Will Somebody Steal my Goddamn Bike?

Apparently there are things one can’t give away. About a year ago I bought a $99 Chinese bicycle from Wal-Mart. This was, in hindsight, not an altogether sound idea. The bike itself may not have been defective, but it is important to note that it was assembled by the lowest paid and most demoralized legal work team in the United States. I will spare the reader any more facile Wally World bashing, as there’s plenty of that to go around, but the fact remains that their staff sucks and I should have taken the bike home in a box rather than ride off on their floor model. That, and I should have noticed the rear axle grinding from the first time I got on the bike. I should have also noticed, while we’re on the topic, that guys who pursue advanced English degrees have less dating success than guys with money, but it’s a bit late for that.

So, naturally, the rear wheel locks up on the bike around eight days after the warranty expires. I tried to repair it, but lacking any experience, available replacement parts, technical support, or bicycle-specific tools, I just broke the thing worse. Having striven and failed, I wisely decided to get rid of Chiang the Accursed, made in China. I went on Wilmington Freecycle, a Yahoo! group where everybody in creation with defective junk attempts to pawn it off on their neighbors in the guise of higher environmental ethics. I have seen used pet food successfully given away, but I could not unload an almost new, probably repairable bicycle. I left it unlocked on my deck while I went on vacation for three weeks, hoping someone would steal it. Instead, I found that a crew of construction workers had rebuilt 2/3 of the stairwell leading up to my apartment and worked around the goddamn thing, even though it was quite obviously in the way, rather than confiscate, move, or throw it away. I’ve now left it out on the ground floor, conspicuously unlocked, across the street from an unofficial crackhead halfway house, and I still can’t get anybody to have off with it.

So that’s it. Environmentalists may point at me in scorn and horror until the end of time, but I’m throwing this headache in the dumpster. If no one wants it for parts, scrap, repair, or anything else, then I certainly feel relieved of the obligation to keep it as décor. In the dumpster it goes. I hope white elephants are biodegradable.