I worked as an anesthesiologist at the University of Washington Medical Center for nearly forty years. Sue, my wife, over that same time period, worked as a nurse at the Medical Center as well. As we were settling in to our jobs, Sue and I began looking at where in the Seattle area we should live. Early on, Sue was very interested in riding horses – an interest that continues to this day. As a result we, only briefly though, looked at living on the ‘east-side’, that is, in one of the suburban areas of Seattle where there were multiple riding facilities, homes with ‘horse acres’, idyllic settings for someone interested in horses. However, living that far from the hospital meant we would both have had a daily driving commute of nearly an hour battling worsening Seattle traffic each way. Commuting and traffic are things that are intolerable to me. I decided after months of looking for a suburban horse home, to walk to work and commute to the horse, rather that walk to the horse and commute to work, if in a moment of weakness, we every bought a horse. As a consequence we chose to live very close to the medical center – right on the edge of campus. Our house allowed us to have a 20 minute walk to work, a 10 minute bike ride, or a 20-25 minute commute if I chose to drive – yes it took longer to drive with all the campus traffic than either walk or bike. Ambulances seemed to make the trip relatively quickly but they benefited from red lights and sirens. I remember once asking the hospital medical director if I could get some red lights and a siren but he just shook his head as he often did when I made requests to him.
To facilitate my commute I had purchased a bike. I want to clarify again, I am in no way a bike enthusiast, I simply rode a bike for transportation, not for pleasure. My bike saved me untold amounts of emotional energy, and vascular and cardiac damage from epinephrine (adrenaline) bursts by simply choosing to commute via a bike.
Making my bicycle commute even easier was the presence of a wonderful bike path a half block away from our home, called the Burke Gilman trail, which cuts right through the middle of campus, and one on which I could travel. The bike trail brought me right past the medical center.
As I aged I became lazier and lazier. Compounding the onset of laziness was the fact that the last quarter mile of my trip back home was a rather steep portion of my return home that started as I exited the trail and finished as I rode up to our home. Slogging up a hill at the end of a 12 hour day or a 14 hour night call shift did little to encourage me to continue to make that commute on a bicycle. Then one day I stumbled upon an ad for an electric bike. I heard sound of harps from heaven, my prayers had been answered!!
I did a bit of research and within the week I caved and I was the proud owner of an electric bike. It was a great bike. It could be ridden as a regular peddle bicycle, or with peddle assist, that is, the motor assisted me making the peddling as hard or as easy as I wished. But it had an additional mode in which the bicycle motor would do all of the work. As it turned out, I would use this last mode every night as I neared the final hill on my way home. It was cool to be riding on the trail and pass guys who were dressed head to toe in spandex and the latest of bicycle riding gear, and me in my Oxford button down collar shirt and dress pants. It is an interesting observation that when men put on spandex, something happens, … does something get pinched, or ?? … and they frequently become irrational, erratic, and unpredictable when riding a bicycle and as I experienced on many occasions, quite rude to anyone who attempted to pass them, particularly if they are old and in dress cloths. How many times I heard the phrase shouted at me, “That’s not a real bike!” “That’s a fake bike”. As the gentleman I was I would shout back, “at least I don’t wear spandex that is way too tight for me!” It is interesting to observe some 25 years later that I don’t hear the same things shouted at owners of the Prius, Leaf, Bolt or Tesla, or soon Lucid. What I do hear is, “wow, I wish I had one of those”. My how times change.
The bike was one of the early models, it was quite heavy and had a very large strange looking battery compartment built in to the downtube, a support leading from the handlebar head tube to the chain stay. The battery was so large that it was built into the bicycle and required a charging cable to be connected from an electric outlet to the bicycle itself. I had little problem with the looks as long as the bicycle got me from here-to-there and would assist my travel whenever I chose.
One of the many joys, NOT !!!, of working as an anesthesiologist at the University of Washington was that we were privileged to take in-house call 5-10 times a month. This means that we were required to work 14 hour night shifts, 4:30 PM until 6:30 AM the following morning. I hated night shift. The worst time for me was between 1:30 AM and 3:30 AM, and it was those two hours that I was truly at my worst at delivering care and making decisions. I just hoped that the OR or the ICU’s were quiet during those times. Somehow, if required, I seemed to be able to step up to the plate and make it happen, but at considerable emotional and physical cost. It was difficult to actually get my act together and even find my way home after being relieved in the morning as my shift ended. I also noticed that for the next three days after one of these shifts I would find myself cold, impossible to feel warm. As I aged the few hormones I still had left, obviously, had become completely screwed up. Turning 65 was wonderful, as after turning 65, I no longer had to take night shifts!
What has all this to do with Obama, the bike thief, one might ask !!
Well, a visit by a sitting president to an American city brings with it a very complicated process that touches multiple federal and local agencies and a large portion of the city’s population in one way or another. It is not easy to get a president in and out of venues safely.
