Saturday morning I noticed that the rear tire on my bent was flat as a pancake. I know it wasn't flat when I moved it out of the house when I got home on Friday, but I figured after sitting for more than six weeks the air may have simply seeped out and a night outside on the carport finished the process.
Saturday afternoon I carried my pump outside to air up the tires to go for a ride. The rear tire wouldn't take air at all and the air came out as fast as I pumped it in. Great. I thought perhaps the tube had dry rotted. As I wasn't feeling especially energetic I just left it be.
This morning I went out, pulled a new tube out of storage, pulled the rear wheel off the bike, and carried it inside to repair it. That's when I saw the big cut on the side of the tire. It went all the way through tire, liner, and tube. Upon examination I could see that it had been cut with something very sharp, probably a knife. This wasn't any accident or dry rot. Some scum bag had probably tried to steal the bike some time Friday night and when they realized there was no way to get through the extremely well hardened lock they decided to slash the tire. Or they just decided to slash it for 'fun'.
Scum. That's the only word for someone like this. I really wish I had caught this piece of trash in the act. I would have beaten him to a pulp and turned over what was left to the police. In this state I could have legally shot him if I had caught him, but I would have enjoyed beating him half to death instead.
I had to get a ride down to the bike shop, shell out twenty five bucks for a new tire, and go to the trouble of installing it all because of some piece of filth that has no respect for the property of others. It's a damn shame that we have people like this roaming our streets. Personally I think we need to build more prisons and lock away every single piece of trash collected off the streets and keep them there.
I really, really wish I had caught the scumbag.