Bike Snob - Anonymous [48]
This is not to say you should resign yourself to bike theft. You should take every precaution to prevent it. However, any use of your bicycle potentially exposes it to theft. Even if the possibility is remote, it’s still there. Even if you don’t get off the bike someone might take it right out from under you if they really want it. The only way to truly theft-proof your bike would be to lock it away in a vault. And even though there are plenty of “soul” bike owners out there who think that sounds pretty reasonable, that doesn’t work if you want to make riding a part of your life.
You shouldn’t be apathetic, but you should know that any material possession’s existence in your life is fleeting. It can disappear at any time. If you invest yourself in an object, you will always lose that investment. Instead, invest your emotion and resources in riding and in enjoying those rides. Those feelings cannot be taken. They can’t rust, they can’t be stolen, and they’re highly dent-resistant. Use the bike; lock up the bike; ride the bike hard; scratch it up; dent it. It may get stolen, or break, or you might even need to sell it in a pinch. But just make sure that when that happens you know that all you lost was a bike. Big deal.
How to Lock Your Bike
Two thousand years ago Archimedes famously said, “Give me a large enough lever and a place to stand and I will move the world!” Well, nobody ever gave him that lever, and that’s why the world is still in pretty much the same place now as it was then: between Venus and Mars, orbiting the sun, and crawling with idiots.
Since the Earth is the least portable thing in the world (inasmuch as it is the world), if you want something to stay where you left it, you need to anchor it to the Earth securely. (This is why buildings generally stay put and birds are highly elusive.) This is especially true when it comes to locking bikes. Basically, the more intermediary objects between your bike and the Earth, the less safe it is. Your bike was actually most theft-proof when it was just some ore in the ground, and the first theft occurred when it was mined, smelted, and built. Ever since then, it’s been vulnerable.
As such, unless you live in an area where there are naturally occurring bike racks in the bedrock, the fewest number of things you can have between the bike and the earth is two: the object you’re locking the bike to, and the lock itself.
The Lock Itself
Every city and town is different. There are some places where you can leave a bike sitting outside for days and nobody will touch it, and there are others where they’ll take your bike right out from under you. Furthermore, you never know how risky a place is. Sure, the lock companies will put little numbered charts on their products telling you how secure their product is, but this doesn’t really mean anything since, as far as I know, no city or town in the world uses the same system. (“Welcome to Cleveland. We’re a six! A heavy cable lock will suffice.”)
As such, use the heaviest lock available to you. I have never, ever heard of anybody who regretted having too much lock. On the other hand, plenty of people regret using too little lock. I have a neighbor who left work only to find his bicycle missing. Incredibly, he spotted the thief nearby and was able to wrest the bicycle back from him. After making some lame explanation about how his circumstances forced him to steal, the thief then told my neighbor that he really should use a heavy chain lock instead of a U-lock. So there you go.
Of course, even locking your bike with a few feet of mint dental floss is better than using no lock at