Okay not quite true, the corollary of this is that you can never have too many keys. My biggest fear “ well apart from the one about involving goats and someone elses video camera but we’ll not go into that here “ is arriving at the station without the ability to lock or unlock my bike.
Because I’m so paranoid about it, it never happens. And when I say paranoid – you’re talking about a man who believes unpleasant weather systems specifically target and follow him in some kind of meteorological conspiracy – that involves checking for the reassurance of keys about five times before riding and a couple of times during.
However, this doesn’t hold for when I’m not riding, which shouldn’t matter but does. There’s times when essential maintenance needs carrying out “ even to me the crank falling off comes under the heading of essential “ and for some reason I’m not riding.
On the last two occasions this has happened, I’ve forgotten my keys and attempted to do something complex with spanners while my bike is chained to a bike rack at the station. It clearly looks like I’m trying to nick parts off it and it’s just as clear nobody actually cares. One day I may just start unbolting plant off the platform in a social experiment designed to illicit some response from an uncaring public.
Anyway I digress.
Due to impending holiday, I was keen to make my London bike scrote proof by locking it up with at least two of Abus’ finest. With a precision logistical strike, I unearthed two spare locks from the shed and secreted them in my rucksack. Sadly I failed to do the same with the keys so aside from the extra exercise required to drag two heavy yet useless locks about, my anti-scrote plan was stymied.
Instead I bought yet another lock. Because of the paranoia you see. I now have a total of four locks in London of which two are on the bike. The others are ensuring no one cheekily runs off with an unused bike rack.
This is the second time this has happened giving me a total of seven locks so my keyring resembles a jailors. There’s got to be a better solution than stoking Evans’ profits on a monthly basis. I just don’t know what it is. It probably involves two key rings, a post-it note on my forehead and some common sense.
So more locks it is then 😉
