How to deter bike thieves

If my landlord asks me how many bicycles I have, I have one (1). If you ask me how many bicycles I have, I have “one” (X). (My landlord only allows one bicycle per resident in our bicycle storage house. My landlord seems to have completely missed the fact that the world is in the middle of a paradigm shift. Since the 1950’s the car has, in the Western world at least, been seen as the norm, the dominant means of transportation. Freedom, to be able to go anywhere you want anytime you want, power, to drive a strong, fast car, status, to own an expensive, cool car. The car has been seen not as a way to get to where you need or want to go, but as the way to get to where you need or want to go. But that is beginning to change. More and more people choose to ride their bicycles instead, to school, to work or to do errands. Both for economic and ecological reasons. Or they ride for fun and exercise! A lot of people ride road bicycles and mountain bikes in their free time. And honestly, how many people drive Formula 1 or rally cars in their free time? In the countryside and in the forest? I suppose I know some people who only own one bike – maybe you’re one of them – but I couldn’t tell who. And I suppose that my landlord only owns one bike. And it’s probably an electric bicycle too! Or maybe my landlord doesn’t own a single one. However, today a lot of people who can, do indeed own several bike. Including me.)

I keep my expensive bicycles (my road bicycle and my mountain bike) in the apartment, because I simply wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I kept them in the bicycle storage house. The bicycle storage house is… OK, I guess. It is situated between the short sides of two apartment houses, but the people who use it, my neighbors, tend to use the automatic door opener quite recklessly, i e just pushing the button and ride away without actually watching the door close and lock. And bikes have been stolen from the building. The bicycle storage house had only stood there for a week, with bicycles in it, when my son’s bike was stolen. They had tried to steal my bike too, my frame lock looked like the victim of a hate crime, it was demolished, but the bicycle thieves had missed the fact that it was actually a very good bicycle lock.

On a side note I got my son’s bike back a couple of weeks later. My son began to cry when I told him that his bike had been stolen, and I had put quite some time and effort into that bicycle. It was a bicycle that we had found just standing behind our house, I took it to the Police lost property office, handed it in, it stood there for three months but whoever owned it obviously wasn’t very interested in having it back so three months later it was ours. It was a mountain bike-ish commuter bike, which I turned into a road bicycle-ish commuter bike. It turned out pretty good, actually! So I was furious when it was stolen, I would have been damned to let a thief get away with it. And so I started scouring web sites where bicycles are sold. Eventually I found it, on Facebook Market (Fences’ paradise). I contacted the police, told them everything but they wouldn’t do anything (unless I could get the thief to take a photo of the frame identification number… like that would happen), so I instead contacted the person selling it, said that I wanted to buy it and set up to meet her. The woman selling it was posing with pitbulls on her Facebook page, so I was nervous to say the least! Would she bring her dogs? What would she do? Would things turn violent? I couldn’t get the police to come to the meeting either, but I came to the place where we had agreed to meet. A woman who immediately rode away to the side and a man riding my son’s bike arrived. It turned out that the woman selling the bike was the thief’s mother and the man riding my son’s bike was her boyfriend. I immediately turned the bike upside down, even if I knew it was my son’s (it was quite heavily customized), the man said “It’s stolen, isn’t it?” and when I told him what had happened he just let me have the it back. He was actually really sympathetic and likable. The day after the police called and asked how the meeting had went… Well, we were lucky.

So even if the bike I keep in the bicycle storage house is my least expensive one and, to be honest, kind of beat up now and so not very attractive to thieves, I want to keep it. I lock all my one bike with a minimum of three locks. A heavy D-lock through the frame, a wire lock or a heavy chain also through the frame and then another heavy D-lock connecting the wire or chain to the bicycle stand. Is it completely safe? No. It’s not. There are very few locks that can’t eventually be cut with an angle grinder, and I have never seen Lock Picking Lawyer (just search Youtube) not being able to pick and eventually open a lock. And this is pretty important to remember: There are no bicycle locks that are completely unbreakable and unpickable. (If you do know of an unbreakable and unpickable bicycle lock, please let me know!) The best you can hope for is that your bike is so well locked up that a bicycle thief will not think that it’s worth the effort and/or steal another one. There are a few things that you could do, though, so here are my tips:

1. If I know that I will leave my bike unattended I never lock my bikes with fewer than two locks. Even if I took the bike to a shop and just pop in for a minute or two I lock my bike with two locks that I have carried in my backpack. Why? Well, I would feel really stupid if I came out of the shop, with the locks in the backpack, and my bike was gone. If I leave my bike overnight or in a special place I use a minimum of three locks. And by “special place” I mean in a place where I know that bikes get stolen and/or where a bike thief could work pretty undisturbed with breaking or picking my locks.

