Stolen bikes

sorry this is long and waffly.

my girlfriend's bike was strangely *not *stolen last week while i was away on holiday. but one of neighbour's was. the seige continues.

i live on the ground floor of a block in a secret location in a poncey bit of north london. there's a pretty high security fence round the front yard area and quite a few bikes and motorbikes locked to various trees there. my bike always lives in the flat but the girlfriend's dutch bike sometimes stays outside locked to a tree, which i realise is a technically a "dick move" but there isn't anything alse to lock it to and it's so big and heavy i don't want to be tripping over it in the hallway.

last time i left it out there i chose a pretty feeble looking tree, maybe 5" in diameter on the grounds that it was the only available one, it was pretty much out of sight in the bushes, away from the main fence and that there was already an expensive looking trek road bike locked to it. i then forgot about it and went away for a week. whoops. dick move indeed.

on coming back from holiday noticed that the bike was gone... along with the tree to which it had been locked which had been snapped off at about head height. i then spotted the girlfriend's bike standing safely behind another heavy locked gate that leads to the communal back garden. It had a note on it from the maintenence man saying he'd moved it to stop it being stolen and left his number. it didn't mention anything about dick moves. it probably should have.

i spoke to him and he said that the other bike (the trek) that had been locked up there was nicked but they'd left the dutch bike. probably as it weighs about 4 tonnes and getting it over a 8 foot fence woul have been a serious undertaking? anyway he moved it to relative safety behind the second gate. nice man. sorry for the trek owner though.

then last night about 7pm (it was still broad daylight) i heard a load of banging and clanging on the second gate that leads to the garden. i looked out to see a guy trying to get over there (or maybe he'd already been over, i don't know?) to where the rescued dutch bike still stood in plain view. he then vaulted over the main fence by climbing a lamp-post and sauntered off apparently totally unconcerened about being seen. made me feel really weird as if he gets over that inside gate he could easily go round the back and press his nose up against the bedroom window. it wouldn't take much more effort to get in. last night i dreamed about being trapped in a room holding a disintegrating door shut while an angry lion tried desperately to get in. i didn't sleep that well.

this morning was a bit more cheery though. friendly maintenence man knocked on the door and liberated the dutch bike for me. i thanked him heartily and we had a bit of a chat about recent goings on. he immediately suggested a whole raft of extra security measures involving fitting up a new gate round the side out of sight, a better lock, bike racks all along the wall and extra bars to stop anyone climbing over the inside gate. what a legend! said he'd got the go ahead from the landlord for most of it already and would hope to get it all sorted by next week.

sorry for the waffle. just getting it off my chest i suppose. i should have known better. everything will stay inside from now on.