Portlander Rebecca Bookman is heartbroken today because her beloved bike is missing. To make matters worse, it suffered a violent fate and it all happened in agonizingly slow motion.
Rebecca’s boyfriend, local bike shop employee Todd Foreman-Kinder says he was driving her to school on I-5 southbound near the Morrison Bridge overpass when a strap on their hitch rack broke and sent the Redline R550 road bike tumbling onto the freeway. Todd saw it happen, but was helpless. “I couldn’t just stop in the middle of the freeway,” he told me today.
Todd turned around at his nearest opportunity and headed north on I-5. As he rolled by where the bike had fallen off, he saw a guy on his cell phone stopped in the left shoulder. “It was the weirdest thing.”
By the time he could double back, there was hardly a trace anything had happened. “The people were gone and all that was left was a skidmark.”
Todd’s not sure if the bike caused a collision; but so far, calls to ODOT, PBOT and the Police Bureau don’t reveal any report filed. Nor has anyone called to report a found bike. Todd is surprised that someone would actually take a random bike that fell off a car on the freeway. “It’s even got a decal with her name right on the frame… It wouldn’t be that hard to look her up.”
Todd posted the incident to the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association email list. Jeff Tedder replied to say he’d seen the bike and that it looked like it had been run over. “I thought at the time,” wrote Tedder, “that’s weird because neither of the cars had bike racks on them.”
Todd and Rebecca are still hoping the $1,000 bike turns up. Todd is trolling Craigslist and he’s posted a stolen bike listing. Keep your eyes peeled for a Redline like the one in the photo above with a “Rebecca” sticker on the top tube and a few major dings.