How To Ensure 2024 Goes According To Plan
How I got my stolen motorcycle back and now it's gone again...
Last year I wrote an essay about my stolen motorcycle called How To Ensure 2023 Goes According to Plan. This post is a sequel to that post, BUT it works on its own too. But click the link and listen or read it if you want!
I was sitting in a cafe in Paris thinking about what to write about. It was January 3rd 2023. What did I have to be upset about, it was the beginning of a New Year and I was sitting in a cafe in Paris thinking about what to write about, I mean come on. What in the world did I have to be upset about. I was upset because my motorcycle had gotten stolen and due to a loop hole, my insurance was not covering the theft. This was stealing the joy and the peace from my otherwise pitch perfect afternoon at Le Cafe Noir. I was furious when my motorcycle was stolen and more angry when GEICO told me they wouldn’t be covering it and now I was seething about it 3 months after the event, grinding my teeth 4000 miles away from the scene of the crime.
I loved that bike. I got it because when we were in Covid lockdown I was bored out of my mind and wanted a challenge and something new to excite me and distract my mind. And now I can’t get my mind off 12UB00. That was my license plate, a number of people asked if it was a vanity plate. Nope. I didn’t name her, the New York Department of Motor Vehicles named her 12 You Boo, not me.
I didn’t want to write about it because the last time I tried to work out my frustration with this situation on stage a therapist from the audience emailed me and said I should consider talking about this motorcycle theft in therapy. I started to write about it, maybe prose was the better outlet for this particular story, it was all about letting go of the things I (we) can’t control and how I (we) react to events when they don’t go our way.
Now here are the 2 reasons why there is a sequel to that post a year ago.
First off, that essay informed the rest of my year, because at the hopeful beginning of 2023 I was like, things won’t go according to plan, that’s alright! You can roll with the punches! Do things differently this year! Hurray!
Sure, everyone thinks that way in January, wait until life starts throwing you curveballs in March, August, November and you are dragging your weary heart across the calendar year December 31st.
The second reason this is getting a sequel, when I wrote that essay, my motorcycle had already been recovered. No, not in a metaphorical or spiritual way, when you let go of things they return to you *harp strum*. In a very literal way, my motorcycle was in the possession of the NYPD and they had been trying to notify me of this since December 12th 2022.
This is what happened. When I flew to Paris I got an international data plan, which means that I can use the internet and WhatsApp and FaceTime audio for calls but my phone number was not in use. So the NYPD had been calling me leaving me voicemails to my phone line saying ‘Kevin, we have recovered your bike. It is here in Brooklyn’ and I was sitting in a cafe huffing and puffing about how my bike got stolen. It is like a masculine romantic comedy about a man and his precious hog trying to reunite.
Just imagine a melancholic me, staring out of the window of a cafe in Paris, now imagine it in Black and White. And now imagine a motorcycle that communicates through its horn and blinking its headlight Herbie The Lovebug style and the New York cop is like ‘Hey boss, not for nothing but…I think this bike is trying to tell me something. I think it’s saying ‘Kevin…where are ya?’
I finally received the voicemail when I landed back in the United States and turned my phone line back on and a voicemail from December 12th that had been stuck in the cellular purgatory was finally delivered to me. I called the number the cop had left for me and nice lady on the other end of the line made it official: my motorcycle had been recovered after the bike got a parking ticket, then the cops ran the plate, the police report popped up, they towed it back to Precinct 95 to be picked up by me on March 1st 2023.
When I arrived at the police station the cop said ‘This is a nice bike. You know this never happens right?’ I told him I suspected it did not happen to often.
Back when I had first filed the police report I asked the cop if there was a chance I would get the bike back and he said ‘Most likely, your bike is upstate being sold for parts already bud.’ Most likely? So you are saying there’s a chance? And in fact there was.
Once I got the bike back I appreciated it in a way that anyone would when you think something is gone forever. I also could not get over how darkly hilarious the irony would be if I got in a motorcycle accident and died. IF ONLY I COULD GET MY MOTORCYCLE BACK, I DID! SPLAT! Be careful what you wish for folks!
I am one to grandly theorize what it all means because that is part of what storytelling is anyway, its piecing together information in a way that starts to make sense. So for this to make sense to me I had to think about what the bike was to me now. What was I so angry about at the cafe in Paris. Was it the money? The feeling of violation of being robbed? The failure of protection and safety from the insurance company? You got your bike back, all has been resolved in the most unexpected of ways. in light of that, what was making you so mad?
My mom says I was fairly young when I first uttered the phrase ‘It’s the principle of the thing!’ It sounds like something I would have heard my grandparents say or my father. It’s so generic it can be applied to really anything. Any injustice, any violation of customs or neglect of the way things should be done. That is what made me so mad…I don’t need to explain anything more than that. IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING. Something so broad is dangerous it can be applied to any principle and any thing.
I had a lovely final few months with my motorcycle, I went on a couple of long rides. There is equal amounts of meditation and thrill when you are going 75 miles an hour on a wide open empty road. Then I put it up on Facebook Marketplace and it was sold. The irony of crashing on it was too great for me but more importantly I needed the money. I think I learned all I could on the bike. About safety, about risk, about adventure, about letting go when your principles are violated and gratitude when all is restored. All of those memories, stories and lessons were represented in 39 crisp one hundred dollar bills.
I put the $3900 in a new savings account. It is like the first $100 your grandparents put in a savings they opened for you. It is a gift that means a lot more than the mere $100, it’s about the future potential of that account. The savings account is for the expenses of my trip to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this coming August and the new show I will be bringing along with me. It is yet to be written save for a 3 or 4 notebooks from the past year filled with entries and scribbles only legible to me.
I am a bit fixated on money lately because I am in a bit of a work transition but the thought of that $3900 just slowly being chipped away at by groceries and rent until it’s gone doesn’t make me feel good. This machine was fighting to reunite with me across the Atlantic sea for God’s sake. I was staring out of a window filled with melancholy in the City of Love as she tried to make contact and then I wrote of our love and loss and lessons learned, I can’t spend what’s left of her on the electric bill.
I think what I was angry about in Paris when I wrote Part 1 of this essay was the inability to live in that moment and be present. I had worked so hard to make that trip happen and there I was angry about something from the past out of my control. It was ok that I was angry because I was right but I was still angry so who wins? When you hold on to all the violated principles of all the unfortunate things that happen to you, at a certain point you have to consider who you are carrying them for. Writing that essay smoothed all that over and it put all those emotions in their right place by writing an essay called:
How To Ensure 2023 Goes According To Plan.
Well, what the fuck do YOU think happened in 2023? How did yours go? You think my year went according to plan? Does anyones year go according to plan? No, of course not you fucking idiot…also it’s not supposed to. The year will do what it does and live it along the way, as it happens by doing your best, caring about what is truly important and investing in the right things.
But what is truly important and what is truly worth investing in? Well, it’s not material things but when a really meaningful material thing is lost forever only to be returned to you it means something. It Means Something. At least to me it does. And it’s not money but if you get a big stack of it from a guy from Facebook Marketplace you better invest it in something worthwhile.
Thanks for coming back to me 12UB00, I’ll put you to good use.
The music from this episode on audio I found on Spotify discovery. It came up when I was writing and then I listen to it on repeat as I wrote this piece. I hope you enjoy it and check their music out.