weird reverse schadenfreude

[Jonathan]

OR, how I got a bad case of the empathy

My building has a public parking garage in the basement. Part of the space is a dedicated bicycle storage unit, with rows of racks behind a locked door open only to residents. This is a pretty great solution, except for two problems:

1. The racks they bought do not work with fenders. I have seen no bike with fenders put up on a rack, because it invariably crushes the fender.
2. It is incredibly popular. The racks are pretty much always at capacity, plus there is spillover from bikes with fenders just crowded into wherever they will fit.

In recognition of these two issues, I think, the management company installed some "public" bicycle racks outside the locked door on various levels of the garage. I say "public" because the attendant would not stop a member of the public from cruising in and parking for free, but that same member of the public would not be able to access his bike when the attendant left (whereas residents and actual paying users of the garage can get into the garage at any time). There are not as many public racks as secure racks, but it has been enough to alleviate the worst of the overcrowding. Plus, the public racks are trivial to hang a bike with fenders onto.

Both Catriona and I have fenders on our bikes because we ride year-round. This clearly puts us in the minority. Many commuters store their bicycles in their apartments because they do not want to deal with the hassle of getting their bikes out of the garage. The bike room is a constant pain in our ass.

I have been in the habit of using the public racks to speed up my departure in the morning. Not having to deal with the overcrowded bike room really makes my morning better. Unfortunately, the sheer number of bicycles means that often all the public racks are full. Furthermore, since most commuters are not using the public racks, that means the public racks are usually occupied by a bicycle that has been there for months. I know for a fact there is one bicycle there that has not moved since the Providence Bridge Pedal event in August.

Every day, I come home and cruise past the public racks. Every day, I am annoyed as hell at the bicycles that sit there, uselessly occupying a convenient rack that I could be using. Then I go into the bike room and trip over the bike with fenders that sits right in the middle of the aisle, locked to the frame of the rack with no chance to move it out of the way. The bike that has been sitting there for months, annoying me every day.

I have fantasized about letting the air out of the tires in the bikes that don't get used. It's a pretty stupid, petty thing to do. Stupid, because these bikes have not been ridden or maintained in months and so do not have any air in their tires to begin with. Petty, because no one will ever connect having a flat tire in a bicycle they have not used in a year with any sort of frustration or revenge on the behalf of a competitor for the rack they have used. Still, I think about letting the air out of the tires almost every week.

Today, I was headed to work and I noticed an empty public rack. Glee! There has not been an empty public rack for several months when almost everyone else gave up the pretense of actually being a cyclist. The same five bicycles have sat there for the entire winter, mutely mocking me. When I turn to fully regard the empty rack and plan my early departure from work to ensure I secured the rack, I realized there was a wheel hanging from a U-lock attached to the rack.

I immediately felt a double sense of horror. Horror that someone had their bicycle stolen compounded by horror that I had been wishing for something bad to happen to that bicycle for months. I made arrangements to try and contact the owner, who probably has no idea what state his bike is in since he probably has not seen it since the winter started. Getting your bicycle stolen is the absolute worst and something I am always afraid will happen to me. I felt really bad for the owner. Still do.

tl;dr I am a bad person but not really.

[Vyrosama]

Instead of biking you should bring back rollerblades, skateboards, or even better http://www.heelys.com/