Originally Posted by Mr. Spadoni

Reading this thread reminds me of the one time I helped get a bike ready for the spotlights. I was working for a company that sponsored a number of athletes, among them a mountain bike racer. Company was getting ready to open a store that would include memorabilia from its various athletes.
Arrangements had been made with the rider to one of his bikes at the end of the season. We would had over the bike to the folks opening the store, and that would be that.
Except.....store opening was delayed. When it was time to start sending props to store, we contacted the rider. Turns out when we didn’t ask for the bike on the original schedule, he figured we didn’t want it. So he sold it.
Now we don’t have the promised bike, we are getting pushed from the store to deliver it, and on top that, the model had only been distributed to factory team riders. So we go to the bike company. They have one of these bikes left and they sold it to us. Don’t recall the exact price, but there was a lot of push back when the expense report went in.
So now we have a bike that is supposed to have been raced but it looks brand new. Because it is. We pull off the tires, replacing them with worn tires of the same model. We drop the bike a few times. We drag it around a parking lot to add some scrapes. Our prep is concluded after pushing the bike down a flight of stairs several times. With that, we turned the bike over team opening the store.
Several months later, we go to the store opening. We are expecting that someone will spot our deception. Nope. Turns out, the store designers had a change in vision. All of the memorabilia from all of the athletes was on display, but it has been painted a neutral color, and hung from the ceiling. All of the money and effort we put into that bike? With how it was used, we could have bought something off the floor at Kmart and it just would not have mattered.
And no, the bike is no longer there. The store moved. The displays were tossed.