Stolen Bike :(

[stefanie.braswell]

Hi bicyclers,

My bike was stolen from the Van Ness metro station yesterday between the hours of 9:00am and 5:45pm on the Starbucks side. It was locked up with the lock going through the back wheel and bars, etc. but the lock must have been cut. We are new to city life, so now we know that we really need a U-lock that can’t be cut!

The bike is a Klein road bike, blue/green in color, shimmery in the light – so it can look like blue or green depending on the light. The handlebar tape is mostly gray. The crossbar has a pretty big scuff mark from when we moved the bike in our Uhaul. The little adjusters/tighteners (sorry for the lack of a proper bike-part term …) on the axle of each wheel are orange.

The bike was stolen along with the red and black helmet that was also locked up with it.

We use our bikes all the time for running errands, getting around town, for fun and for exercise, and we miss it – as you can all imagine! Please respond to this post if you have seen a bike matching this description around town or posted on Ebay, Craigslist, etc.

Thank you fellow DC cyclists for your help!!

Stefanie

Topic

[kkentium]

Sorry to hear about your bike, what kind of U-Lock did you have?

[vvill]

Dang, that really sucks, sorry. Sounds like a lovely bike too, a Klein

Unfortunately an angle grinder can be used cut just about any u-lock.

[cyclingfool]

Sorry to hear about your bike. I lost mine from the basement of my apartment building in the spring. It’s a painful loss, I know. I hope you’re able to track it down.

Tools to help in your bike search that I found along the way:

https://ifttt.com/recipes/229 (get an email alert when a craigslist ad matching your criteria is posted)

http://www.adhuntr.com/ (search all of CL across the country, eBay in one portal)

I have used both of these. While I haven’t had success finding my bike, they’re good tools, and I was alerted a couple times to possible matches, though the ads went down within a few minutes of me asking a couple very general questions about the bike being sold (like frame or wheel size, color).

In the end, different ifttt.com recipes helped me source good deals on a replacement bike frame and a nice used Burley trailer. So, it’s a good tool to know about generally and one I had not learned about until I had to start keeping tabs on things for my bike.

[KLizotte]

Condolences on your lost. Keep an eye out for it on all of the area Craigslists (including Baltimore and Richmond).

As vvwill noted, a U-lock can be cut with fairly simple tools. I’m alarmed this happened at a metro station in broad daylight though. File a report with the police so there is a record of the theft. Hopefully your home/rental insurance covers some of the cost of replacement.

[mstone]

Locks are mostly there to deter the honest and the lazy. Bike theft will continue to be a problem until 1) people actually register their serial numbers so there’s some hope of recovery and 2) the police start taking the problem seriously (#1 would help). There’s no feasible way to create bicycle locks which could actually prevent bike theft, the solution has to be social.

[KLizotte]

@mstone 64509 wrote:

Locks are mostly there to deter the honest and the lazy. Bike theft will continue to be a problem until 1) people actually register their serial numbers so there’s some hope of recovery and 2) the police start taking the problem seriously (#1 would help). There’s no feasible way to create bicycle locks which could actually prevent bike theft, the solution has to be social.

And 3) people make every effort not to purchase stolen bikes. No market, no thefts.

[mstone]

@KLizotte 64519 wrote:

And 3) people make every effort not to purchase stolen bikes. No market, no thefts.

It certainly helps to be aware, but without #1 it’s really hard to tell except in the most egregious cases. How does a non-bike-geek tell a stolen bike apart from one that some guy is trying to unload because it’s been taking up space in his garage for too long?

[Author]

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