Remember the bike we made look too crappy to steal? It got stolen.

Careful readers of this humble blog will recall a post almost exactly three years ago – the last time the little red-haird girl’s bike was stolen - telling how we slapped some rust-stain stickers on her new bike to make it look too crappy to steal.  I’d ordered them from an artist in England who produces them.  And it really did look beat up once we’d put them on, at least at first glance.

And they worked – for three years and 10 days.  Saturday morning, sometime between 9am and noon, a wave of bike thefts hit our building.  Her bike, complete with all the stickers and scrapes and scratches it had picked up along the way – was ripped off.  A downstairs neighbour had it worse: his family had two bikes stolen.

So.

Pissed.

Off!

Not only because at the same time we’d bought her new bike, I’d spent hundreds of euros and countless hours setting up a safe, secure place in our cellar area – behind three locked doors – to store them in.

I’d picked up a special concrete drill bit to install three wall anchors to lock all our bikes to, and we somehow got used to laboriously carrying them down the stairs to the basement every night.

We thought at the time that with all the work and cost involved, maybe we were over-reacting a little, but we saw no other way to store them overnight.

I’d also always thought that locking them up inside overnight was the reason the bike hadn’t been stolen.  Not, of course, because of some stickers.

But now it looks as if they’ll get stolen outside our place in broad daylight, too.  On a Saturday morning, a time you’d think there’d be enough people milling about to keep the scumbags at bay.

At least it’s some consolation that it’s insured, and that we might be able to pick up some sort of a deal on a new bike.  Fall isn’t exactly the time the bike stores are crowded with shoppers.

How to keep a bike thief at bay, if only for a while

This is for Yelli in Berlin, who, like the best two of the three of us, had her bike stolen.

Remember how we made the little red-haired girl’s bicycle too crappy to steal? We sent away for some stickers that make a new bike look all rusted and splotchy, so that a thief passing by wouldn’t give it a second look.

Last time I looked, she still had her bike, so it must be working.

But a bicycle that we thought really did look too crappy to steal got ripped off sometime after we came back from our lovely weekend of cycling along the banks of the Elbe.

It was my wife’s bike and we’d bought it the week we moved to Hamburg after leaving Hong Kong in mid-1997.

I wonder if this is a sign of the times, a signal that things are getting so dire even for thieves that they’re willing to steal any bike that doesn’t have weeds wrapped around a rusty chain. I mean, the bike was 12 fucking years old!  It did have new parts on it, but not many, and the frame looked scratched up and sloppy.

Sometimes you hear a story where a stolen bike is found for sale on craiglist and somehow recovered, or like the commenter whose neighbour called out for Chinese food and was astounded to see the delivery guy riding her own bike which had been stolen a year before, but those are huge exceptions.

Most stolen bikes are never recovered, so how can you make sure you can lessen the chances of having your bike stolen?

In my opinion the best way is to make sure you have a damn good lock – or two – and no matter what you’re using, never leave it outside overnight.

So which lock to buy?

I’ll tell you which one not to buy, and that’s any lock with a wire cable like the one in the photo. Even the best ones can be snapped through with a set of bolt-cutters. We were dumb enough to assume my wife’s old bike wasn’t worth stealing, and so only had an Abus security level 8 cable lock on it, the same kind of lock which had been snapped through six months before on the little red-haired girl’s new one.

The U-shaped locks made famous by Kryptonite are perhaps the best choice, but they have their limitations. They’re heavy, you can’t put them around both wheels unless you remove one, and they’re awkward to work with.

That said, the Kryptonite New York Fahgettaboudit U-lock rated highest in security in a Slate.com survey. Bikeradar.com also raved about it, saying the small size makes it nearly impossible to lever apart.

