Urban cyclists, please be smart!

I have lived in Chicago for nearly twelve years now, and I realized long ago that if you lock up your bike outside for any extended period of time, you might as well send out an Evite to every junkie, bum, hood, thug, deadbeat, and klepto to come and lift your ride.

When I first moved to the city, I brought along my good ol' Trek Mountain Track 800*, a trusty steed that had transported me from dorm to class to work and back all through college.  I lived in a roach-ridden garden studio apartment, so lack of space necessitated that I lock it to whatever signpost that was free on the street outside my building.  Being a naive small-town Michiganian, I was in the habit of not removing the saddle and seatpost after locking up.  Within a few weeks, both were gone.  Another fatal mistake I made was to not thread my U-lock through the quick-release front wheel.  Within months, that was gone, too.  Conceding defeat, I soon made a sad, painful game of guessing which additional part would be missing each time I left my building and walked past the once proud cycle.  I eventually became so ashamed of betraying such a loyal old friend that I would avoid walking past it by only leaving my building from the back alley.  On the day I moved out, I stole one last glimpse of the 800, which had been stripped right down to the now rusting steel frame.

I waited a good six years before buying another mountain bike, a GT Aggressor.  This bike has also been stripped down to its frame, but I myself have been the willful perpetrator, having swapped out most of the entry-level stock parts for pricier and higher quality ones.  I currently own two bikes, and am in the process of building up one more (everyone has their vices).  But I have not made the same mistake of locking any of my bikes up outside for longer than it takes to get a few groceries at Jewel.  

This month's edition of Outside Magazine features an article on one journalist's attempts to infiltrate the seamy underbelly of urban cycling--the underground network of ne'er-do-wells contributing to the ever-growing epidemic of bicycle theft.  Like most large American cities (as well as Canadian), bike theft in Chicago is rampant.  On any given day, you can type the word "stolen" into the Chicago Craigslist Bicycles section and find at least a couple of fiery posts by enraged victims.  As a former victim myself, I sympathize with these folks to a certain extent, but I always remember that my own negligence was chiefly responsible for the loss of my bike.

So, I suppose the moral of this post is, do not lock up your bike outside if at all possible, people!  If  mitigating circumstances make it unavoidable, it's probably wise to not invest in a bike worth more than a couple hundred bucks.  Save the super-sweet titanium frame, carbon-wheeled, tubeless-tired time trial bike for when you buy a house in the 'burbs and can keep it in the garage.

*That is not the actual bike I owned, but very similar. Plus I love the bucolic setting; makes the bike seem like a wild mustang roaming the Plains.