I ran into Penny Ballem at Bob Rennie’s UDI speech at the Hotel Vancouver yesterday and was surprised when she waved a booklet of bus tickets, saying they were her way of getting around these days. I’ve only ever seen her on her bike until now. What happened, I wanted to know, thinking perhaps she’d decided the traffic in Vancouver was too awful or the status of her job required something more formal than rubber boots and a bike.
No, alas, Ms. Ballem has suffered the awful fate of hundreds of cyclists in this town. Her yellow Brodie Energy mountain bike was stolen from right in front of the security office at city hall. She parked it at the bike rack around 2 p.m. a couple of weeks ago and saw it again at 4 p.m. But when she came out at 10 p.m., all that was left was her Kryptonite bike lock, twisted like a pretzel.
She hasn’t bought a new one yet because she hasn’t had time. And I got the sense that she isn’t sure she’s going to find something else that fit her so perfectly as the Brodie that she’s had since 2003. So if anyone sees it (it also has an MEC rack on the back with “a little cushioned thing for milk”) around town, they could think about returning it. Who knows? Perhaps your tax bill would be forgiven for the year.