Providing A Criminal A Criminal Opportunity

Today I returned home from a 6-mile run and decided to wash my commuter bike while I was cooling off. I opened the garage and walked my commuter around to the back yard. While I was washing it down a young lady who lives next door to me ran up and breathlessly yelled, "Some asshole just stole a bike out of your garage." I looked and saw my Cannondale 29er was gone. Given her sense of urgency and excitement I thought it had just happened. I asked which way he went, jumped into the car, and went looking.

Nothing.

I went back home and asked her what she saw. She was driving home and saw this guy run into my garage and then come out on my bike. She almost hit him when he rode out into the street. She watched him go down the road and was freaked out by everything and wondered what to do. (She's a young person and has no experience with matters such as these.) She parked in her garage, went in the house, and told her dad what she had seen. He told her to tell me. She came to my front door and rang the bell. I didn't answer since I was in the back yard. As she crossed back to her house she saw the open gate and came to get me. So the guy had a good head start on me.

My now stolen bike.

She gave me a description and I drove around the surrounding neighborhoods for a couple of hours hoping I'd get lucky. I talked to quite a few people. Nobody had seen the bike. And I learned about more bikes stolen from garages. Still no luck.

It's only a bike. It can be replaced. 

But I was just around the corner. It's all I can do to keep the "if only's" out of my mind. As far as I know I gave this guy a perfect opportunity, which he probably would have had somewhere anyway but this time it was me.

Fuck!

Yep. That about sums it up.