I recovered my bike from an eBay listing!

You may have seen this article I posted at the end of last month.

I went through the process of the insurance paperwork (now needs to be undone)

As I was just wrapping that up, my ebay query showed a hit and I found a link to my bike. The picture was blurry and a google image search happened to show me that the image came from a video reviewing the bike. It didn’t look exactly like mine so I decided to trust the seller and I was prepared to buy the bike if it wasn’t mine because it would have been close enough to be a replacement. I chatted with a cop beforehand and then I decided I would go in as a buyer and test-ride the bike. My brother came with me to stake out the bike. When we met up with the seller, it was immediately clear that it was my bike, it even had the fenders, rack and trailer hitch still there.

The next step was to pretend to go get cash from an ATM and we called the cops to go get the bike. Luckily, I had a key to the battery so that would prove the bike was mine. A serial number is what I should have brought with me.

Things to remember:
a) lock your bike up, always (double-check)
b) register all your bikes on https://bikeindex.org/ with serial number there! (Now)
c) if you want to find your bike these tips might help, they helped me http://www.bicycling.com/culture/advocacy/five-things-do-get-your-stolen-bike-back