October 21, 2010, President Obama decided to visit Seattle, and more specifically, the University of Washington where he was a guest speaker at a rally in the Hec Edmundson Athletic Pavilion for US Senator Patty Murray in her re-election campaign of that year. Hec Ed pavilion sits just across the street from the University of Washington Medical Center so an announcement of a presidential visit so close to the hospital would strike fear into all of our lives. I knew that I could, with very little warning, be privileged to care for the President who was experiencing some form of medical emergency. Hmmmm, the headlines on CNN would read: “Ross kills the President”.
A lesser concern, however, was we would all know that for the duration of the visit, traffic would be worse than ever and it would be best to avoid roads and freeways altogether. As I looked at the schedule for the month of October I realized I would be on call while he was in town. It struck me !! – as it did every time someone important came in to town – OMG, it could be me taking care of one of these folks, me, an ole Idaho ‘potato head’ giving them an emergency anesthetic, no pressure at all!! I will say I have given anesthetics to two of the richest men in Seattle (can’t say their names but you would recognize them) and a couple of world leaders from the middle east to name just a few, but never ever liked doing any of them. Funny, I always had to go to the Medical School Dean’s office and get their medical records out of his safe and review their records in his office. Their medical records were never available through medical records or on line in the electronic medical record. Also I always saw those assignments as no win situation for me. The folks would come, actually sneak, into the hospital through a back door surrounded by ‘their people’ – and if everything went well no one would ever know they were ever there. But I had nightmares if things didn’t go well. I could see it now – a headline in the Seattle Times – “Ross offs …” …… ugh.
Well, back to Obama ‘the bike thief ’’.
The Wednesday night before Obama’s visit which was scheduled for a Thursday, as I mention, I had the ‘good fortune’, ugh, of being on night call. That meant I would be working all Wednesday night and leaving the hospital early Thursday morning very close to the time that Obama would be arriving at Hec Ed Pavilion – the basketball sports arena for the University directly across the street from the hospital. As per my usual, that night when I came in to work for night shift I rode my electric bicycle to the Medical Center and lock it up in a bicycle rack assigned to night staff. The rack was right outside of the Emergency Room entrance in clear site of the security officer that staffed a booth in the ER and a very short walk to the men’s locker room where physicians and staff could change into scrubs before entering the operating room area.
As luck would have it, I had cases to do all night long, one which took much of my attention was a man who had a propensity to try die at the most in-opportune times, a man that had presented with a rupturing abdominal aortic aneurysm – I just hated it when someone tried to die on my watch. With the help of a very competent senior resident and a junior resident who was clearly at the head of the junior class we were able to get the man through his surgery, out of the operating room, up to the ICU – and some three weeks later discharged from the hospital. Well, the end of the night shift could not have come quickly enough for me.
As the shift ended I finished up some paperwork and, totally exhausted, I changed out of my somewhat blood splattered blue scrubs, and headed for the emergency room entrance to climb aboard my electric bike and head for home. I was pretty much daydreaming as I exited the building and, as I came up to the bicycle rack, I suddenly realized I wasn’t seeing my bike.
As often happens in situations like this, the first thing that went through my mind was – “Ok, where did I really park my bike yesterday? Did I just forget that I parked it in a different bike rack”? It didn’t take me long to realize I had actually parked the bike where I usually did and …, IT WAS GONE !
It was crazy. How could this be happening, after hearing all of the somewhat disparaging comments I had about the bike, “who would really bother stealing my electric bike?”
I looked around and was reminded that there was a hospital emergency department security kiosk, a kiosk which is staffed 24/7 by a medical center security officer, was just a few feet away from the bike rack. I made my way over to the kiosk to ask the security guard if he or one of his colleagues had noticed any unusual activities at the bike rack. At best one would describe the guards enthusiasm about my concern as lukewarm at worst uncaring and, what I perceived to be , unexplainably evasive and non-comital, like he was told not to talk about ‘things’.
Hmmm… Strange I thought, and a very faint song I couldn’t recognize started playing in my head ….
a melody I had heard many years earlier on a show called, ‘The Twilight Zone’.
I was really at a low level of energy so I elected to pursue further investigation with the security folks the next day. However, I did go to the anesthesia office and take time to call the University Police to report my bike being stolen. I did that with some trepidation as I figured that the police department was way too busy with the presidential visit to be even minimally concerned about a missing bicycle. My call was taken by a very pleasant officer, Sargent Mary Gleason. I apologized for calling but she reassured me I should have called. She thanked me for calling and said, “the UW police take a stolen bicycle report seriously. She asked for a description of the bicycle and then asked for the serial number, which I didn’t have with me. She suggested that I call her the following morning with the serial number but the bicycles description was so unique that she said she would distribute the information and the police would watch for it. What a pleasant interaction I thought.
