Help, please! Yes you – don’t pass me by, I have a problem and I need your advice. How can cyclists survive – not just physically, though that’s also tricky – but financially? We bike because it’s practical and ethical, and because we’re encouraged to by our political leaders, but why should we go on when it’s just impossible to stop a bike being nicked?
This is how bad it’s got – there I was at 2am last night lying on my sofa, reading some cop book, squinting with exhaustion when I heard a thin electonic whine, as if from a hedge strimmer, coming through the open window. I ignored it. Read on. But only a few sentences later, being even nosier than I am lazy, I wandered over to the window to have a peer around. No nocturnal horticulturists, but instead, by the steel bike rack, three boys on the shadowy pavement slicing through the D-locks systematically with an angle grinder. They’d freed two bikes already and had moved onto mine, a smart new Marin hybrid secured with 100 pounds worth of steel. So I hauled up the sash window, leaned out and shouted, “What are you DOING! That’s my BIKE!”
All three looked up. Yellow sparks were flying up into the night, half-lighting their faces– they smiled, and kept on grinding. “Oy!” I shouted, more desperately. “Get lost!” They didn’t. So, what could I do? No point calling the police — they’d take too long. No point either running downstairs and trying to manhandle three young men. I knew it, and they knew it: check mate. And after a few more seconds, when the lock came apart: cheers, mate. My seventh bike in two years – gone.
So what can a poor cyclist do? I can’t take the bike inside – there’s just no room. I’ve tried painting it pink, covering it with tape, locking it’s front wheels to its back wheels to it, all to no avail. What’s the answer, please?
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