An Irishman's Diary

ONE of the many pitfalls of cycling in Dublin is the unwanted intimacy your bike is forced to endure, when locked in a public place, with the bicycles of strangers.

This is not a matter of prudishness. Which said, there are occasions when the spectacle of a light-framed racer and a chunky mountain bike, clinging to each other on either side of a lamppost, especially in the 69 position, can appear indecent.

But that aside, there’s also the problem of carelessly locked bikes. To wit: rather than fasten both frame and wheel to a pole, thereby maximising stability as well as security, many cyclists just throw the chain or cable around the crossbar, loosely.

As a result, bicycles often seem to be locked in the informal, human sense of that word. Give one the slightest push, and it will go sprawling. Or worse, it will collapse all over your bike, like an amorous drunk.

But that’s not the worst thing, either. No. The worst thing about having to share poles with strangers is the occasional eejit who, unthinkingly, locks his bike to yours. And excuse me while I froth at the mouth here. But in the space of half an hour last Wednesday night, it happened to me twice.

The first was outside my Pilates class (sneer all you like, readers, but it has improved my posture no end). I was, of course, in a hurry, having imminently to collect my daughter from Irish dancing. Thus, I noted with concern that my bike was now sharing its pole with a stranger, and that, furthermore, they looked uncomfortably close.

The new bike had two locks. It had also a helmet attached: more than I had. Thus, in some ways, its owner was clearly a careful person. But only in some ways. On closer inspection, I found that his loop lock was running through my loop lock. And remarkably, that he had also managed to secure his smaller, bracket-style lock to my bicycle, via a brake cable.

Apart from minor annoyance, the intertwined loops were no problem. It was a Mexican divorce – either party could end the arrangement instantly. The bracket lock was the problem. Either it had to be opened, or my brake cable unscrewed. And call me reckless, but I’m just not in the habit of carrying a set of bicycle wrenches or Allen keys around town with me.

Instead, I went looking for the owner – a nearby pub seeming the most likely place. Sure enough, a man there did have a bike outside. But it proved to be a different bike and a different pole.

So I surveyed a few other places, without success. Then, getting desperate, I tried an upmarket restaurant nearby. No luck there either, except a sympathetic staff member who, when I muttered aloud about needing “a set of Allen keys”, said the magic words: “I have Allen keys”. Thanks to him, several minutes later, I had freed the brake cable. If it hadn’t been for air temperatures of minus 3 degrees, I might even have reattached it too. Unfortunately, the required dexterity soon deserted me along with all the feeling in my fingers. So I decided to cycle home without a front brake and fix the problem later when thawed.

In the meantime, I returned the Allen keys to my saviour. And, by the way, if there are any cyclists looking for a good place to eat in Dublin, I highly recommend FX Buckley’s in Pembroke Street. Not only do they keep bicycle maintenance equipment. I’m told they do a very good steak too.

Anyway, I was in an even bigger hurry by now. But as it happened, I also still had to make a quick stop at a supermarket en route: namely Dunnes in South Great George’s Street.

This is an area with a big bicycle population. So much so it can sometimes be a struggle to find parking spaces nearby. Happily, there was half a pole free in front of the shop, so I locked my bike hurriedly (but carefully) and ran inside.

Moments later, I re-emerged to find – sharp intake of breath here – that in the interim, a female cyclist had locked her bicycle to mine. And not accidentally, from the other side of the pole, like the previous eejit. Au contraire. This person had done it deliberately, because there was no pole available.

Now, I knew she wasn’t far away. She was almost certainly in the same shop, on a similar errand. But by God, she had picked the wrong night to treat my bike as a lamppost. I was in high dudgeon already, and as three minutes passed and the altitude increased, my oxygen supply started to run out.

South Great George’s Street can be a chaotic place at times. And by coincidence, while I was standing there, looking concerned, a Garda car pulled in and two detectives emerged, asking if I was the person who’d just called the guards. No, I told them. “But stick around – there could be a murder scene here shortly”.

Okay, I didn’t that say that last bit out loud. In fact, when the woman arrived, she was so apologetic that it was as much as I could do to give her a short lecture on the ethics of bike-locking.

By now, a series of urgent phone texts had culminated with news that my daughter was having to be rescued from dance class by her mother. And not for the first time, cycling home on a sub-zero February night, I was very sorry I hadn’t brought the car.