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It's with a heavy heart that I have to post about my stolen YZ400. As the previous post said, this was the motorcycle I looked for, and always wanted, since I was a kid.
I thought it was safe
The way it was stolen was invasive. But I didn't do everything in my ability to keep it safe. I thought it was safe, and it wasn't.
It was somewhere very slightly visible — and by slightly, I mean only part of the wheel. It wasn't out in the open, and it wasn't somewhere it could simply be rolled away: it had to be picked up and carried. And it wasn't there for long.
How it got there
After I did the Mint 400 race, I lost the muffler for my IT. The following week I went to search for it on the YZ. I didn't find it, but I had a good ride anyway.
When I got home, I put the bike in the depths of my driveway, hidden behind stuff, hardly visible from the road at all. It was safe from the rain there, and that weekend it was raining.
A gray week
That same weekend, one of my pets got really sick, and eventually he passed. I spent the day at the vet waiting for help, but it was already too late. It was a very rainy, gray and sad day.
I didn't feel much like dealing with anything, and I left the bike where it was. I thought it was safe.
I had work, and the next couple of days I was getting back into the swing of things.
"I'll put the YZ away tomorrow"
I had one last opportunity. Instead, I listed the XR250 for sale, and spent the couple of hours I had cleaning it up, taking pictures and posting it.
I was going to put the YZ away, but I never thought it was in danger, so I opted to do it the next day. I literally had this thought: I'll put the YZ away tomorrow, and use the time to sell the XR.
I literally had this thought: I'll put the YZ away tomorrow.
When the next day came, the motorcycle was gone.
Two years of nothing
In one week I lost a good pet and my favorite motorcycle. It was a really tough time. I felt violated and let down by the world.
I stopped posting anything on YouTube. I'd filmed the YZ and hadn't posted anything on it up to that point; I'd also filmed and not posted the IT videos.
I'd never posted anywhere that I had the YZ. I think it was a theft of opportunity. I have my suspicions — and the story I got later, which I'll share in the next post, supports that theory — but I don't have hard proof, and I'll never know for sure.
No police report
I didn't report it. Stolen dirt bikes don't come back, and this motorcycle doesn't have a title, so it didn't seem worthwhile to report it as stolen.
I tried to do it online, but you can't report it online — and between work and everything else, it's very difficult to make these kinds of reports.
Letting it go
I waited two full years before I got back to editing the YZ video.
Part of the reason it took so long is that my pet was in that footage. He was always around the garage, and it was tough to look at video of him, the bike and me all together when he was gone. I put one of the clips of him into the video.
He's in my first videos from years ago, too. It was upsetting then, but now it's nice to see him there. He's immortalized, in a way, in the garage where he so often was.
He's immortalized, in a way, in the garage where he so often was.
When I did come back to it, I'd just posted a series of videos on my XR500 and was feeling good about the channel. I was going to do a one-off video on the YZ, and let it go.
That video did better than any of my other videos at the time, and I was finally letting go. I started looking online for another YZ to replace the one I'd lost.
Found
After a day or two of looking around, I found the YZ someone had stolen from me — on Marketplace.
By letting it go, it actually came back to me. And I wasn't going to let it slip away.
By letting it go, it actually came back to me.
I still can't believe the timing: I posted the first video, and found the motorcycle I'd never even said was gone. The next video and post are about getting it back.