The Bicycle Thief: Part Three

Aftermath

I had travelled 10,000km from Vietnam to France to compete in the Tour du Mont Blanc; one of the great European challenges for amateur cyclists. Finally, the morning of the race had arrived. But as the riders rolled across the start line at five o’clock on that chill July morning, I was stranded, hapless and alone, in a dimly-lit subterranean hotel car park; with no bicycle, no time and no hope. All my best-laid plans undone in the dark of night by a theft of the most heinous kind; stolen hope. All my preparation, travelling, spending and training—okay maybe not the training—had conspired to deliver me to this place and to this moment. Despair.

As it turned out, I was not entirely alone in my misfortune, as one other hotel guest had similarly awoken that morning precisely one bike lighter than the night before. What’s more, while I had always considered my bicycle to be quite an expensive piece of machinery, I quickly revised my level of indignation once I learned of his de luxe, custom-painted, one-of-a-kind, Italian super-bike, which he had practically bolted to the wall of the garage the night before to keep it safe; all to no avail, as it transpired. Good to know the thieves were bike connoisseurs, at least.

As it was five o’clock in the morning, the hotel reception was unattended, so I dialled the emergency number stuck to the front door of the hotel. No answer. Clearly, this number was exclusively for matters of life-and-death and nothing so trivial as grand larceny. And in the apparent absence of a grand larceny hotline, we waited it out until, eventually, at eight o’clock, the hotel owner-cum-receptionist arrived and let herself in.

Upon hearing of the great bicycle heist that had just taken place in her impregnable garage, she assumed an expression of such shock I thought she might pass out. The police station, she told us, would only be contactable after eight thirty. Reminded me of my bank. At eight-thirty the superbike guy and I drove down to the police station in his supercar. He didn’t speak any French so I offered to help him file his police report.

You know you’re in the middle of nowhere when you have to ring a doorbell to get into the police station. A young policewoman came to the door and eyed us up like we were selling Gideon bibles. When I informed her that we had come to report a heinous crime, her eyes lit up and she ushered us into an under-furnished office comprising a desk that looked like it had been stolen from a Charles Dickens novel and a computer from the 1990s. But she was carrying a gun on her hip so I let my thoughts on interior design pass without any unnecessary social commentary.

Crippled by my customary English politeness, I suggested she start with the superbike guy. She asked him a bunch of questions, including whether he was married, which struck me as a bit superfluous to her mission of tracking down the perpetrators of the heinous crime. Since he didn’t speak French and she didn’t speak English; she asked me, I asked him, he answered me and I answered her. It was like a scene out of Cyrano de Bergerac in which I play the ugly guy with the big nose. With each answer, she tapped away with her two index fingers on the antediluvian keyboard. Finally, she had all the information she needed from both of us, although I did notice with some disappointment that she didn’t ask me if I was married. Maybe she was also a bike connoisseur.

She printed out the reports and handed them to us. “What happens now?”, I asked the policewoman with the gun. “We will keep an eye out for your bikes”, she countered, enthusiastically. At that moment, I realised that we would never see our bicycles ever again. But she had a gun so I smiled and told her everything was perfect, because I’m English and that’s what we do.

The superbike guy nearly went out of his way and dropped me off seven kilometres short of the middle of nowhere, in Hauteluce; where I grabbed a cinnamon-scented coffee and a bowl of beef stroganoff—the buttery croissants still hadn’t arrived. I then set off on foot in search of my Airbnb in the middle of nowhere. There, I gathered up my belongings, checked out and began the long, wearisome journey back to Annecy, where I checked into yet another Airbnb—I should buy shares—and awaited my long flight back home to Vietnam.

Epilogue

It is now one month since I returned from France. And as I look back on my little alpine adventure, I am reminded that all experiences, good and bad, are in some way positive. The secret, perhaps, to finding solace, even happiness in the misfortunes that befall us in life, is to allow sufficient time to pass and perspective to set in. For in the grand scheme of things, it is always our most challenging moments that make for the most compelling stories and greatest learning. “The cracks are where the light gets in”, as the saying goes. And in the words of a favourite song, “The grass is greener where it rains”.

Let it rain!