Talk about absolute craziness! Okay, I will.

Thursday morning someone posted a listing on craigslist that said simply "bike found". The listing basically just said that "one of the neighbors had one left on his yard" and to contact the poster with details identifying the missing bike. I contacted the guy and, shockingly, he responded later that day that he indeed had my bike! Emilie went over and picked it up before I even got home from work.

Nothing had been done to the bike and all pieces were intact. The seat had been lowered all the way and the chain was a mangled mess. After raising the seat and putting the chain back in place it seemed to be pretty much exactly as it was. The contents of the seat bag had been removed, but the only stuff in there was a spare tube, a tube tool and a bandanna. Less than $5 worth of stuff in total. They took my bandanna but left the bike computer, strangely.

My theory is that it was stolen by a teenager that tried to make a quick getaway.He dropped the seat and took off. The bike would have been in the highest gear when he took it, which would have made a quick getaway impossible. He started messing with the gears to try to shift into a lower gear, but ended up derailing the chain. He panicked, dropped the bike and took off. It makes you nervous to stop and try to fix the chain on a stolen bike right in front of the owner's house, you know?

Anyway, the guy who found the bike had apparently been putting signs up and I never saw them. Finally the neighbor put a message on craigslist. I had been checking craigslist everyday, but hadn't checked it yet that morning. Emilie's dad saw it and tipped us off to the posting. The guy lives right around the corner from us - probably the equivalent of about three houses away. And he had the bike for the whole week.

I never thought in a million years that I was going to see that bike again. I rode to work yesterday and took my sweet time, savoring the sweet ride of a bike redeemed.