Though they are probably less secure I prefer a chain, especially the Abus line, because they’re easier to work with. Abus grades its security on various levels from 1 to 25. A level 25 lock is the heaviest and made for securing motorcycles, but cyclists can also use them for locking them up overnight inside if you’re careful not to bend spokes working it through the wheels. This chain is extremely heavy though, and not meant to be lugged around on a bicycle. It’s also really expensive.

The next step down is the one I have – the Citychain level 15. It’s a good compromise between ease of use, weight, price and security. I bought one for home and one for the office. I leave one at the office locked up around a post and one at home so I don’t have to haul it back and forth.

If you have a place in your building to install one, pick up a wall anchor, because simply locking even the best lock around the frame and wheel is no good.  The lock must be around a fixed object – especially if you have insurance on it, which I’ll get to later.

You need a decent hammer drill to install the bolts, but once it’s in, it’s in for life. I suppose you could remove it with a jackhammer, but if a thief is going to use a jackhammer it’s going to attract a bit of attention.

For those who can’t avoid locking up their bike in a high-traffic area, it helps to have two different types of locks. That way, a thief who specialises in breaking open a certain type of lock will pass yours up, unless he has both the expertise and the tools to break into the combination of locks he finds on yours. Worth thinking about if you really value your bike.

Another thing to seriously consider is bicycle insurance, because you can practically forget everything you’ve read up to now. ALL bike locks can be broken into.

A very short clip:

In Germany you can insure your new bicycle against all perils including vandalism, misuse, breakage, wear and tear, sheer stupidity, and of course theft. The monthly rate you pay is based on the retail price of your new bike. As long as you buy a lock worth at least 20 euro – which seems to me like a rather cheap lock – and the bike is locked up to a fixed object through the frame, the bike is insured 24 hours a day. The price is based on a sliding scale according to what you paid for the new bike and lock, which is also insured.

Check it all out – in German – at wertgarantie.de.

It may look expensive to pay, say, 15 bucks every month for insurance, but when you consider how much it costs even to get a blown tire repaired at a bike shop, let alone replace worn brakes, chains, sprockets, bearings and chainrings, it’s probably worth it in the long run. And you have the peace of mind that if the bike is stolen, something that seems to be happening way too often these days, you can get it replaced no problem.

And with someone else doing all the repairs, no black grease to clean off your fingers anymore, either.

PS: There is simply no end to the debate over which lock to get.  Check out the bike forums and get spoked.

How to make a new bicycle look too crappy to steal

About a month ago, the little red-haired girl’s bike was one of the 50 bicycles stolen every hour of every day in Germany – more than 400,000 every year. It wasn’t the best bike you can buy but it did cost about €400 and she used it every day to get to school, visit friends, go to horse-riding and clarinet lessons – to get everywhere that was close enough to home, anyway.

We didn’t have a convenient place to park it inside overnight, so we bought what we thought was a decent lock and stored it back of our place. Didn’t take long before it was gone.

It took a while to find a replacement, but we finally found an adult’s bike with a small frame that we hope she’ll grow into. And this time, we’ve gone all out to reduce the chance of getting this one stolen, too.

Number one is making sure she has a place inside to store it overnight.

So I bought a heavy wall anchor that is now permanently installed in the concrete wall of our basement space, cleared by throwing out junk and re-arranging other stuff. Whoever buys our place one day is going to inherit that thing, because I had to smash a ball bearing with a heavy hammer into each allen key hole so that it can’t ever be unscrewed from the wall. OK, I suppose a jack-hammer might do it, but that’ll wake up the neighbours.

We – that means I – now have to lug the bike downstairs and back up every evening and morning, but despite the hassle, the peace of mind is worth it.

It’s still not 100% safe, of course. During the day when it’s parked at school or at the bus stop the chances of it getting stolen are less than if you lock it outside overnight, but bicycles get stolen anytime.

So after Pete from Couchtrip suggested in a comment that I get these stickers to make the bike look so crappy, a thief passing by wouldn’t think of stealing it, I said what the hell, give it a shot – and ordered three packages from the website of British artist Dominic Wilcox for about €15.

