I’ve been walking my ass off these days, because last week (after one of my shopping excursions with Pamela), I went out to find someone had swiped the battery to my e-bike! Man, I was so pissed. I mean, here I was having a good day, finally figuring out this body type classification system and these goddamn fuckers ran off with my 50-lb battery! What the hell? XJH recently adopted this new policy offering free bike parking. Well, a lot of good free parking does me. I’d rather fork over the 5 mao (6 cents). I gotta have people watching my stuff, you know? Was there a lock, you ask? Yes, there was but just so happens, my battery lock had a tendency to get jammed. Some days, I couldn’t even remove the battery to charge it, so figuring that no one was going to run off lugging this huge, heavy, cumbersome object, I decided front and back wheel locks were sufficient to protect my precious Furby. Wrong! And damnit, Furby is a bitch to ride without juice. I had to waddle that thing home. Not cool.

So now I’m on this mission to replace the stupid thing. I’m not sure if I have to take my bike so they can check for fit or whether there’s some kind of serial number or part number or what. The hypermarts that sell e-bikes are far away, so I can’t really walk Furby there. I tried to call Carrefour to get the scoop. No answer. I passed a little street bike vendor and asked him about batteries. He quoted me 300 RMB ($36 USD) and said it would be new, but seeing as his shop was a total dive, I had a gut feeling the transaction was nothing more than the repurchase of a stolen and therefore already used battery. In the mean time, I suppose this is a good way to get in some exercise…