FUCK the ASSHOLE(S) who waltzed into my backyard, (while I was home, no less!) and basically looted my BIKE…stealing (yer gonna love the irony) my locks. Yep. They cleaned out all the pockets and storage areas on the bike itself, which contained 1 Kryptonite New York Fuggedaboutit bike chain, worth $180 retail, and two Kryptonite shackles that go with the chains. (They missed the other chain, which was lying on the floor of my cluttered garage.) They also snagged two bike pumps, one large and one portable, a shit chain and miscellaneous bike-related tools.
They also took my newer bike pet trailer, which seriously bums me out since I only acquired it recently and it was a very handy piece of equipment. And it annoys me because it means they almost certainly just dumped all the other stuff in the trailer and just rolled it down the driveway and probably down the street.
And the theft of the shackles and chain is incredibly aggravating because they didn’t get the keys, making the shackles completely useless…so they stole them from ME without having any fucking use for them, which for some indescribable reason just makes it extra-super-infuriating.
So much suck! Although I am appropriately grateful and relieved that for whatever reason they did not take the bike itself, which would have been, well, I don’t even want to go there in my mind.
And I confess that I am nearly 60 years old, and still retain a weird naïveté that allows me to be amazed by thieves. How can people just do that sort of thing?
In 13 years I have never locked my gate. Now I lock my gate.
The asshole with bolt cutters looks a lot more suspicious. Most thieves are criminals of oportunity, if they don’t happen to have the right tools with them the chances of planning to come back are small.
Fuck thieves. I hate having to plan around the possibility some asshole might take my shit.
Oddly, it was apparently only the bike that didn’t get stolen.
I’ve got sympathy that the crime occurred, but honestly, I’ve got to admit to some bewilderment that all that metal was left out in the back yard exposed to the weather as well as wandering eyes.
Yeah, well if someone wants my bike then they better have pretty hardcore bolt cutters, I’m sure not going to just leave it unprotected for anyone to take! How ridiculous!
That is all the suck, and also all the FUBAR. I can’t imagine there’s much black market value in a bike chain and locks, sans keys, unless they’re planning on thwonking each other over the head with them.
The audacity, and stupidity, of crooks never fails to amaze me. Last August some idiot(s) got into my car and made off with some loose change, the mount for my GPS, my prescription sunglasses (bifocals!) and my snow scraper. Also I work at the town hall, same building as the police department.
That is incredibly bad advice. Even allowing for well-equipped bike thieves it still protects you from opportunistic thieves.
Not that long since I came back to my bike to find two teenagers trying (unsuccessfully) to lever one of my locks open. A quick shout of rage and they instantly took to their heels. No locks and that bike would have been long gone.
Don’t discount the deterrent effect of multiple, high quality locks on an actual bike thief either. If it looks like it’s going to be a pain/a lengthy process to take they’ll look for easier targets.
Again, and this was years ago. I left my bike at a location with 3 other bikes. I came back 10 minutes later to find my bike still there and the other bikes missing with their cheap crappy cable locks lying in pieces on the floor. Apparently I heard later that bike thieves were operating in the area from a Van, going around hitting the easy targets and ignoring the well protected ones.
Exactly. When I plan to leave my bike for more than just a few minutes, more than just a few feet, that’s when ALL the chains come out, and I loop (or DID) 30 pounds of chains around and through both ends of the bike, wheels and frame. Anyone who plows through that would almost deserve to succeed, in light of the labor and exposure it would entail to do so. (Really hate it when establishments place their bike racks in unnecessarily hidden spots…really, we’d much rather our bikes were right there in front of the whole damn world, thank you, because that means people trying to break our locks have to be as well!)
Now if I could just find a way to do something similar with my dog, who is frequently left with the bike. I sort of do, in that I try to create a looped, complicated structure of leash around his body and with the bike locks…
Hell, I double lock my bikes if i’m just going into a shop for 30 seconds.
There’s a Tesco’s (British Supermarket chain) Extra (Local version of their store) just around the corner from me. In the year since it’s opened i’ve come across people bemoaning the loss of their bike/running in to ask the security guard if they can check the footage, on 3 separate occasions. And I only go there 3-4 times a week.
Same situation every time, ‘I’ll just lean my bike against the stands and go on in, it’ll be fine’.
Always thoroughly secure your bike before you go anywhere, and I speak as a man who’s lived in London for 10 years without losing a single bike.
Oh I lock it no matter what. It’s just the degree of locking… if I’m running into the liquor store where I can see the bike and I’m literally 6 steps away, then one 10 pound chain is enough.
I watch “Call the Midwife” and I never get over the way they just bike up to a location and hop off and walk away. Yeah, it’s 1960, but still, the East End of London? And no one would steal the bike? Gimme a break…
Thankfully the sparks do draw more suspicion.