A prayer to the bicycle gods

Cori Hundt ’11 is from Warren, NJ.

I think I offended the bicycle gods. Perhaps I was a bicycle thief in a previous life? Or maybe I burned bicycles in political protest? After all, these explanations are the only ones I can find as to why my bike has been vandalized not once, not even twice, but on three separate occasions during my four years here at Middlebury. Three times is three too many. But it was when my bike was vandalized twice in a one-month period this semester that I finally had enough. To quote the communications office’s plate posters, “This time it’s personal.” So, for the first time ever during my years at this college I am writing to the Opinions section of The Campus.

I accepted the fact that I might not see my bike ever again when it was stolen during Thanksgiving break of my sophomore year.

I was pleasantly shocked to receive a phone call seven months later in June from Public Safety saying they had found my bike in the basement of Hepburn. “Did you live in Hepburn?” I was asked. “No, I lived in Hadley and the lock was cut and my bike stolen from the bike rack I could see from the window of my dorm room,” I replied.

Happy to have my bike back, I cut my losses and took it to the Bike Center on Main Street to have it repaired and tuned up when I got back from abroad in January of my junior year. Over a year after my bike was stolen, I finally had it back and in working condition.

Spring of my junior year went by smoothly without any strike from the bicycle gods. Then, in October of this semester, they attacked again. I walked out of my dorm to ride my bike to an early meeting to meet a professor and found it still locked to the bike rack outside of Munroe but flipped over, the gear hanging off and the back tire bent in half.

Amazed how this could happen another time, I later carried (literally carried, it could not be wheeled) my bike across campus to Public Safety to report the vandalism. Then I had to have a generous friend with a car take time out of their busy schedule to drive my broken bike and me to The Bike Center in town to once again to have it repaired.

Finally, about three weeks later my bike was fixed and back in action. I chalked it up to someone’s drunken night and my bad luck with the gods of all things with two wheels. Surely if I left it outside Munroe, nothing more would happen to it. After all, lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice.
Then only two weeks later I walked outside of my dorm and found my bike vandalized for a third time. This instance, the entire bike rack was moved and my bike handle was bent in half and as well as my back bike tire. The paint on the handle was entirely gone and there were marks on the concrete showing where someone had repeatedly smashed it into the ground.

On this occasion I was absolutely livid and incredibly hurt — not because of what it costs to fix but because of the principle of the matter. I can almost understand someone taking a bike that is not his or her own for riding purposes (read almost, not actually), but to have your bike purposefully and senselessly destroyed twice in one month is absolutely ridiculous. What bothers me the most is that I am a fellow student of yours. What if you know me? What if you pass by me in the dining hall every day? What if I caught you? While I honestly cannot envision a bicycle vandal sitting down to read the Opinions section of The Campus over a cup of coffee in the morning, if you do I want you to know that that bike you destroyed has a name and face behind it. My bike is the damaged blue, black and silver Trek 800 still on the bike rack outside of Munroe. My name is at the bottom of this Op-Ed.
It is by no means an especially nice bike or a good bike. But it is a bike I was given for my 14th birthday by my parents. A bike I have used to ride around campus for the past four years. A bike I will be taking home over Winter break because it costs too much to keep repairing when all I do is leave it locked up on a bike rack at Middlebury outside of my dorm.

Yes, an apology would be nice. And yes, paying for the damages would even nicer (it was $85 and change to repair the bike the first time it was damaged after my sophomore year, $58.80 the second time it was damaged earlier this semester and I have not yet had it repaired a third time), I do not expect said bike vandals to come forward, so what I do ask is for everyone to consider the cost of time, money and emotion that committing the crime of bicycle vandalism has on your fellow peers at this institution. It is not entertaining, it is not excusable and it is not okay. Please, please, please think before you act because this time it is personal, bicycle gods be damned.