2. I use different locks. This is both to deter bike thieves and to make it easier for me. Heavy D-locks (also known as U-locks), like this one

(I borrowed this picture from Kryptonite. I hope that's OK!)

are, according to my experience, the safest ones. So two D-locks, at least one of them through the frame, and a wire lock or a chain, preferably somehow wrapped around something immobile, like a bike stand, a street light or a traffic sign, and either connected to the frame or one of the D-locks. It’s also a good idea to wrap the wire lock or chain through the front wheel, to make that less easy to steal. If you can lock up the back wheel, through the frame, even better! If you have a dropper seatpost, push it all the way down and draw a wire lock through the saddle rails as well. This also applies if you have a quick release seatclamp.

The reason I use different locks is both to deter thieves and for my own sake. If one of the locks I use should somehow be a thief’s “favorite” because he or she (the thief) has found a way to break or pick them it’s a good idea to use other kinds too. And it makes it very much easier for me, when I am to lock or unlock the bike, because I know which key goes with which lock.

3. Consider your weakest link. If you have, say, two ultra-safe D-locks, like this one

 (I borrowed this picture from Bike24. I hope that's OK!)

(I have that lock and it’s very safe but heavy as a mother)

and a wire lock or a chain, like this one

 (I borrowed this picture from Bike24. I hope that's OK!)

(I have that lock too, and it’s very safe but heavy as a mother too)

, you lock your bike through the frame and both the wheels, but you lock it to, say, a thin bike rack or a wooden fence... If you have a valuable bike and you lock it either to nothing or to something that is easily broken the thief might take the whole bike with them, away, and start breaking and/or picking the locks in peace and quiet someplace else. I have seen bike thieves do just that.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWvM_ND9CI4]

This is a perfect example of really crappy bike racks. You can just unscrew them and take them down.

4. A way to further deter bike thieves is to uglify or (heavily) modify your bicycle. A guy I met once said that he was going to write or paint “The person who tries to sell you this bike is a thief and a f**king asshole” on his bicycle. It’s a good idea as long as you don’t try to sell the bike yourself… But painting your bike with very vivid colors and/or bright patterns makes the bike harder to sell to someone just looking for a bike to ride to work on. People who… No, actually: Assholes who would consider buying a stolen bike seem to prefer discreet, generic bicycles. Black is a preferred color. So paint your bike orange, with purple dots all over it, and paint your name all over it while you’re at it. Or better yet: Give a couple of kids lots of paint and give them complete freedom to paint your bike.

This would be a better world if people never bought stolen bikes. (My guess is that very few bikes are stolen because the thief got an irresistible urge to go for a mountain bike ride in the middle of the night.) I was somewhat amazed to see people just leaving their bicycles, unlocked, outside shops in Taiwan. It must be great to be able to do that.

Have any tips of your own? Feel free to tell me!

Ride safe!

What went wrong?

Almost two years ago a bicycle parking garage in Gamlestaden, Gothenburg, opened. About a week before the bicycle parking garage was officially opened I sneaked inside to check it out, and was really impressed.

The garage, the building itself, was really cool, it was good architecture. And still is. Big up to the architect Malin Landh.

Malin Landh works at Sweco, by the way. (Or maybe worked, I don't know.) Which is kind of interesting. Obviously there are some good architects working at Sweco, but Sweco was also responsible for the town hall/railway station house in Växjö. When the municipality of Växjö was to build a new town hall/railway station house they organised a competition, which was won by the White arkitekter architectural firm, with this entry:

(I borrowed this picture from Arkitekten.se. Hope that's OK!)

  

I thought it was a really good entry. But then the commission to build the building was assigned to Sweco. (I'm not going to go into why. If you're really interested google it. Or write to me and ask, and I'll tell you why!) And Sweco came in with an "interpretation" of the winning entry, that was so bad that the town architect in Växjö refused to accept it. I understand town architect Henrik Wibroe completely, Sweco's interpretation of White's winning entry was hideous. (And, apparently, White's winning entry was too costly to be realised.)

So now that the building is finally built it looks like this:

(I borrowed this picture from Vxonews. Hope that's OK!)

Which is OK... ish. Kind of. It could have been so much better, though!

But anyway, the bicycle parking garage in Gamlestaden... I was impressed! It looked cool, the light inside the building was super nice thanks to the screen walls, and there were plenty of parking places for bicycles. About 600 of them, actually.

But about two years later it looks like this:

About 20 bicycles, and a handful of wrecks, butchered ("stripped" doesn't quite cover how I feel) bicycles. And there were no bicycles parked on the lower floor, and one rusty old bicycle parked on the upper floor. To be fair, the photo was taken on a holiday, so perhaps there were less bicycles there than it usually is.

