Everything Comes With A Price
Put a barely used, fairly decent exercise bike in the “For Free” section as I was moving and didn’t want to deal with actually selling or moving it. This is in Los Angeles by the way.
I get 63 emails in the first 10 minutes. First come, first serve. The guy and I e-mail back and forth and agree on a time later that evening.
7 pm sharp, this very small gentleman shows up. I let him up and show him the bike. He asks if I have the AC adapter for it. I go looking for it. It takes me about 5 minutes to rummage through a box and find it. When I came back out, he was going through my dirty laundry hamper and pulling out my dirty boxers and socks and setting them aside. I asked him what he was doing.
He asked if he could buy what he had set aside…Offering $20. With an overly perplexed look on my face, I blurted out something like “wha…. no.. just.. take the bike…” He didn’t say anything. He just hurried out the door and left the bike.
The next morning, I replied to the second person who emailed about the bike. After giving him directions, he said he would meet me at 8:30 after he gets his mom’s car, but won’t be able to call me because he doesn’t have a cell phone. Ok…Odd, but whatever.
He doesn’t get there until 9:15. He’s 6’0″ and on drugs for sure. I ask him if he wants a hand getting it down the stairs. He declines hastily. Picks up the bike and hurries out the door with it, grunting like a doped up bear losing its virginity. I hear him struggle more down the stairs and shout, “You sure you don’t need any help?”
He screams “No” back at me. I hear more struggling, then a bunch of tumbling and a loud crash. The guy fell with the bike. I rushed down the stairs to help him out, only to find that he left the bike (half-broken) and was sprinting back to his car. He gunned it out of there.
I ended up carrying the bike to the curb and posting about it on CL again. It was gone by the morning.