My brother was visiting Seattle for a few days, and yesterday we took a ferry over to Vashon Island with Scot. While sightseeing and on our way to do some geocaching, Scot told us there was a tree on the island with a bicycle in it. Not a bike sitting in the branches, but a bike in the tree. Right. The idiot. The bozo! We felt like fools scrambling around in the trees looking up for a bike. Then he found the little path that led to the item above.
The first picture is one that I took yesterday. The lower one is what the bike looked like several years ago. The bike was vandalized and the handlebar and front wheel were taken. Someone restored the missing pieces, but the frame and the rear tire is the original deal. If you look closely you can see the edge of one of the pedals, too.
The real story, of course, is that this was a tragic Star Trek transporter accident. Who knows what happened to the bike rider? This bike is also the inspiration for a children’s book by cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, Red Ranger Came Calling.
Filed under: personal and none of your business Tagged: | bike, tree, vashon island
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Tree trunks don’t grow up. While this tree may have grown out and around the bicycle, it was not a bike left along the ground, unless the soil beneath the bike had washed away. If the soil was washed away, then there would be exposed roots.
This bike was probably staged here a few years before these pictures. The amount of rust and other degradation is too little for this to be too old.
Wrong, I have seen barbed wire fencing that was fastened to trees using them as a fence post, the top wire at about 4 feet and the bottom wire at about 6 inches, the other 2 spaced evenly between the two – years later the bottom wire is 10 – 15 feet from the ground . . . no one staged that. It would be very possible for a bike to be lifted by a tree as it grew around it . . .
I suggest you visit the site if you are ever in Washington State. You can see the edge of a pedal that is deeply embedded the trunk, which would have been very difficult to stage.
Here’s one story of the origin of the bike:
http://www.mortythedog.com/2011/07/vashon-island-bicycle-in-tree-mystery.html
It would be interesting to know when reports of the bike in the tree first appeared.
[...] swallowed by a tree is a fairly famous landmark in Vashon Island (near Seattle). You can find numerous references to it, including multiple supposed back stories. One way or the other, the story boils down to [...]