But it's not a bicycle parking garage, it's a working space for bicycle thieves! I would never park any of my bicycles there!

Note the butchered bicycle to the right? It's a pretty good bicycle, a Nishiki Race Hybrid Comp. It's not a great bicycle, but a solid, good one, in good condition, except, of course, it's missing parts. I took it home, and today I took it to the lost property office at the police and handed it in, so that the owner can have the bicycle back.

And thing is, it's not the first bike that I have found here that I have handed in to the police. Last fall I found two Merida 29" mountainbikes, whole, functioning, a bit dirty but in good condition, just standing there without locks or anything. Had the bicycle thieves just put them there, to come back and pick them up later?

So what has happened? This bicycle parking garage feels like a complete failure - why?

Perhaps my next blog entry should be about bicycle locks. Our family has about eleven bicycles (depending on how you count) and 26 bicycles locks, and as I'm planning to get a new bicycle I will buy at least two more locks. So I'm becoming quite the expert on locks.

(I borrowed this picture from The Best Bike Lock. I hope that's OK! And please note that I'm sponsored by neither The Best Bike Lock nor anyone else. And I don't know if The Best Bike Lock really have the best bike locks or not. Are they sponsored? I don't know!)

Ride safe!

Postgirot Open 1987

They made a postcard for the Postgirot Open 1987 race as well. As you can see the race is full on, riders and everything. (Note the Volvo 340 support car!) But they have tossed all the logos and style aside. This is just three pictures from the race. A bit boring, if you ask me. So why did they do this? I have no idea. Did the race not get as much attention as the Postgirot money transaction service (well, the bosses) hoped it would? Were they tired? Did they leave the design of the card to some intern? I would love to know.

The back of the card isn't better. It just says Postgirot Open 10-16/6 1987 and Norra Europas största cykeltävling (The biggest bicycle competition in Northern Europe).

It's cool that this was the biggest bicycle competition in Northern Europe, though! Or well, it would have been cooler if we - still - had this huge bicycle race up here, but you know what I mean.

Ride safe!

Postgirot Open 1986

You know, there really isn't much to say about this post card. It resembles the post card from 1985, which either could be seen as a bit cheap and predictable, or that they had found a concept, a logo that was working. (Which, we will see later, probably was not the case.) But instead of the image being slightly tilted this time the image is completely horizontal. And below the name of the race and the dates are the names and logos of the sponsors of the race. (Note Cycles Peugeot!)

 Here you go:

(To be honest I think the graphics on the 1985 post card for Postgirot Open worked better.)

The backside of the card, which says "Postgirot Open 1986 - The fifth success year)

And then there is the pin. Not much to say about that either, it's kind of the logo of the 1985 and 1986 post cards, and kind of not. Well, I could say that I bought this pin for about 30 Swedish krona, about 2,59 €. I recently saw an ad on what is basically the Swedish ebay, where a guy tried to sell a pin from Postgirot Open 2002 for 980 Swedish krona, about 84,58 €! Don't fall for it! These are sold cheap and they should be sold cheap. (Though you might have to wait for one to come around and you might need a bit of luck too.) Also, they are not participant badges, like some sellers like to claim. These were strictly promotional. (Although, I suppose, anyone taking part in the race probably got one or could have gotten one should they have had to ask.)

To be completely honest again I think that this pin is kind of tacky, so I don't use it, but still it's Postgirot Open memorabilia.

That's it for today! Note the absence of politics today! Not that I don't have anything to say about what's going on in the world, and not just the corona virus, but for once you don't have to put up with it.

Ride safe!

Team PKBanken Postgirot Open 1985

Technically this isn't a Postgirot Open post card, but as you might have noticed I do not only collect Postgirot Open post cards, but other memorabilia too. Like my awesome jersey! To be honest I don't really want to be seen as "someone who collects memorabilia for a long since discontinued bicycle race, but... I guess that's what I do. Good grief, that's sad!

But for all you other sad sods out there who also have a soft spot for 1980's cycling, here is the next part of my series, a post card for the cycling team Team PKBanken, with a picture of what I assume is the team for the 1985 Postgirot Open bicycle race. Below the title are the dates, depart and finishing places (cities) of the stages of the race of 1985. (Yes, and the logos of the Swedish Bicycle Federation and the PKBanken bank.)

There's not much to say about the post card, is there? I haven't been able to find much about the Team PKBanken team, other than evidence that they might have been a "semi-professional" team. Whatever that means. The suits, that is the jerseys and bibs of the riders are pretty dull, and they wear slip-ins... I'm not even going to mention the hair cuts. Obviously they rode Peugeot road bikes. I hope for their sake their components were better than the ones I had on my Peugeot Mont-Blanc. (But they look like Campagnolo, don't they?)

