So this is what a terrible sister I am.  Back in 1996 I was packing up my apartment and moving to Amsterdam.  I had borrowed (taken) my brother’s bike to use while he was living in Ontario.  I’d never bothered to clean it so it was rusting away, and it was also very heavy.  He still lived back East so instead of sending it back to mom and dad’s for safe keeping, I just left in the apartment storage locker and didn’t tell him.

About one or two years later, Andrew asks me where his bike is.  I told him it’s in the storage unit at the Margaret Rose.  “You mean where you don’t live anymore?” he asked.  Uh, yeah, something like that.  And I never apologized to him for doing that.

Fast forward to spring 2010.  I’m thinking of buying a new bike and so is Andrew.  In fact he’s already bought one is just waiting to pick it up from the shop.  As he walks to work that morning he sees a red bike in a bike stand, unlocked.  On closer inspection he realizes it’s his old bike from 1996!  They must have finally cleaned out the storage locker and put all the junk in the alleyway which is right around the corner from where he lives now.  He takes a few pictures and posts his find on facebook.  I see the pics because I’m at work and have nothing to do so I surf the web.  A lot.  I go tell the story to my co-workers and my boss orders one of them to drive me to where the bike is so I can check it out.  I do better than that.  Albert drops me off and drives away because he does not want to be complicit in my non-theft of an unlocked bike which used to belong to a close family member.  I hop on it to take it back to work.  The chain is so stretched it’s an elastic band, the gears don’t work, there aren’t any brakes and the wheels are wobbly.  But I manage to get it back and store it in the bike locker at work.

Two weeks later it’s Easter Sunday and after church I tell him I need to go to my office to pick up some work.  He drives me into the parkade and parks right beside the locker.  It takes a second or two but his eyes widen and all he says is, “You. Did. Not.”  Yes I did!!!  I got your bike back, I yell at him.  Oddly enough he doesn’t seem overly thrilled by this.  He gets out to take a look at it and then asks what he’s supposed to do with it.  This time, I ACTUALLY ASKED if I could donate it to a bike store for refurbishing.  He said yes, that’s what I did, and now we know the end of the story.

So proud of myself for finally getting the bike back!

Andrew’s not sure what to make of this. He seems rather disappointed to see it again.