John N

Over the weekend, someone stole my beloved Co-Motion Americano with a Rohloff and Belt Drive from our garage. While I have file a police report, contacted bike shops, local FB groups, etc., on the off-chance someone tries to sell it outside the Tulsa area, I would appreciate people keeping an eye out for it. If you happen to come across it, have your police department contact the Tulsa Police Department and also me. The frame's serial number is S-16012 and the Rohloff's serial number is 169112. The TPD Case number is #2022-004485.

The color is "Vanilla" but the frame is fairly scratched up due to heavy touring use. Has a Schmidt gen hub, Tubus F&R racks, and my last touring "partner", a foam pink pig "Spammy" on the front rack.

The TPD thinks it was probably a homeless guy who just happened by while I was inside. The homeless usually part out the bike but with the Rohloff and the Rohloff-specific frame, they won't be able to part out too much stuff. It very well may end up in the river :-(.

Anyway, keep you eye out for it please and Happy Trail to you!

John

texbiker

Add your bike information to BikeIndex.org. Many police department and pawn shops check it.

L134 

I recovered a bike after taking this suggestion. Took over a year but I got it back.

Tourist in MSN

Regarding your Co-Motion, since Rohloff hubs are so rare in USA, you might want to also let Cycle Monkey and any other companies in USA that work with Rohoff owners also know the serial number of your lost bike and also hub serial number.

Although unlikely that your bike will end up in the UK, it is my understanding that bikeregister is where to go for registration in the UK.
https://www.bikeregister.com/

My bikes are registered on Bike Index. And I paid a few bucks more (donation) to get stickers, thus each of my bikes has a Bike Index sticker on them too. My community used to require licensing bikes, but enforcement was nil. I always licensed them to get the city sticker on my bike with my license number, my dad had a bike stolen decades ago and when the police recovered it they called him up and said we have your bike, come and get it. About a year ago my city stopped licensing bikes, they specifically recommended Bike Index or Project 529. That implies at least in my city that they check Bike Index if they find a bike.

Watch Craigslist, people put recently stolen bikes and bike parts on Craigslist.

Tourist in MSN

Have you registered your hub with Rohloff? I am not sure when they started registering hubs, but from your serial number I am guessing your hub is from about 2012, I think their registration program started a few years after your hub was built so you might not be aware that they started a hub registration program.
https://www.rohloff.de/en/service/ha.../serial-number

This is reminding me that I have not registered mine with them yet either.

​​​​​​​

John N

Tourist,
I have registered with BikeRegister but didn't know Rohloff did that so I will do that too. I will also contact CycleMonkey but I swear it is like pulling teeth to get them to call you back or email you. I have dealt with them maybe 4 times and only 1 time did a sell result because by the time they finally got to me (up to almost 2 weeks later), I had bought the item elsewhere. I am also scanning Craigslist and FB around the region a couple of times a day.

Thanks for the info on the Rohloff.

John N

Thanks, I will do that.

futtockpaintbal

I hope the police will help you. To be honest, they didn't help me when my one was stolen. It was my first and fav bike, I always drive on it to college. Police often treat such situations unseriously. Here https://paperap.com/free-papers/police/ I found a lot of interesting articles on this theme. I'm a forensics student so I needed it for my abstract, but all people may get something for themselves from it. I hope it will be a reorganization of police departments in the soon future.

Yan 

Some years ago someone came around with a truck and stole every bicycle out of every garage on our entire street. This was in a small town in Canada where nobody locks their doors. We didn't even have a lock installed on our garage side door, just a plain door knob. (hard to believe but true). After that we had to start using house keys for the first time ever.

Anyway, the guy was busted a few weeks later and everyone got their bikes back.

Time to use that home owner's insurance to score yourself a sweet new bike.

John N

Actually, I just recently had the bike recovered. Here are the details. https://forums.adventurecycling.org/...?topic=17206.0

Tailwinds, John

Yan 

Wow. Crazy that they trashed the bike like that and made it worthless. Just another story of drug addicts stealing multi-thousand dollar bikes and selling them for $50 to get their next hit. So what did they do with the guy? They let him go?

The last time I had a bike replaced by insurance the company did take the destroyed old bike. Enjoy your replacement ride.

Tourist in MSN

Great that you got the new bike, although I am sure you lost a lot of hours in the process to get a new one, and likely are out some of the cost for replacement.

Interesting that the thief put that much work into trying to hide it with respray on the frame, etc.

I am surprised that the police put that much work into trying to find the owner when the serial numbers were gone. I suspect most would just say, it is only a bike and there is nothing we can do. Perhaps someone realized that the Rohloff had value, or perhaps they saw the headbadge and realized that it had been an expensive bike?

John N

The TPD thinks it was a homeless guy. Anyway, since the TPD could not PROVE the guy who brought the bike in stole the bike the only thing I could do is have him arrested for possession of stolen goods but then the District Attorney would probably just let him go since that would be difficult to win. It is sort of stupid for the insurance company to not consider selling the bike but I guess they might think this reduces the chance someone is trying to scam them (I'm not!),

John N

Yep, a lot of hours (days) trying to get the "perfect" brand new custom build bike then just as I was about to place the order, the very slightly (~300 miles on it) used Co-Motion came up for sale and the guy let me buy it for what I would get out of the insurance company.
The thief actually stripped the vast majority of the paint with a wire brush (I see brush marks in places). I doubt he knew the value since he stripped a lot of the decent stuff and replaced it with crap and I have been looking at Craigslist to see if any of the items became available. For instance a Tubus Grand Touring front rack is still pretty rare here, at least in Oklahoma.

Yan 

Thieves are clueless. I had someone steal my bike computer once. He was smart enough to take the fork sensor, but didn't take the spoke magnet. I hope he had a spare magnet lying around at home because I'd hate to see that computer tossed in the trash the next day. The bike was locked in the underground garage at work, so it's someone who works in the building who took it. Hopefully nobody from my office...

M Rose

This thread and your post Yan reminds me of when my Verve was stolen last year. The police recovered it within a few days, only thing missing was a Bluetooth button to connect to my VHF/UHF 2 way radio… An expensive button with no other purpose in life other than making that specific radio work hands free, and only 2 of those radios are being used within the tri county region. So the thief has/had a button that is absolutely worthless to them. I laugh every time I look down at my handlebar and see the empty space and think of the guys at the homeless camp trying to figure out what the device is and how it applies to a bicycle.