GTB: The Bike Saga

It all began with a bike.

From the study abroad program handbook, I quote: “Boston University does NOT recommend bicycle use due to heavy traffic and past accidents involving students.” This part of the guide is underlined. And bolded.

My friend Alex, who wants more than anything to be as cool as the Italians, decided to ignore this warning and buy a bike from one of our Italian friends. It cost ten euros, which is a great deal, according to my host mother (who has had seven of her family bikes stolen). Though, the price may have had something to do with the fact that the bike was on it’s last leg (or...wheel?) so to speak.

Considering most bikes in Padova have probably been stolen at least once before, we told Alex that it was pretty much a definite that his was a stolen bike. He adamantly denied this, saying “What? No! This is a virgin bike, guys!” Of course, this just gave us more ammunition to provoke him. Our Italian friends loved joking about the bike too. One Wednesday night, our friends Alessandro and Federico suggested we make a movie entitled “GTB” (Grand Theft Bicycle) starring Alex and his bike. Alex immediately started thinking of a backstory to rival The Godfather.

I won’t lie, I was happy to score rides home on the maybe-stolen-maybe-not bike once in a while, cutting my usual 30-40 minute walk down to 10-15 minutes. Most of these rides home were drunken (driver included), with me either clinging to the wobbly seat with Alex standing in front or trying to keep my butt balanced on the front frame while Alex pedaled behind. When I wasn’t my most sober, I had a bad habit of getting my feet caught in the wheels. When Alex wasn’t his most sober, he had the bad habit of trying to squeeze between parked cars and jump over tram tracks. At one point, the brakes broke and Alex could only stop with his feet. I’m pretty sure we were the perfect bad example for the program handbook.

Flash forward a couple weekends. Kate and I are at the grocery store, when I feel my phone buzzing. It’s a text message from Alex. It reads: “My bike got robbed.” I turn the phone to Kate and she crumples in laughter. “I have to get out of here!” she says frantically to me before running to a nearby cafe. “I’m going to pee my pants!”

Alex, still trying to be a “real” Italian, now insists that since his bike was stolen, he’s “in the system.” According to him, now that he’s in the system, he can steal someone else’s bike to replace his. I gave him an eye roll and an “oh please”. “I’m like a mother who’s lost her child,” he said. “I keep looking at every bike I see, hoping it’s mine. I’m down -1 in the system and some sonofabitch is +1.”

I and our other friends, however, can’t imagine a more perfect ending to the GTB bike saga. It really has come full circle.

At one point when I made fun of Alex’s dramatic bike comments, he came back with an even more dramatic: “It’s the system. We’re living in it.”

The perfect tagline for our movie? I think so.