Devastated Promo just wants his bike back
With some donated parts and a frame and labour from Full Boar Bike Shop, Pramod (Promo) Thapa got a mountain bike.
Thapa, who moved to Kamloops with his family from Kathmandu, Nepal, has cerebral palsy — but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming a competitive downhill skier.
The bike, therefore, is essential for training in the off-season — riding the bike uphill helps to build stamina and brawn and heading downhill is a lot like swooshing down the slopes.
Sometime late last week, the bike was stolen and Jim Knowles, who trains Thapa, is hoping someone will find it because his young student “is devastated by this.”
Building the bike became a community effort, Knowles said, with some “rad little rippers in Kamloops” donating spare parts, along with Full Boar co-owner Dylan Methot’s other company, Mostly Mental Shuttles, which contracts with the Kamloops Bike Ranch to drive riders up to the park so they can barrel down the trails.
Full Boar used a frame from the British mountain-bike company Orange and Knowles is hoping its distinctive look — it is white with the union jack painted on it — will help someone identify it.
For those who know bikes, the front fork is also distinctive, with Full Boar staff using a Marzocchi Triple-8.
Replacing the bike would cost an estimated $4,000, Knowles said.
The bike was locked to Knowles’ porch on Hillside Drive with a half-inch chain that appeared to have been severed with bolt cutters. The lock was hanging on the rail, Knowles said.
Thapa trains extensively because he’s hoping to make it to the 2014 Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia, or the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
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