SIDE A / SIDE B | JUNE 2026 - Volume 5

Some sounds stay with you forever.

A song tied to a memory. The crackle of a vinyl record before the music starts. Tools echoing through the shop.

And then there are the sounds that instantly pull you out of sleep and into panic.

For us, it was the alarm.

It happened during a very cold snowstorm. We're talking temperatures in the single digits. The roads were covered in ice, the wind was howling, and the whole town seemed to be asleep. It was the kind of night when nobody had any reason to be out unless they absolutely had to be.

Then, at 3:07 in the morning, my phone exploded with notifications.

It was the shop's alarm app.

If you've ever owned a business, you know that feeling. One second you're asleep and the next your mind is racing through every possible scenario. Before I could even process what was happening, the monitoring company called.

"Your alarm is going off at the shop. Would you like us to dispatch police?"

"Yes, please." No hesitation.

As they contacted law enforcement, I pulled up our security cameras. We have multiple cameras throughout the building, so I immediately started reviewing the footage to see what had triggered the alarm.

Kevin was already pulling on his clothes and getting ready to leave. There was no way he was going to sit at home wondering what was happening at the shop. While I stayed glued to the camera feed, he headed out into the ice and snow.

A few moments later, a figure stepped into frame.

The person had their hood up and their face covered as they moved carefully through the snow toward the front of the building. Then came the sound of glass breaking.

Even through the camera speaker, it was enough to make my stomach drop.

The person climbed through the broken front window and stepped inside.

I called Kevin immediately and told him what I was seeing.

At that point, police were on the way, Kevin was on the way, and a stranger was walking around inside our shop. All I could do was watch.

What happened next was not what I expected.

The person moved through the building slowly, looking around as if they were trying to figure out where they were. They weren't smashing displays, opening drawers, or grabbing tools. They weren't trying to roll out a motorcycle or loading anything into a bag.

Instead, they seemed almost confused.

The longer I watched, the more obvious it became that something wasn't adding up. Whoever this was, they didn't appear to know what they were looking for.

They looked around at the motorcycles, the workbenches, the toolboxes, and the parts shelves. Then they stopped for a moment as if they were trying to make sense of it all.

That's when my husband said exactly what I was thinking.

"I don't think this is what they expected to find."

A short time later, the person turned around, climbed back out through the broken window, and disappeared into the snow.

Just like that, they were gone.

By the time police arrived, there was nobody left to find.

Nothing had been taken.

Not a single tool.

Not a motorcycle.

Not even a bottle of cleaner.

The only thing left behind was shattered glass across the floor and a very long night for us.

The next day, after talking with officers and reviewing everything again, a theory started to emerge.

Before we moved into the building, it had been a dispensary. Around the same time, several dispensaries in the area had been broken into.

Suddenly, the whole thing made a lot more sense.

Whoever broke into our shop probably thought they were breaking into something else.

Instead, they found motorcycles, tools, and a repair shop.

Wrong building. Wrong target. Wrong night.

Looking back now, it's almost funny.

At three o'clock in the morning, it definitely wasn't.

What has stuck with me all this time isn't the broken window or the cleanup afterward. It's that moment when the person stood there looking around, realizing they weren't where they thought they were.

Running a motorcycle shop has taught us that the stories don't stop when the doors close at night.

Sometimes the strangest stories happen when nobody is supposed to be there at all.

Some happen under a summer sky, with fireworks reflecting off the water and the smell of sunscreen and gasoline in the air.

Next month, we'll tell you about one of the unexpected perks of owning a powersports shop, and how a few jet skis led to friendships we never saw coming.