For the Love of Our Bikes
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This past summer, people broke into our friends' front porch and stole 3 of their bikes. Less than a week later, people kicked in our garage door and stole 3 of our 4 bikes. We saw numerous postings to the neighborhood listserv about stolen bikes, so, it was clear that our loss was part of a bigger wave of bike theft in our area.
We are fortunate that we have home owner's insurance and that our coverage paid for replacement cost. However, we still had to pay for the deductible and more. The financial hit was painful but there is no real way to measure the amount of work that has gone into insurance claims and garage repairs and replacing our bikes.
Since we got the new bikes, we have kept them in the house because even with a new steel garage door, we don't trust that somebody won't try to take them again. After all, the bikes stolen over the summer all seemed to come with a unique story that made me shake my head and think, "They even managed to get those?" But our house is small and we can't keep them inside forever. So, we decided to install steel bike racks inside of our garage so that we can double lock them.
But installing these racks has been the grown up, theft prevention equivalent of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.
If you buy steel bike racks, you're going to have to install them.
If you're going to install them, you're going to have to bolt them into concrete.
If you plan to bolt them into concrete, you're going to need special bolts, sleeves and a drill bit.
If you try to use the drill you have, you're going to realize you need a special hammer drill.
If you rent a hammer drill, you'll still be drilling holes all day long.
Luisa has been drilling into concrete for the past four hours and I'm starting to think I should have just moved a mattress into the garage and slept with a baseball bat.