Stripped!

We've all seen the bike carcass still partly locked up to a rack somewhere but minus a wheel or the seat or something. Sure, it sucks when it happens, but it's common enough that you don't normally take a second glance when you walk by a half-stolen bike. Usually, though, you only see bikes missing parts that are easy to pull in a few seconds, often without tools. Quick release seatpost clamps and wheel skewers are great for quick adjustments, but they all but gift-wrap the parts for thieves. And as if things weren't easy enough to steal, incompetent lock usage factors in. Way too prominently, I might add.


I came across a few carcasses that gave me pause the other day. These things hadn't just been mugged for a few parts, they'd been picked completely clean. And of course, all three were located outside the engineering buildings. Beware the kids with wrenches, for they may actually know how to steal your front dérailleur and put it to use.

Exhibit A: stolen bits include the usual seatpost and rear wheel, plus the rear derailleur and brake, the chain, and the entire front end from the stem forward. AND this one had two different locks on it.

Exhibit B: We might as well count what's left of this one. Locked wheel and frame, seat and seatpost, stem, headset, fork, bottom bracket, lock holder, and a rock. Both derailleurs are gone, shifters are awol, brakes peaced out, handlebars invisible, even the chain is absent. At least somebody at the bike auction will convert this into one major eyesore of a fixed gear.

Exhibit C doesn't look quite as crud-coverd as Exhibit B, but it's just as thoroughly picked. Somebody bothered to take the stem and the rear brake as well as the seatpost and surprsingly the chain (again!). As with Exhibit B, cranks are gone too, which is no mean feat. Hah. feat. Bike.

Just to check my 'engineers are the piranhas of bike theft' hypothesis, I went for a ride around campus. Checked outside the quad, the lunch place, the bookstore, both gyms, some assorted dorms, and most of the academic buildings on campus. Saw probably several thousand bikes, and the award for cleanest picked still goes to Engineering, hands down. The only semi-competition was found outside the Life Sciences building, where somebody evidently stole the tube and tire from a completely unlocked POS mountain bike but left everything else. I don't know how to interpret that at all. Whatever, my engineering guys are making me proud.