My son’s bike was stolen right out of our garage this afternoon, right in front of my wife. Guy just stood there for a moment acting bewildered and then quickly took my son’s bike off the wall rack and took off.
Storm 7.4 M Serial # : A73NCX7L171
I was just starting a ride, about 2.5 km from home when Lorna called me and I turned around and headed back, came across the guy on Lackner just south of Ottawa street. I chased him through the back lot of Food Basic’s and then back on to Ottawa taking photos until I hit a curb and went down. Thankfully no damage to my bike beyond a minor paint scratch on the top tube and some grass stains on my cycling kit. At least I got some good photo’s of the guy.
Yep, I am keeping ours closed more regularly now too. I am also going to look about wall anchors and cable locks to keep the other bikes secured while hanging in the garage.
We made a full statement to the police and a neighbor had camera footage of him coming up our driveway towards the garage. Just moments before Lorna saw him in our garage when she just happened to be putting stuff in the recycling bins.
This is going to seem like an odd question but what is the reasoning for keeping garage doors open? Is it to air it out? When we moved here 5 years ago I noticed people doing it and always wondered on the purpose.
It wasn’t done in Edmonton and in the UK if you left your garage door open the entire contents of your garage would be gone in less than a day
Not sure really, partly laziness I guess and a false sense of security. I don’t have it open all the time but going for a short ride, while others are still home, I didn’t feel a need to close it. It was convenient to just ride straight in, not anymore. Keeping my stuff safer from opportunistic thieves trumps the convenience factor.
I’ve been worried about the same thing since we keep a number of expensive bikes in our garage. We have multiple security cameras pointed at the driveway and inside the garage and we also have a wifii-enabled garage door opener that will send an alert if the garage is open during the night or longer than 20 minutes.
But I still wanted a way to easily lock all of the bikes just to prevent any quick opportunistic theft.
The solution I went with was to hang all of the bikes vertically in the garage using rubber coated hooks screwed into a 2x6 mounted on the wall. That made it easier to keep the bikes together.
I then purchased multiple ‘Hiplock Ankr Mini’ to anchor cable lock to the wall. The Hiplock Ankr hides the heads of the bolts so they can only be removed once the cable lock is removed. It is mounted to studs with 4" bolts so it isn’t going anywhere easily. Ziggy’s has the Hiplock Ankr for about $30. I bought one for every 3 bikes. https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/ca/p/hiplok-ankr-mini-micro-security-anchor-lock
I then purchased one steel cable and small combination U-lock for each bike. I actually found one for $17 on Amazon that worked perfectly. Even though it was cheap, the U-Lock is hard to pick because it doesn’t allow anyone to apply tension to the lock mechanism to feel when the lock mechanism moves. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B08HGFDSF5
Sadly they seem to be out of stock, but with a bit of digging I’m sure I could find similar options.
The only problem I had was routing the loop of the cable through the Hiplock Ankr. I ended up using a dremel to carve some of the wire casing shrink the diameter a little, and vice grips to compress the loop to get it to fit though the hole. If I did it again I would just buy another $16 combination U-lock to route through the Ankr to connect the cable locks.
The U-locks are big enough to hold the top tube of all of our bikes and the 4-digit combination only takes a second for us to unlock and lock.
Total cost was less then $30/bike. Obviously anyone with a large cable cutter would be able to remove the bikes, but I’m pretty sure it would stop any quick opportunistic grab. It took a few weeks for my boys to remember to lock their bikes but I’ve beaten that into them enough that they now remember
I’m curious, but with the great pictures of the thief, did he get caught or did you get the bike back? I’m still looking for the guy and thought I saw him once or twice in the kitchener area. Maybe give us an update?
Nothing from the police. I don’t think they are trying at all to find him, low priority item I suspect.
I keep an I out when I am riding around but I haven’t seen him since.
Not that it’s very helpful but I saw him on the Iron Horse between Glasgow and Union when I was heading to the Gravel Ride on Saturday. He was pulling a cart but not riding a bike. I didn’t feel comfortable confronting him.
Thanks for the update. I wouldn’t expect anyone to actually confront him. I don’t expect to get the bike back, he is probably homeless and may have pawned it off by now.
