Bike locks

The smallest things can suddenly take on significance. I've been missing Sandy intensely since Saturday afternoon, but I've also found comfort in all kinds of ways since I returned home Sunday. One of those ways is how I've seen people carrying their bike locks.

I carry a U-lock on my bike, usually bungeed to the rack. When I use panniers, I carry the lock in them instead. Sandy didn't like to fuss with bungee cords or bags for her lock; she just slipped it over the handlebar and let it dangle as she rode. She did tie a bandana around the handlebar to keep it from sliding all over the place, but that was her only concession.

This picture was taken in May 2010, when she and Christine took the bikes down to Myrtle Edwards Park while I was in
Missouri. If the image is large enough, you can see that lock hanging from her handlebars, tucked in with its bandana. I
always thought she should take it off before putting the bike on a car or bus rack, but she didn't bother. I only recently
found this photo and others from that weekend. Christine must have had Sandy's helmet, because Sandy's wearing mine here. It's nice to see her in the blue bike shorts, which I now wear frequently, always when I want her along for the ride.

I thought it was a ridiculous way to carry a lock, mostly because the few times I needed to ride or even walk her bike short distances, I found the lock unwieldy and distracting. It just felt out of control somehow. (I'm ENFJ according to Myers-Briggs; Sandy was ENFP. The J and the P made all the difference. I went around shutting cabinets and drawers, locking exterior doors, removing flammable objects from the burners on the stove, and so on in her wake. She had no problem with things bouncing around. In contrast, though I'm far from tidy, I like things to feel a little more contained. On the other hand, many times I'd be looking for my current water glass and discover she'd already popped it into the dishwasher - so much for consistency.)

The thing is, I'd never seen anyone else carry their bike lock that way. I considered it odd enough that I would have noticed, I think, and she'd have felt a kinship with anyone she saw doing it, too. So yesterday morning, as I set off to walk to the grocery store, I was amused to see a cyclist biking in front of the house with a U-lock dangling off the handlebar. I'd been thinking about Sandy, yearning for her, and I welcomed the reminder of her quirks and possibly the indication of her presence.

Yesterday evening, on my way to the library, two cyclists passed me on 11th, as I walked by Hugo House. Again, I'd just been thinking about her. I think about her all the time, but more intently sometimes than others, and this had definitely been intent. And as I looked toward the street, I realized that both of these cyclists had their U-locks dangling from their handlebars.

Maybe it's become a thing. Maybe Sandy was a trendsetter and people who saw her commute to work every day more than two years ago noticed her habit and eventually adopted it. Out of curiosity, I looked online to see if people are reporting that they've starting carrying locks that way; the forums I found all discussed everything from holsters to racks to the frame-mounted holders that come with the locks, but nobody mentioned just slipping the thing over a handlebar. So maybe it's a fluke, a caress from the universe, letting me know that Sandy's energy remains in the world.

I'll be pretty entertained if I next see three cyclists carrying their locks that way, and then four, and so on. That would be a pretty sure sign of relevance, or at least a bit of fun.