COMPTRON and the Case of the Battered Fuji

My road bike is possibly the most valuable thing I own, and I cherish it. I bought it on 25 November 2006, a very seriously considered present to myself for the next decade to come.

I missed him intensely (the bike is male, though as yet nameless; naming ceremony forthcoming after we've completed our first century ride) while I was in Europe. I thought of him daily, I dreamed of him some nights. About a week after getting back, I finally finally took the bike out of my room so I could ride it over to Bonnie's house just a few miles away. The bike weighs a cool 18.7 lbs, easy to carry down the stairs and into the alley. Please imagine my surprise and ensuing distress, then, when after accomplishing this, I prepared to get on the bike and saw that my right handlebar was bent at a 45 degree angle, and the back wheel wouldn't spin. ?!?!?!?

I needed to get to Bonnie's, and I'm still minus my cell phone, so I figured I'd just try to get the bike functional there in the alley and puzzle over the situation while I rode. I was able to bend the handlebar most the way back and get the wheel going, so I clipped in with much trepidation and made my way west slowly. The alignment was off so much that I feared I might have actually forgotten how to ride; let me say merely that the 17 minute journey to Bonnie's was frightfully interesting (though untrackable, because my bike computer had stopped working too).

I took the bike into the shop today, and Jorge - a wonderful mechanic who's messed around with my bike before - looked it over. In his estimation, it was definitely crashed. I had to have the handlebars replaced, the dropout fixed, and a few other things tuned up. $130 later and with promises of undying love if he could have it fixed by today instead of by his original offer of next Wednesday, and my bike is back, its wounds bandaged and set.

But who crashed my bike? I trust my roommates implicitly, as they are both honest and decent and painfully aware of exactly how valuable the bike is to me, and thus I am sure they neither rode it nor sanctioned the riding of it. So how did it come to be so violently battered? I'm opening up a toll-free tipster hotline as soon as Switzerland coughs up my mobile. aaaaargh!