The guys squatting at the ends deserve to be mentioned, though. No, I don't know who they are. And they have obviously simply pulled the track suits over their other, "regular" clothes - you can see that the guy to the left is wearing a shirt and tie under the track top, and they have brown leather shoes and brown boat shoes, respectively. (In the late 1980's all the cool kids in my school class wore a Lacoste polo shirt, bleached Levi's 501 and brown boat shoes. Today I like Levi's jeans and I have my first ever Lacoste polo shirt, but I still hate those boat shoes.) But the track suits are just awesome! That pastel yellow is nailed!

Some things obviously were better in the 1980's. Ride safe!

Crap on wheels

Have you noticed a plague recently? It's called rentable electric scooters. They're sh... crap. Apparently they have a really short life span, so they're absolutely not environmentally friendly. They're for lazy people. People too lazy to propel themselves forward. People too lazy to park them out of the way, when they have reached their destination or ran out of battery. And the lazy, nature hating people who rent these scooters park them every-effing-where. On sidewalks. On bridges. In the forest. And in bicycle lanes.

Sorry dude. But you had it coming.

Right now it's the wild, wild west with these scooters in Gothenburg. A lot of people are actually renting them and I think there's three companies whose business idea is to rent electric scooters. But a lot of people, especially cyclists, are complaining about them, complaining that they´re parked everywhere and that they're in the way.

And now we have the first death case in Sweden that can be directly linked to electric scooters. A 27 year old man apparently rode his rented electric scooter down a steep hill and was hit by a driver in a car, in Helsingborg, in the south of Sweden, about a week ago. And yes, there is a huge difference between me getting annoyed over electric scooters being parked in the bicycle lanes, and the death of a man with the biggest part of his life ahead of him. A huge difference. It's a tragedy.

So will something be done about these scooters? Yes, I think so. Unless it turns out that these scooters were only a really short craze and all these three companies (Breakit, Lime and Voi) go bankrupt I think some legislations will be passed, so that you can't just park them anywhere. Or ride them anywhere, anyhow, with no safety improvements.

(A common sight in Gothenburg, Sweden, lately.)

Then, when I was taking a walk with T a couple of weeks ago, we saw an abandoned bike just lying on a lawn. We walked over to it to take a closer look when an elderly lady came up and talked to us. She said that the bike had been standing there, leaning against a distribution box for weeks, but now it was lying in the grass. Since no one had obviously moved it I decided that we were going to take it home, and take it to the lost propery office at the police, as soon as I could. Which was a couple of weeks ago. This is the bike that we found:

It's an OK bike, with 26" wheels, I think. But is the front fork broken? It looks a little bent.

I think the paint scheme is pretty cool (underneath all that dust). And it's made in Taiwan!

It's really kind of rusty, though...

This solution, for the front brake, actually is really interesting.

At the moment I don't know if the owner have picked, or will pick, the bike up, from the Police lost property office. If he (It's a "he". We can agree on that, can't we?)has picked, or will pick, up the bike I won't have a new old bike. Which is OK. Depending on whether I make any progress with the Kona or not I will keep this bike and use it as a winter commuter bike, or donate it to the Bike Kitchen. I mean, if and when T wants a proper mountain bike I'll probably look for something else.

It was some time since I last worked on the Kona, on that bloody stuck seat post, but lately other projects have had higher priority, like my road bike, my regular commuter bike and L's old commuter bike, which is now our spare bike. In short I am not short of bicycle projects.

Ride safe!

Svenska Cykelmässan 2019, part 2

A guy who calls himself Sambal Oelek also attended the Svenska Cykelmässan bicycle fair, two months ago. He is not a member of Ensliga Bergens cykelklubb (and probably doesn't want to either, which is totally cool), but he was kind enough to give me permission to display his photos from the fair on this blog.

There really isn't that much to say about the photos, except that Sambal Oelek is a much, much more talented photographer than I am. So, here you go:

 A thriatlon bike... Euch!

I think that this stuff (the two photos above, and the manufacturers' badges) are from an exhibition about bikes at the Mölndals Stadsmuseum museum. Keep an eye out for a post about our visit there.

OK, so it's an electric mountain bike... But look how they've painted the logo on the frame. So cool.

Yeah, you will never see me a pair of windfrees. They are probably really clever, but you look like a dork wearing them.

Fredrika Ek's bike!

I don't know who this bike belongs to.

I couldn't get an espresso at Café Kask, but maybe I could have gotten one here? But why was this wagon stuffed away in a dark corner?! How much did they actually sell, from this crappy place? Hey Svenska Cykelmässan! This is not cool!

This is where I bought a Campagnolo Athena crank set, and T a Specialized helmet and a pair of red gloves.

This is pornography...

Thanks for the photos, Sambal Oelek! Ride safe, y'all!