Benjamin Fleischhauer and his 48cm, hand-straightened Bianchi.

A quick story about the Internet.

I was biking home up Venables last night around 1AM when I found this bike lying in the middle of the road, with the back wheel locked to the frame. There was nobody in sight, so I picked it up and took it home.

Put it up on Craigslist this morning and you guys passed it around all over the place on Twitter and Facebook. Sadly, a bunch of people got in touch but their stolen bikes didn’t match. Good luck, stoic theft victims. Eventually Ben’s co-worker spotted the ad and sent him the link.

I got an email from Ben saying:

Hi,

If it’s a navy blue 48ish cm Bianci road bike, with an orange Kryptonite evolution normal/large sized lock then you found my bike.

It has a big rusty rack on the front that looks and is homemade, a brown old leather seat with possibly a plastic bag still underneath it.   And the tires are Continental Gator Skins

It was ghost locked in front of Wallace Machine shop, I was in there for 3 minutes to retrieve an old bicycle part and when I came out my bike was gone.

I too had a bike stolen in broad daylight, back before social media was really a thing. I chased the thief down an alley, lobbed a chunk of brick at him and actually knocked him off, but by the time I ran up to him he managed to get away. It was traumatic and weird. The police couldn’t help. I knew it was gone for good.

I’m glad the person who grabbed Ben’s bike was lazier than my thief. And I’m glad we have the Internet!

Something silly to post today. I entered my friend Evan in a Japanese hot dog eating contest as a joke. His name was drawn out of a hat and he got the call on Tuesday. He spent all week training relentlessly and today, tested his mettle. We made a short (mock?) doc depicting his quest.

If you’re squeamish, you might want to skip the last 5 seconds of the video.

_

Remarkably, this turned into a major media event. The Vancouver Sun and Province were there, along with the Metro paper and the Richmond Review. CBC, CTV and Global sent TV crews. I spotted Fairchild Radio. There was even a correspondent from Xinhua, the Chinese state broadcaster. So Evan should soon have about 1.3 billion new fans.

Our video included, that’s a lot of free marketing for Japadog.

Thanks very much to Aaron Ross & The Boom Booms, as well as Nigel, Josh & Kent of Friends With The Help (download their excellent new LP for free here), for the use of their music.