Arizona man celebrates his sobriety by getting drunk and stealing motorcycle

The demon drink clouds the sharpest of minds, as we witnessed last week with the stupefying negligence of Texas hit-and-run driver Paul Joseph Garcia.

Hence, if you’re an all or nothing kind of guy, it’s often advisable to stick at nothing.

Arizona man Jackson Brady Hanley Jr. certainly believed he’d earned a drink when he decided to have one earlier this month.

The 29-year-old had been off the sauce completely for all of four months. Surely, he thought, a one-off session to mark the milestone couldn’t do much harm.

Sadly, Hanley was mistaken.

His bacchanalian celebrations on Feb. 11 took a wrong turn when he drunkenly decided that he rather fancied a new motorcycle, according to court documents published Friday by The Smoking Gun.

After riding his bicycle to Kelly’s Kawasaki in Mesa, Hanley “grabbed” a motorcycle and started wheeling it away in the hope that no one would notice.

However, the cunning plan was rumbled when a perceptive customer spotted him pushing the pristine machine down the street and alerted staff at the dealership.

Police soon caught up with Hanley resting from his inebriated exertions on a fence with the pilfered motorcycle tipped over beside him.

Hanley admitted to officers he’d stolen the vehicle and was planning to try to start it up once he got back home.

He also explained for good measure that he’d been celebrating four months of staying sober by drinking moscato and vodka.

However, he was unaware that he’d already caused $3,500 worth of damage to the motorbike due to the careless way he’d rested it on the asphalt.

Hanley’s arrest and charge with theft of a means of transportation certainly made for a more memorable occasion.

But you can’t help worrying that the poor chap is back to square one with his efforts to quit the drink.

	Mesa, Arizona
Location:	20 miles east of Phoenix
Population:	508,958
Median Household Income:	$54,700
Quirky Fact:	The largest suburban city by population in the U.S., Mesa was first occupied at least 2,000 years ago by the prehistoric Hohokam people, who built a large and sophisticated canal system there.