What everyone else said, Ken... that sucks.
On a lighter note:
Xavier and I worked on plasti-dipping his bike black, and degreased and lubed the bikes that needed it, and we did a lot of adjusting of his ride, and now he has 6 gears instead of 4, sometimes 6. It was a VERY used bike, but a nice Gary Fisher. Even though it was less than what most of us have in our water bottle cages, after 6$ in "paint", a few bucks in degreaser, a couple hours hanging out and going over bike maintenance together, and lots of tweaking, he has a bike he really digs and we went out for 9 laps of our "circuit" around the apartment complex (hill to start, fun descent going down, over and over). I didn't quite hit my 20 miles goal this week. Xavier and I spent about half an hour at the LBS today, getting some stuff (including his new handlebar mounted water bottle cage), and we checked out the bike he's going to start saving for (he saves half, I pay the other half). I talked to them about the Sunday shop ride, and it's just not something I'm up for yet, so I'm going to chance taking the bike to work and hit up the local weekly "beginner ride" to see how I hold up.
It was a pretty awesome Sunday.
We went from this
To this
When the porch is designed to be a built-in bike rack, you HAVE to take a pic of 'em all lined up, no?
Oh, I still love his helmet. Best kid helmet they had at the bike shop (a Giro). I had told him if he saved up half, I'd buy the rest. One weekend last year he said "Daddy, I have 21$, can we go get that helmet now?" Made me so happy. The next day the shop was open, we went.
**BRENT**