The stickers really do look pretty authentic, even before they’re on the bike. You get 15 shapes per card – rust stains, chipped and peeling paint, a straight-edged rust strip you can wrap around a tube joint – enough to get you started I suppose, but really, you should go all out and get three. That way, it really looks crappy. Oh, and he’ll drop the postage charges if you get three.

We whiled away a pleasant half-hour on the balcony a couple of days ago sticking them on. I was a little unsure at first, but after looking at them for a couple of days I have to say the bike does look abused and neglected. The little red-haired girl says they blend in too well to the grey paint, but I think that’s what makes them work. Because the colouring in on a clear background, they show the background paint through the edges to look like real scrapes and rust spots.

OK – maybe not up close. I suppose if a thief were hanging around the bike checking it out, he’d see through the ruse; the handlebars are still shiny, the rims and hubs are pristine, and the stickers aren’t perfect.

But if it’s enough to deter the wrong guy at the right time often enough, odds are that normal wear-and-tear will catch up with it and it’ll get a chance to start looking its age in a few years’ time while still in her possession.

Insurance tip:

Another thing to seriously consider when you buy a new bike is insurance. Because the possibility it might get stolen had crossed my mind, we bought an insurance policy via Wertgarantie. (link goes to site in German only)

Their complete coverage package really does cover everything. They’ll pay for all parts and labour for repairs due to defects, vandalism, rough handling, wear and tear – everything. They’ll replace the bike full cost if it’s stolen while locked around an immovable object with a lock on their approved list. The lock is also insured and replaced if damaged. They’ll also replace parts stolen off the bike.

I went for it because even though the cost of the bike will be paid again over four or five years through the monthly fees, the time I save in not having to do any repairs at all during that time is more than worth it.

When the time came to report the theft they were friendly and helpful with all my questions both by phone and email. We found a new bike for about €600, but all we did was pay the €200 difference. They reimbursed the dealer the €400 for the old bike.

This is not a paid post, btw! I just think it’s a good deal – and was really pleased with the service they gave me when I actually had to make a claim.

Passive-aggressive note to a bicycle thief

Finally bought a new bike for the little red-haired girl to replace the one stolen from behind our place. Because writing passive-aggressive notes has now become a spectator sport, it occured to me that maybe I should tack one right where the bike was standing when the lock was snapped through in the middle of the night.

It should go something like this:

Dear Bike Thief:

Thanks so much for giving us the opportunity to explore the inside of our local police station, play telephone and email ping-pong with our insurance company and discover just how difficult it is to find a suitable replacement bike for an 11-year-old at the end of summer when nothing is left in stock and new deliveries are a month away. She will no doubt grow into the adult bike we were forced to buy. In the meantime we have purchased at considerable expense a hefty anchor which has been installed for your convenience in the concrete wall of our basement cellar located behind no less than three locked doors. That’s where her new bike is now going to be standing overnight. You are now welcome to show you actually have the balls to pull off some real breaking-and-entering, instead of slinking off with another child’s bike after whipping out your fucking bolt-cutters. Our insurance will pay for it anyway.

But although it’s good to vent, the best way to make sure you don’t get ripped off again is to go on the defensive.

Because leaving a shiny new bicycle out in public in this country is like sticking a sign around it saying RIP THIS OFF, you can also pick up stickers that make a new bike look like shit!

Thanks to South African blogger Pete at Couch trip who dropped a link to the company selling rust and scratch camouflage stickers in his comment in the last post. Since the little red-haired girl is all for keeping her new bike at any cost, she said it’s OK to go ahead and buy a set. Once we get them in the mail and stick them on, I’ll post a photo of the rustiest, crappiest-looking new bike you’ve ever seen.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject…

Sick of roommates or colleagues stealing your lunch? You can now buy plastic bags that make it look as if that Wonder bread sandwich is covered in mold.