I've finally had the "where's my bike??" moment of panic a couple of nights ago. I'd left Jacqueline chained to one of the bike racks at the huge intersection in the Museumsquartier and went out for dinner with a friend.
Afterward, I went to retrieve the bike, but was horrified not to see it at the rack where I remembered leaving it.
This is a large, busy intersection that has between one and three bicycle racks on each corner. It was possible I'd left it on a different rack from the one I remembered. I started checking them all, with my friend's cheerful encouragement: "Relax, no one wants to steal your junky bike!"
While I don't appreciate the implication that Jacqueline is undesirable, I am glad that she was indeed safely locked up to a bike rack down the road. The shape is so recognisable, that I spotted her as soon as we approached. Immensely relieved, I vowed to pay more attention to where I leave her.
On a separate note, the headlight bracket on Jacqueline snapped over the weekend (you can see it positioned at an odd angle here), and we do not have a replacement. So we've removed the headlight altogether now and I am using the LED battery-operated lights I brought with me from the US. Cycling with those at night, a couple of times now local cyclists have commented that my tail light is too bright. It's not that it blinds them, but more like they just find it disconcerting - not typically associating that level of brightness with a bicycle. Interesting, because in Boston the same tail light is not considered too bright at all; in fact in the past I've used two of them whereas here I am only using one. Just goes to show how different cycling "culture" can be, even in terms of light intensity preferences.
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