Bicycle Madness

My bicycle arrived as part of our shipment from Japan. (Did I mention earlier that our stuff arrived on March 30th?) And on Saturday, we went off to Seia (near the Serra de Estrela mountains) to pick up one for Megumi. She'd spotted the bike she wanted last week, but in the end decided to upgrade to something else. It's a Portuguese-made mountain bike, but with Japanese (Shimano) components of course. Quite a nice machine.

Anyway, both of us now having bikes, we decided to use them yesterday (Sunday). We rode up to the house, then on to the house of some friends in a village called Sinde, not more than 3-4 km away. It was a lovely ride, and then a very nice mostly-downhill ride back into Tabua. Meg hauled her bike up to this third-floor apartment (no lift). I left mine behind our car in the garage -- locked of course.

A couple of hours later, around 7pm, one of the neighbours came ringing our doorbell. She doesn't speak English, but I understood enough to know that something was going on with my bicycle. I went down to the garage to find the rest of her family -- husband and two daughters -- there with a young lad. My bike had bits hanging off it! They were desperately trying to make me understand -- and eventually I did -- that they'd come in and caught the lad taking off the nice Shimano components!

He denied it, of course. But why else was he in the garage, hands on my bicycle. They asked if I wanted to call the police, and at first I said yes. But it seemed clear they thought it was overkill. The lad kept telling us he'd fix the bike -- he seemed to be an expert! He also said he'd pay for any parts needed -- surely a sign of guilt... Anyway, I decided not to involve the police. In the end, it was clear some parts were needed. He'd damaged one of the gear cables, and somehow a bolt (rear brake arm retainer) had gone missing. We agreed I'd get the parts and invoice him for them!

All this seems quite reliable, as the people told me they knew him; he lives across the square with his mother. All very odd. I'm still not quite sure what was going on; he appeared to have no tools with him, yet clearly some tools had been used to take the parts off. And why would he set about stealing bike parts in daylight, and just outside his own home? Most odd, but we are all convinced he was somehow involved in what was going on...