Sometimes Something Smells Fishy

As I've said before, I love bicycling and bicycles.  The pictured bicycle is a a very expensive carbon professional road racing bike made by the Pinarello Company of Treviso, Italy.  As equipped, this bicycle and bicycles like it will set you back a least a cool $10,000-plus.  Racing bicycles have special pedals called "clipless" that work with special shoes that ironically clip into the pedals.

So it's surprising to the shop owners when a customer rolls this bicycle into Revo Cycles of Dana Point, wanting the mechanic to install "flat" pedals.  The customer, dressed in shorts, no shirt, and flip flops was not exactly rockin' the "roadie" look either.  The mechanic Mike Mayefske installed the pedals and wrote down the bicycle serial number, suspicious that the purported owner was perhaps pedaling a purloined Pinarello.

A few calls later, bingo!  See:  http://www.bicycleretailer.com/news/newsDetail/3395.html  One other thing about expensive road bicycles, your tires are inflated through a "presta" valve versus the type of valve on most bikes (and cars) called shrader valves.  So the customer unsuccessfully tried to pump air into the tires at a gas station (a bad idea for many reasons) but was unable to, when he returned to the bike shop for an "air job" the stolen bicycle was recovered by the police who were alerted by the Bike Shop.  Get this, the mechanic stalled the hippy dippy customer with the ol'--this type of air compressor needs to warm up routine.

Similarly, the Las Vegas Sun  http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/nov/16/5-arrested-in-attempted-nevada-bank-robbery/ is reporting that 5 men showed up at a Vegas area bank with a search warrant that entitled them to seize all the cash in the local Wells Fargo bank vault.  The dubious bank manager refused to honor the warrant despite being handcuffed--and there are now 5 thwarted would-be bank robbers in custody.

Shortly after I became a lawyer, a distraught family, all adult children, came to the office because their father, a NASA engineer had died in a swimming pool while on his second honeymoon with his new wife who was half his age.  Funny thing was Dad never swam a day in his life.  Dad had never taken a swimming lesson, and except for the shower, Dad had an aversion to water.  Our office was the fifth law office they visited seeking some help, no one listened to them.  Hell I wasn't exactly burning up the legal profession at that point in my life, (or for that matter at this point in my life) so I listened to them.  Turns out, new wife didn't kill Dad as my clients suspected but when we got the records from Florida as part of our investigation, the ambulance report reflected something of tremendous interest. The EMTs reported standing at poolside, unable to make out the body of this African American just below the surface.  Dad who must have been secretly taking swim lessons, or, more likely, emboldened by a sudden shot of testosterone--drowned disoriented in the hotel pool.  The autopsy showed no drugs, no alcohol, no trauma, no evidence of foul play.

Being the sharp-witted intake associate, I received a $1,000 bonus out of the multi-million dollar wrongful death settlement shared between the family, new mom, and the attorneys.