“Lost your bike? Call this number…”
This is not a recommended technique for securely locking your bike.
I received a call the other day from a fellow bike commuter (let’s call him “Andrew”) asking me if I had any tools. It turns out that Andrew had ridden his bike off to a meeting at a nearby office but when he’d come back to his vehicle, he found that somebody had locked their bike to his—not a very bright or friendly thing to do. So Andrew was looking for a way to disentangle his machine.
I didn’t have any lock removal tools to hand and if he couldn’t locate any I was concerned that Andrew would have to leave his bike locked to a post, perhaps overnight.
- Me:
-
“Will it be safe to leave it in the street overnight?”
- Andrew:
-
“No, I’ve brought it back with me.”
- Me:
-
“Well, why do you need the tools then?”
- Andrew:
-
“Because the other bike is still locked to it!”
It turns out that the other person hadn’t accidentally threaded their cable through Andrew’s bike and around the post, they had simply locked their bike to Andrew’s! So he just unlocked his bike and walked off with both of them—in fact the cable was long enough that he had no trouble riding his own bike with the parasite bike attached. He left a note on the pole saying “Lost your bike? Call this number…” Hopefully that didn’t sound too much like a ransom demand.
More on related topics
- From shed to bike shed
- Bike parking: An improvement
- Relying on luck and ugliness?
- NOW try to steal my bike, you bastard!
- EastLink bike path concerns
- Posted by Treadly and Me at 12:46 pm
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- Filed under: Commute, Heh!
- Tags: bicycle, bike parking, cable lock, lock, security
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…and you’ll be pleased to know she did ring about 6pm that evening – recovered her bike the next day :-)
Awww, don’t ya love a happy ending?
Not the smartest pencil in the pack – you should have sold her some “magic” beans…
Hmm, I’d love to know how she explained it…
What a great story. Was she mad? Or apologetic? Did she explain why she’d done something so dumb?
Mad? Absolutely nuts, I’d say! :-)
She was sorry, just said she was running late and couldn’t even remember locking her bike, let alone what she locked it to!
So I guess I’d better be the one to do this. Was she Blonde?
You know something? It never occurred to me to ask that.
And they allow people like this to vote and to reproduce.
That’s a tad harsh. But we can safely say that the person concerned does not value her bicycle in the same way that Surly Dave values his…
This story reminds me of what happened to my friend. However, this guy did lock his bike properly, that is, to a stationary object. When my friend wanted to ride home he couldn’t because he was still locked via the other guy’s lock. So then what? Tit for tat of course so my friend then locked the other guy’s bike with it to the post. This resulted in a multi-day stand off with neither guy unlocking the other and without them actually meeting. Then a note was left to end the stand off and without ever meeting they did get each others lock off. Reason prevaled in the end.
Hah! But just think of the extra security those extra locks provided to both bikes during the stand-off.