I was seriously tired so decided to head home. I was so tired I really didn’t want to walk home, but wouldn’t you know it. all bus services to the hospital had been diverted since Obama had arrived about 30 minutes earlier. Traffic was completely snarled. I tried to get an Uber, but no such luck. So off I trudged, luckily it was only a one and a half mile walk.
After getting home I slept for about 4 hours, awoke, and remembered I had a call with a colleague, Craig, in New York City about a medical simulation program he was helping to set up at Cornell University, so gave him a call mid-afternoon. We chatted a bit and at some point he said I sounded a bit tired and distracted. So as I am want to do, I put on my pity hat and had to tell him about my night on call and then needing to walk home because my bike had been stolen and that Obama was in town so couldn’t catch a bus or an Uber.
Craig then started to relate to me that a year or two earlier President Obama was on the Cornell campus speaking and 40 bicycles came up missing !!! I said, What !!!!!!!!!……..
I just actually laughed and said, “come on, really”! He reassured me this was fact.
Fact or just a ‘Pre-Trumpian’ Conspiracy ???
Now, again, I started to hear that same melody I had heard earlier but this time not so softly.
The next day, Friday, I went to work as usual – I guess not really as usual, since I didn’t have my bike. I had an office day that Friday. Since I had dug out the serial number of my bike I decided to call the UW police so they could add the number to the report. I dialed the number and Sargent Mary Gleason answered the phone, just as she had the prior day when I reported the bike being stolen. She was again very pleasant, took the serial number. In passing I told her what my friend at Cornell had told me, laughing as I finished the story. I then asked in jest, any other bikes go missing yesterday. Mary, then had a bit of a prolong hesitation before she continued and said …
Now, … I need to pause and give you a little background before continuing. In 2010, the UW police station was located on Boat Street, a street along the Lake Union boat canal, a canal that forms the southern most border of the campus. It happened that at that time right next to the Police station was a retail stored named “Recycled Cycles”. Recycled Cycles was a store where folks could bring used bicycles, receive a little cash from the store which would then take the bikes off their hands, refurbish them, and sell them as used bikes.
Sargent Gleason continued, “this may not mean anything, but after thinking about your call yesterday, I recalled that I saw 4 very large black Suburbans parked at the front door of Recycled Cycles when I came to work at 6:00 am. I thought that was a bit strange because it was very early for the store to be open. Interesting, don’t you think”, she said.
Fact or Conspiracy ??
The Twilight Zone song began playing even more loudly in my mind !!
We ended our call and I was left in my office to ponder what she had just said. All of a sudden I remembered that when I had gone out the previous morning and found my bike gone I had seen a number of security cameras near the Emergency Department Entrance. It struck me, I wondered if the cameras may have recorded anything useful. After working for the medical center for as long as I had, I had become good friends with the head of security at the medical center. I made my way to his office and with a bit of humor told him what I had learned. He said, “well let’s see what we can see”. After several minutes of searching he concluded there were no videos available from the cameras for Thursday morning, gone, disappeared, erased????.
Hmmmmmm … .
He then ‘questioned the … … lineage’ of the Secret Service agents and suggested he was not happy that they had performed the requisite sweep of surrounding locations that are near a presidential venue and didn’t even have the courtesy to contact him before they performed the sweep near the University Medical Center.
He did suggest that during Secret Service sweeps if a suspicious item is found, such as a bike with an unusual battery case, the item is removed from the vicinity of the president, without notification.
Fact or Conspiracy ??
The Twilight Zone song was playing loud and clear in my head at this point.
Since I had been paying for a home insurance policy for many years and had never made a claim I decided that the following day I would call my insurance company to report my bike being stolen. I, surprisingly, on the first ring of the phone, was able to speak with an insurance company representative, a very pleasant lady by the name of Helen. I started by just telling her about being on ‘call’ at the hospital and when I came out in the morning to get on my bike it was gone. She reviewed my policy and reminded me that the bike appeared to be worth about $2,200 but that there was an $800.00 deductible. As she took my information she casually asked how I thought the bike went missing. With some hesitation I began telling her the story that I had put together over the preceding 2-3 days, each chapter ending with “ can you believe that”. As I related each chapter, I became more and more convinced that the whole thing sounded more like a ‘fake news story’, a rather far-fetched conspiracy than actual fact.
After I completed telling her what I had found out, there was a very very long pause. Helen finally said, “That is incredible, and that is exactly what happened. Your bike was ‘stolen’ by the secret service and with that we will not be withholding the deductible and we will be paying you the high end of the bikes worth, $2,800, and they should be ashamed of themselves” !!!
Do you hear the same music I had heard ???? I ask you …Did Obama steal my bike ?? … or am I just one of the many conspiracy theorists that find literary fodder in the world of politics?
As an epilogue to this story, a colleague of mine asked me if I had seen a news report that after his appearance at Hec-Ed Obama was seen exploring Capitol Hill, a very eclectic part of Seattle, and having coffee at a prominent coffee shop on the Hill. I immediately asked her, “he wasn’t riding an electric bike was he?”
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