3. I grew up in central London so I was always security aware, used Kryptonite d-locks, would take the front wheel off, and look for busier and brighter spots.
Marin Palisades Trail – my first mtb from the mid 80’s, stolen from locked work shed in early 90’s, only d-locked through frame and rear wheel. Probably an inside job given that the shed contained all the spare kegs for the pub, and the lock was intact, but I couldn’t prove anything.
Saracen Hardtrax? – all I could afford as a replacement for the Marin since I didn’t have insurance. Stolen from a parking meter it was d-locked to, but I had insurance this time which allowed me to upgrade to a Marin Bear Valley in the mid/late 90’s which had RST elastomer suspension forks. This actually led me to using the bike as a mtb rather than a commuter and pub bike. My cyclist girlfriend was jealous though and bought a mtb mag to source a suspension fork for her Marin which she’d only bought the previous year. That mag happened to have a route in the Surrey Hills which we could reach by train from London, and from that point we rode it most weekends until we started racing in 98.
Kinesis Crosslight – 2002 – locked with a Kryptonite NY bike chain lock to a fence in trendy Hoxton Sq, Shoreditch, as I was getting to know a girl in a nearby bar. I was gutted since it rode beautifully, I’d built it up myself, I couldn’t afford to replace it, and I could have avoided the loss altogether if I had only taken the bike home first since I lived nearby, but I didn’t do so because the girl might have headed home instead of waiting for me, since we’d already been out to a concert and it was about 2am.
