Spot The Deliberate Mistake

On the way home tonight, I stopped off to buy some flowers for my Beautiful Wife. Outside the shop I saw this locked up – looks like maybe last year’s model of either the Focus Cayo 105 Tripple, the Cayo Ultegra, or at a push, the Cayo Pro. Whichever it is, it’s between £1,000 and £2,500 of carbon bike.

Which is probably why the owner has locked it with two separate locks – clever person.

Except the locks aren’t used in the ’standard’ configuration. The lock securing the expensive bit of the bike (in fact all of the bike) looks like the sort of thing that my eight year-old daughter could break, while the front wheel is “secured” using a nice chunky D-Lock (or if you prefer, U-Lock):

OK, so how should this have been done?

1. Use the U-lock to secure the back wheel (and if possible the frame too) to something immovable. These are the two most expensive parts of the bike.
2. If you can’t get the lock around the frame and wheel, use the Sheldon Brown method.
3. Use that flimsy-looking cable lock to secure the front wheel (or maybe get a beefier one to do so) – locking it either to the frame or an immovable object.
4. A lock attached to the rim of a wheel like shown above does nothing to prevent it being stolen!

Update – looking at the brifters on the second photo, they seem to be Ultegra, which probably makes this bike the Focus Cayo Ultegra, priced at just shy of £1,500. At that price, when locked like this, it really could be a steal!