Nine Out of Ten

Nine out of ten.

                In my twenty plus years of adulthood, I have had nine out of ten of my bikes stolen.   Count ‘em; that’s ninety percent, an A-.  Yeah, I know.  That sucks.   Thinking back, some of them were just stupid moves on my part.   For example, twenty years ago I left my bike on the front patio at a Burger King (where I worked) and went inside, letting them lock me in with the drive through open.   When somebody came by, I could only pound hopelessly at the glass, yelling for the manager to let me out, as he/she hopped on my bike and zoomed down the street.  However, other times were just my rotten luck and the underestimation of the initiative a bike thief would take.   Take for example, what happened on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at the south bike racks at the Student Resource Center (SRC) at CNM’s Main Campus.   As part of my regular schedule, I showed up for work at one.   The racks between the SRC and JS Hall were full, so I rolled over to the south racks.   I threaded my Kryptonite cable lock through my helmet, the front tire, frame and locked it to the rack.   Some four hours later, I took my dinner break and walked to the south side of the SRC, and my bike and my helmet were gone. 

                I went home (I can walk/ride home for dinner), cursed, ate, generally felt sorry for myself, and wondered if perhaps I’m at fault again.   Maybe I didn’t really lock it?  Maybe I wrapped it around the bike rack instead of through it?   When I got back to work, I called security to file a report.   Chances are that nothing positive will happen as a result of my report, but it could happen, so I wrote out the description of my bike:   a black, single-speed SE Draft and white Bell Helmet.
     About 15 minutes later, I got a call from security saying that they may have my helmet.   So I walked over to security and, sure enough, there it was, and in the helmet was my Kryptonite cable lock…and the cable was cut.   

               

He explained that earlier in the day (between two and three) another security guard spotted the helmet, put a note on it, and then when nobody claimed it took it back to security.   It was there for the last few hours until I filed my report.  

                Nine out of ten.   Number nine, which I got in August just for commuting, wasn’t even that valuable of a bike.  Yet somebody bothered to bring a big pair of bolt cutters (my guess would be the two foot long kind), looked down the row of bikes, and cut the cable in the middle of the day.   In the other rack, evidently, there was another cut cable still hanging from the rack.   So by my rough estimation, at least two bikes have been stolen from the SRC racks alone.   While I have no doubt that more bikes have been stolen, the fact that someone is willing to steal it in the middle of the day is pretty brazen.   So I ask you, what would you do if you saw someone using a pair of bolt cutters on a bike lock?   Would you assume that he left his key at home and is merely just trying to get his bike?  Would you call security and take a mental picture of what he looked like?    And what would you do if somebody is selling a good bike for way cheaper than it is worth?  Or if somebody you know is actually bragging about stealing a bike, would you confront them?  Stealing bikes is not cool, ever, under any circumstances.   When he stole my bike he stole my main method of transportation.   I made the decision to get rid of my car in August.   And now, I’m down a bike too.

November 17, 2010