Abandoned

I see those bikes that have so clearly been abandoned and wonder how they get that way. Sometimes the front wheel is missing. Sometimes they lay, crashed to the ground, bent. Sometimes the chain is off and all rusty. Sometimes there is only the frame left locked to the bike rack. Everything else, wheels, chain, shifters, handle bars, seat, removed from the sad bike that's been left.

I once left a bike for dead in college. A friend of my mother's gave it to me. She never rode it. It was old, but still usable. I rode it only a few times my freshman year . When I moved back home for the summer I forgot it. It stayed chained to the under-used bike rack behind my dorm all winter and summer. It turned into one of those rusted, forgotten bikes. It was still there when I got back to school the next fall. But I did nothing about it. It may be there still.

I guess that's how bikes get that way. But in a city, a large city, it seems odd that someone would chain up a bike, on a busy street, and then just forget about it and then be too embarrassed, or not care enough, to go back and get it. But apparently it happens. I always feel sad for the bikes.