I've never had very good luck with vehicles. Most vehicles I've owned have been wrecked, stolen, or both. The unifying thread through these mishaps is that, with rare exception, I've never been there when it happened.

Chapter One: The Huffy - 1980

I was seven years old. I learned how to ride. I spent days with my mom and dad, getting over using training wheels. I remember the first time Dad let go of the back and I started going down the cul de sac on my own, losing my balance, and banging into the neighbor's trash can. I remember it specifically because it was the same trash can (or at least a descendent of the same line, from the same neighbor's breeding stock of corrugated aluminum trashcans) that I hit with Dad's car ten years later when he was teaching me to drive stick.

Well, I did learn how to ride the Huffy sans training wheels at long last. I remember the day I got the hang of it and Susie and I went with the Selbys to UCLA to ride around the campus, and to let their dog splash joyously around in the inverted fountain. I wouldn't claim I was a pro at using the bike; for weeks afterward I would jump off the bike when I wanted to stop, afraid of the brake. For some reason I thought the brake (which worked by trying to backpedal) would lock the wheel and I'd go flying over the handlebars. That fear was stronger than any possible injury I might sustain by jumping off the bike to a run and letting it crash where it may. Eventually I got the hang of it (first of bailing, then of breaking)

Ready bike mobility was a big boon to my social life, and now I could ride to The Galleria. (The Sherman Oaks Galleria, the primordial pool of what would come to be known as the 'Valley Girl.' In fact, the movie of the same name was filmed there.)

Of course, for security's sake, my mom got us chain locks for our bikes. This was before there were Kryptonite locks, and the four-tumbler cylindrical lock afforded more security than this seven-year-old had ever had. I could lock things. I could keep things even when they weren't in my room.

That was the theory, anyhow.

A few months later Susie and I took our bikes to The Galleria and we locked up both bikes with my lock. After a hard day of wandering (the pet store, the arcade, the bookstore, the movie theater, the pet store again) we descended to the underground parking structure to grab our bikes and ride home.

Sifting through the crowded bicycle rack, like trying to find a book on the bookshelf, I skipped over my bike. Looking again, it wasn't there. Locked with the same lock, they were right next together, but now my sister's pink bike stood alone, jilted, with nothing but a broken chain draped on the neck of the handlebars like a broken promise of security.

Speaking of broken security, that was our next stop, to have a report written up by the mallcops. (When you're seven, you don't realize there's a difference between a mallcop and an actual police officer.) The guy said he'd call if anything turned up, and Susie and I made our slow way home, me walking, her on her bike, mildly miffed that the thief didn't think her bike was even worth stealing, when the chain was already cut.

...

Three weeks later I took my skateboard to The Galleria and was skating through the empty parking lot ramps on a Sunday morning and I get stopped by a mall cop who's going to write me up for riding on the parking lot's ramps (first time warning, second time the board gets confiscated). He starts writing up the warning and pauses, frowning further:

"Haven't I stopped you before?"
 "No, sir."
"I think I have. This isn't your first time. I'm going to have to take your board."
 "This is the first time I ever took my skateboard here. I used to take my bike until it got stolen a couple weeks ago."
"Here?"
 "Yeah, right over there. Did you find it yet?"
"No. Um, go on along."

It was a while before I got another bike, but I put that skateboard to good use. In junior high I would ride it 6 miles each way to my Saturday bowling league. (There are so many things wrong with that statement...)

But that's another story.