Yesterday I was talking to my sister on the phone when I looked out my front window and saw a child’s scooter parked in my driveway next to my truck. I looked around to see if the child was nearby, but saw no one. After a while when no one came to claim the scooter I moved it out of the driveway and onto the sidewalk in front of our home. I didn’t want to accidentally run over the toy. It remained where I put it for the rest of the day. We were out during part of the afternoon and early evening and when we returned it was still there. Today is the day of our garbage and recycling pick up and I have moved the scooter once again so that it doesn’t look like we put it out for garbage collection.

I can imagine several scenarios by which a child, temporarily tired of riding the scooter, abandoned it and continued walking. Perhaps the child is one who lives on our street near to our house or around the corner and forgot where the scooter was left. The scooter is small enough that it must belong to a child that is too young to be too far from home.

I can also imagine that the scooter was taken from the home of its owner by someone else and ditched in our front yard for some reason. In that case, the owner might not know where to look. I’ve tried to keep the scooter in a place where its owner can easily see it if that person or the parents of that person is looking for the missing scooter.

I try to think the best of people and prefer not to interpret the mystery as part of a crime, but I just read an article about a 16-year-old who was found to be in possession of $45,000 worth of stolen bicycles in our community last week. $45,000 is a lot of stolen property and the youth is in really big trouble. The total valuation got me to thinking that the youth must have had a warehouse to stash all of the stolen bikes, but it turned out that the haul was 15 bicycles. That means that the average value of the bikes was $3000 each. I guess I haven’t kept up with the prices of bikes. I’m pretty sure that my bicycle didn’t cost $300 when it was new.

Of course what made the value of the stolen bicycles so high is that several of them were fancy electric bikes. We see people riding e-bikes around the area frequently. In fact, we have speculated on how the presence of the bikes blurs the line between bicycles and motorcycles. The e-bicycles aren’t licensed for driving on city streets and they don’t require a driver’s license to operate, but we have seen them moving at speeds up to 35 mph on city streets. In many ways they are operated much like motorcycles. I’m sure that there are places on walking paths where the fast-moving bikes pose a danger to pedestrians. We walk a lot around the neighborhood and have not had any close encounters with the bikes, but we have wondered whether or not the increasing presence of the bikes might result in a change in traffic laws. When does a bicycle become a vehicle subject to regulation?

It is clear from the youth’s crime spree that stealing a single bicycle can be a felony due to the high value of the bike. I’m pretty sure that the scooter in my front yard does not fit into that category. Over the years I’ve bought enough children’s bikes for our grandchildren to know that there are a lot of bikes, scooters, and other toys that can be obtained for far less than the value of those stolen bikes.

The article I read about the stolen bikes said that all but three of the bikes have already been reunited with their owners which probably means that the thefts had already been reported to the police. It doesn’t say how long the youth had been stealing bicycles. I don’t know if electric bikes require special chargers. Perhaps the stolen bikes batteries ran down and the thief had no means to charge the batteries so another bicycle was stolen. It is hard to know what the young criminal was thinking. Surely as the number of stolen bicycles mounted, hiding them and keeping possession of them got harder and harder. I suspect that eventually someone saw the stash of bikes, knew that something was out of order, and reported it to the police. The article didn’t say how police discovered the thief and the stolen property.

It is quite possible that some or all of the stolen bikes had been left somewhere without being locked. Our neighborhood seems really safe. We see lots of bikes and other toys left in front lawns. We have commented in the past about bikes and scooters left in driveways and the risk that they might get run over. Children can get careless. Still, we hadn’t thought in terms of the toys being at risk to be stolen. On the other hand, I suspect that many of the stolen bicycles were’t children’s toys, but rather the possessions of teens and adults. The value of the bicycles points to more experienced riders.

I am intrigued by electric bikes. I had the chance to ride one once. It belonged to a friend who were visiting and we went for a short ride on their e-bikes. It was a lot of fun to have the additional assistance with pedaling on the steep hills around their home. I know the owner of a local bicycle shop that rents e-bikes and I have thought of renting one just to see how it might work in our neighborhood. But I’m unlikely to shell out $3,000 for a bike. One purpose of riding a bike is exercise and the one I have works well for that purpose.

I guess that if you are going to own a valuable bike, security has to be one of the things you keep in mind. Although I don’t like to think of our neighborhood that way, I guess that if you ride one of the bikes around here, you need to have a good lock. I wonder if the rental shop also rents locks for the bikes.