> A bicycle that looks like a junker can ride like a dream. An older frame with scratched and chipped paint and nice but undistinguished-looking components is a

> A bicycle that looks like a junker can ride like a dream. An older frame with scratched and chipped paint and nice but undistinguished-looking components is a good choice. Let it get dirty. My beloved 1970ies Peugeot bike fits this description. I was so confident that this bike would never be stolen that I left it unlocked at the local train station (rural suburbia) in the summer of 2022 (I was late and the train was already arriving). When I returned 9 hours later, it was gone. I was devastated. Police said there was nothing they could do (I didn't even have a frame number). 4 months ago, on a new bike, I felt like taking a different bicycle route home from work because it was such a nice late summer evening. While I was driving down a large 4 lane road in the city, I suddenly saw my stolen bike lying in a small patch of grass next to the road. It must've lain there for months. The paint was bleached out. The tires were brittle. The chain was rusty. The saddle was partly broken. My own chain lock, now also rusty, was still wrapped and locked around the handle bar. And a spider had built a web across it. For some reason, the thief had locked the bike using a new and very heavy ABUS folding lock. I immediately called the police without touching the bike. When they arrived, they were obviously amused that anyone would call the police to get back such a piece of junk. But when I demonstrated that the key on my key ring opened the old rusty lock covered in spider webs, when I showed them pictures of myself and the bike (showing very characteristic rust spots) from a 2022 bike tour, and after they checked that I had indeed reported such a bike as stolen a year before, the officers spend 20 minutes opening the thief's folding lock with various tools. They were successful. My wife says that I smiled for hours like a fool after I returned home that night with the bike I never expected to see again. I replaced the saddle and oiled the chain. The bike is still riding like a charm.