SuperSatellite ||

Man, I don’t know what it is lately, but apparently I have become a magnet for red lights.  I’ve been driving back and forth to the college a lot for the play and such, so my travel has been about double the normal rate.  But for some reason I cannot hit green lights between here and there to save my life.

My normal route has 6 lights going and 7 coming back.  To be fair, one of those lights (on both legs) is never red.  It’s just there for the school kiddies to get across a busy street when they push da button.  But, between the 11 other passes, over the past 4 or so days, my red light percentage is running about 80%.  I made it a point to count coming home yesterday, of the 6 lights which actually run normally, 5 were red on me.  I don’t get it.  Same story this morning.  My trips to and from work are taking almost twice as long as normal because I’m constantly sitting at lights.  Everyone knows Pittsburg’s downtown lights are notorious for this behavior, except that I don’t go through the downtown.

Don’t even get me started on the stop signs.  Those bastards get me every time.

Yesterday, someone dumped a mountain bike at the curb of my house.  Being the good samaritan that I am, I made Michaele pull it out of the street so that it wouldn’t get hit.  I figured maybe it broke down on someone or something, and they might come back for it.  When I got home from work (after fighting the red lights), the bike was still there, so I pulled it up closer to the house and called the cops.  After all, that’s their job, right?  I remember when my last bike got stolen here, someone dumped a POS in its place, also stolen (they basically traded up), so I ran with the assumption that someone might be looking for it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this was no great find.  It was a Wal-Mart Mt. Fury Roadmaster Steel Beast of Crap purple woman’s mountain bike.  Replacement value $3.27 at a rummage sale.  But hey, someone might want it back.  So I call the 5-0 to let them know.  They tell me not only will they not pick it up, but they won’t even send someone to look at it.  Now that’s really encouraging.  Sure, I can understand not picking it up.  They only have so much room to store abandoned bikes.  But to not even look at it to see if it matches a description someone might have submitted?  That’s just lazy and sloppy.

Imagine it was your $2000 Trek Fuel EX 7 or something.  You called it in, gave a description, etc, etc, and the police assure you they’ll do their best.  I just happened to find it dumped at my house.  Knowing a good bike from a cheap bike, I call the police.  They tell me:
5-0: “…sorry, we are out of room to store bikes.”
Me: “So, what should I do with it then?” 
5-0: “Well, hold on to it for a while and see if anyone claims it, otherwise…” 
Me: “Otherwise?  Just do what I want with it?” 
5-0: “Basically, yeah.”

That’s paraphrased, but pretty much the exact phone conversation I had.  Given the fantasy bike, you’re out, and I just hit jackpot, and the police didn’t do an ounce of followup on your report.  Sadly, the actual bike really is a piece of junk, and was more than likely left for trash.  The moral?  Don’t let your bike get stolen in Pittsburg.  (I never did get mine back that got stolen a few years ago, I think I know why now.)