The Bike Job

We started walking at about 2am. It was a quiet fall night, a light breeze making the dry autumn leaves dance around and scratch the ground in a beautiful symphony.

We were wearing work gloves because the task at hand could be quite dangerous. We were carrying hammers as was the plan. The streets of St. Paul were quiet and empty, just the way we needed them to be. It was time to put in work.

We reached our destination without a worry and did a quick look down Snelling Avenue for traffic. It was empty. We gave eachother a simple nod and drew back our hammers and at the same time we struck the huge plate-glass window which erupted into a deafening downward flow of shattered glass. That's the moment where you're either in, or you're out. We were in.

We walked through the opening and I thought I hit my head on something but there was no pain so I kept going. Our goal was simple: steal two Cannondale mountain bikes worth $2,500 each (back in the late '90s) and get the hell to the safe house as fast as possible. We were inside less than a minute when we had what we came for and made our exit. As we came out, a car slammed on its brakes and a guy yelled out, "Are you OK!?" We ignored him and started pedaling.

In my periphery I kept seeing something on my left side but every time I looked back it was gone. We went as fast as we could through the side streets, price tags spinning around from the handle bars. And fifteen minutes from the time we started walking we were safe. But it wasn't over yet.

As we went inside the house our friend that lived there looked at me and gasped. "What the fuck happened to you?" he said. I'm sure I looked puzzled.

I looked down and saw myself covered in blood. I had scraped a chunk of flesh off of my head and it was bleeding profusely. What I had been seeing out of the corner of my eye was my blood shooting out and turning into a mist. My hair was caked, my shirt ruined. Fortunately once the adrenaline rush was over, the bleeding stopped. When we called the buyer for the bikes I informed him of the incident and he said his girlfriend would take care of it, which she did. Tweezers and iodine worked, but left me with a noticeable scar on my left temple.

That was the first of many large thefts that I was a part of when I was a teen. I did not learn any lesson, and even though I got away with several bikes over the years, it was what my first felony arrest was for. If only I could talk to me back then.

I wrote this story before but I think I did a much better job this time. You should feel like you're there with me. Please share this if you like it.