a pic of the guy. After talking with him for a while I asked him what he thought should happen.
He shrugged and said that he'd traded his own stuff for it. To which I replied, but the guy you traded with stole this from my friend. I know this for fact, this is her bike (oh yeah, we were two blocks from where it had been stolen). I said I didn't want to call the cops but it seemed like the thing to do. After some talking, I told him to not disappear anytime soon and we went back down to the end of the block to gather some troops.
A real Johnny, a John, a Stacy, a Lino, a Paula and I went back down the street to go and get the bike. Johnny because the bike was stolen from his back yard and he would, understandably, be interested in who had entered his domain and had the gall to steal from him. John and Lino because they like the girl who's bike got stolen, they don't like theives and they're down for keeping our neighborhood clean and safe (especially if it might include an ass whooping). Stacy came along because she lives with Johnny, felt the same sort of anger about a thief in her domain and she happened to know the guy who'd made the trade. Paula was there, obviously, because she was with me, is a pal of Heather's and has a streak of fairplay in her a mile and a half wide, she does not go for cheaters, line jumpers, thieves or other social jackasses. And me, well, I'd started the whole thing and was overseeing the execution of the recovery of my friend's bicycle, also to make sure things didn't get too out of hand.
Six of us sort of descend on the place, four or five total other people there. The guy was still there, the bike was still there and after giving him a minute to tie things up with a customer he was waiting on, we talked to him about what was going to happen. Faced with six people, four guys, one of which is a big 'oke, one's a short but very thick 'oke, one's in the middle heightwise and build wise and then there's me, I'm not as tall and not as big. Never have been and never will be, it's cool, there are certain esteem benefits to knowing how physically strong oneself is. Another long term benefit of working out with powerlifters back when I was just starting out in the fitness game, strength is its own discipline beyond building a big muscular body.
Anyway, we left with the bike without incident although the guy said he'd call the cops (an interesting switch now that he was going to lose the bike) and Johnny, who'd pretty much stepped in as speaker, invited him to do so. Come on now, a stolen bike in a head shop? Who you gonna believe?
The bike was brought on back into the fold of the 'hood and Paula and I got sidetracked outside the local dive bar chatting with friends I've not seen in a while. After catching up, getting a party invite for Sunday, some hugs and plans for more time, we rolled all the way back down to the end to check in and see if the bike had gone back to Heather yet. No sighting yet.
So we asked Johnny to have Heather give us a call when she got in. We rolled back up towards home yet again, this time on my old street where her house also was (she did used to be my neighbor). She hadn't gotten home yet so we kept on. As we got further from the house a truck pulled on to the street ahead of us, its lights about a half mile up from the ground. I got the hell out of the way (Friday night in this town?) but recognized that it was the same kind of truck that Stacy had said she'd seen Heather in earlier. We circled back as the truck pulled into her driveway.
And really, the only thing that could have possibly made telling her we'd recovered her bike for her was to have had a picture of the look of both astonishment, surprise and real, genuine joy. She was literally jumping up and down in her excitement. And then I met her aunt and uncle and friends. Wonder if I made a good impression on them? Hahaha.
So there ya go, an opportune happenstance on the rare off chance that I went into the head shop today, that I'd talked with Heather only a day or two before and she'd told me about her bike getting ripped off. I'd even started looking online for a replacement. Ahh, fates.
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