Snow and Bike Thief

4.1.2010 von Ines.

Today it stopped snowing. But it seems that the city was overwhelmed with the amount of snow and was not able to clean all the streets.

Even on the huge avenues there was snow everywhere. Especially on the bike lane. So the few people that were riding bikes had to ride on the street. But that was okay as there were hardly any cars.

Due to the weather conditions the public schools were closed today. It was around -26 degrees with the strong wind that was blowing. I was astonished to see this governmental office have all employees stand outside. I am not sure what kind of ceremony it was as I arrived when they were playing teh Chinese anthem just before they all ran inside.

My bike shop looked really nice with all the snow outside. Unfortunately it was really cold inside as we have no proper heating, just electric heaters that suck a lot of electricity.

Today my good friend Gil dropped by the shop just before lunch. We were sitting in my office chatting. He asked me which bike I had ridden to come today. I told him it is the blue Corima fixed gear bike outside the shop near the entrance. In that moment I remembered that I had not locked it this morning as Samantha and I first shoveled all the snow away from the shop front and after 30 minutes had frozen hands. But as we were soon going to go for lunch with Gil I decided not to lock it. About 10 min later Gil says “Hey look, is that one of your friends? Oh look, he is taking your bike.” So I ran down and out and saw some guy with a huge coat and a hood pushing my fixed gear bike as if it were his down along teh hutong. Even though it was very obvious that he would not have such a bike. So I run up to him knowing that if he would decide to jump on the bike and try to ride it he would be so surprised that it cannot coast that he would not be able to go away especially as the hutong was all covered by snow. When I reached him I asked him “What are you doing?!? This is my bike.” He just gave me the bike, said the typical “mei shir” (=in the sense of “whatever”) and continued on walking down the hutong as if nothing ever happened. I did not expect that. It was so strange but on the other hand so Beijing style. Wow, so I hadmy bike back but only because Gil had looked outside in the right moment. Thank you Gil!!!

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