all alone!
- SAFE RIDE
I am fortunate to have a gym membership for the summer months. And yesterday I decided it would be a wise choice to exercise indoors due to the excessive heat and humidity we are experiencing. I rode my bike to the gym, and locked it on the empty bike rack there. In an earlier post I mentioned my aversion to numbers, so I was glad to find this lock (Wordlock) last year at Target. There are four rows of letters, and a possible 10,000 combinations for you to select from. Do you generally lock you bike up, or worry about it being taken?
Inspiredcyclists 
As of yet, I haven’t ridden my bike into an area that I’m too concerned about, however I do always think about the fact that it could be stolen, so lock up every time. And luckily, I can simply take my bike into the office with me if I ride. While I wouldn’t be happy, it wouldn’t be a tragedy if my bike was stolen since it’s nothing really special or too expensive, but my husband’s would be much more of an issue. He has a Wilier road bike and paid more for it than I will probably ever pay for several bikes in my lifetime. He does ride it a lot though, at least 5-6 days per week, with some rides being up to approx. 110 miles, so hopefully the cost per mile will make it worthwhile eventually – haha 🙂
I can’t tell from the photo, but are you locking your bike by the wheel? Maybe it just looks that way from the photo! The reason I ask is that I recently read about people locking their bike wheel to something and when they come back the entire bike with the exception of the one wheel is gone! That’s just terrible! I actually had never thought of that before, but now always make sure to lock the frame itself to something so that it’s at least a bit more difficult for thieves.
Traci, you are correct, I just wrapped my lock around the wheel and the bike rack. I know better, but just did this in a rush. Luckily, I too am not in an area where I am very concerned about it being stolen, but still it is better to be safe than sorry. What type of lock do you use? Thanks!
I honestly wouldn’t have thought about someone stealing the bike and leaving the wheel if I hadn’t seen someone talking about it on another blog! I can’t remember where it was now – they had photos and it was sad to see the poor wheel left there by itself 🙂 It’s pathetic that people have to go to such lengths to protect their bikes, but I guess that’s the way it is with everything.
We use a large U-lock combined with a cable which can fit around both bikes to lock them up together when we go somewhere. I hate carting around the U-lock because it’s heavy (I definitely don’t need more weight on the bike when going up hills – haha), but from what I’ve heard a cable alone can be easily cut.