Bike shop tech downhill wonderboy Joe Perizzo sent us an email a few weeks ago with a picture of his stolen bike. You may remember Joe as our April 2006 cover boy—doing a backflip off a pine tree. When you attempt the kind of jumps and tricks that Joe does your bike needs to be a high performance monster because your life depends on it. Joe had saved up for a while for his special rig.
The day he contacted OTM I put a picture of the stolen bike on our blog and hoped for the best. A week later I got an email from Joe. I’ll let him tell the rest of the story:
My stolen bike was posted on craigslist on Saturday at 4:20. By Five o’clock I got a phone call from my friend Ned to tell me he found it. There was no phone number to reply, but dumb-dumb posted the fork by itself with the phone number. My friend Caveman got through to the guy about the fork and he told Cave that he had the bike too. The guy was lucky he didn’t meet up with Cave because Cave was going to hurt him. Instead the guy came to sell the fork to my co-worker Bryce at the bike shop. He came in and I was shaking with adrenaline. I knew the guy! He was an old friend who I hadn’t seen in years. He didn’t want to talk to anyone and his phone was ringing off the hook because I posted his number on Facebook. He said hello to me and then Bryce gave me the fork to check it out. I looked at my old friend with a sad face and told him that the bike is mine. He was shocked and very apologetic. He asked no questions, told me he had it in the car, and shamefully walked me out to his car to get the bike. His buddy waiting in the car was like “ahh F*ck.”
My old shady friend walked back into the shop with me making small talk and telling me he bought it on the west side for $50. He asked if I still go out for beers like we were going to be friends or something. He left and then all my co-workers and customers in the shop lifted me up over their shoulders and started chanting my name while I held my stolen bike over my head.
JON SNYDER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEFeditor@outtheremonthly.ziplinestaging.com
P.S. Have you had a chance to check out the online browser version of OTM? It’s the same as the print edition and you can access it anywhere. Just go to www.issuu.com and search for Out There Monthly.
