Modern Vespa

I live in quite a civilised town, and have already expressed my delight in how different it is to me old homeland.

Therefore I was quite pissed to come out this morning and find my wife's pushbike had been robbed. Not so much the bike itself, just that some fuckin' scum-licker walked onto the driveway, between Vespa and Audi, and carried the bicycle away

Going to start chaining the Vespa up at night, pricks

Sorry to hear that! I too live in a supposedly "good" area of Christchurch NZ but in the last two months, my home and a neighbour's home got broken into. I'm considering booby-trapping my home and my vehicles. Really.


Rear chained to the shed


Front not chained to anything... they can lift it but they can't wheel it away!

As annoyed as I am about the bike, a home robbery is a real sickener. Experienced it once back in Wales...it's truly nasty knowing some scum-container has been in your home and swiped, amongst other things, your Playstation

I would chain the Vespa to the car, but I know that's an invitation to disaster. Very forgetful before 9a.m, me

I would get an alarm for the scoot, I have one of those disk lock ones....
Also, buy a motion detector light...it scared away one thief, when it went off....
Alarms for house doors are really cheap, compared to a break in....have one of those too....make sure they are loud enough for the neiborhood to hear!

Got the motion detector light...will definately consider an alarm though thanks

Thefts were up 20% this year where I live. Why it's getting so bad people try and steal your thoughts, hopes and dreams.

when i was in italy, a lot of the homes i visited and passed were booby trapped. i wish that we could do that in america. i noticed that the tops of fences had concrete with nails and pieces of colored glass coming out.

it was pretty and functional.

Leave it unlocked. Get a gun. Wait up all night for them to come steal it. Shoot them.

One (or more) less thieves in the world.

I think the German authorities would very much frown upon such measures here...damn shame!

I am going to be a bit more vigilant with my stuff from now on though - I was happy to move to a low-crime area but that doesn't mean nothing happens.

Been leaving my scooter outside the office with the keys still in it - cut that out for a start

The few times I've been to Germany I've always been pretty impressed with the apparent level of respect folk seem to have for the rules and the place in general. I suppose as a Brit/Celt moving over there it must be easy to get complacent, so I totally feel your frustration.

I suppose it maybe reinforces that respect thing in a weird way if they had to lift it over the car & scoot to get it out and there was no damage to either. I'm assuming the lack of damage here, but I'm sure since you were venting anyway you'd have probably mentioned it. Still I would never have taken it this far!

Hey,I was wondering if the center stand could be modified to lock in place? I was trying to imagine how much more trouble it would add for the thieves to lift your scoot.What do you guys think?

Yep, I was one complacent Celt.

True now you mention it, I think even thieves have a moderate respect for property, even when they're pinching it! The bike was only chained to itself, I reckon if it was chained to our fence, they would have left it there rather than make a mess. Weirdos

They have cigarette machines on every street here. How long do you reckon they'd last in the UK, J? 5 minutes before it gets chained to a Transit van and off into the night

Mmm well Germany is very different from the UK.

I mean they have rules about what time of day you can beat your carpets.

No beeping the horn on Sunday either

Do I beep on Sunday? well, only if I must

bah. drag

if it makes you feel any better, we have had three pushbikes and a pond filtration system nicked from our back garden ...

F***ers! Stealing food to survive, I can understand that (and relate a little bit). Stealing other stuff...well it's just not on is it

sorry to hear. i will wish diarrhea (really bad ones) on the thieves for you. believe in karma

Tiff.

Thanks! I hope they crap themselves too

When I went to Key West I was shown how to lock
up the scooter, you run a six foot cable through
the front wheel as you have and rap the remaining
cable up and around the leg shield and through the
tie down on the lower left of where your feet rest. 8)

So sorry to hear. Nobody has a right to steal somebody elses shit, ever.

Hope you find them and your push bike.

Best,
SDG

My cable lock is a little bit too short to do that, but I know what you mean. It really is there as a deterrent as I doubt it will really stop determined thieves from freezing the lock and hacking it apart, or a really large industrial-strength cable cutter

Get yourself a big ass samuria sword and do this: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.samurai16sep16,0,114199.story

That's not right, hope you find your bike.

Excellent. Job done. I'm not in favour of vigilantes, but trespassers (which here means some damage has been done, however slight) should be deterred before they trespass. Preferably with a few vivid examples.

Yeah, but we're very child-friendly. No time limits there

To the OP: sorry you had that bad experience. I also got a bicylce stolen, when I was in the Navy. It was bright red. Didn't stop them, though. Fuckers.

I hate thieves. I have this lock for my scooters and if you cut it trust me you can hear it a mile away. Plus at 15ft you can wrap it around and thru most anything. Hope you find the bastards. It's called lock alarm

That wouldn't work over here either...We don't have much of a problem with theft here, though it's on the rise since the bank collapse. But vandalism is a big problem here. Here in the centrum, we don't have things like phonebooths and public lavatories any more. There is just no point.

Sorry to hear about the bike being stolen!

Securing the front wheel alone does not really prevent the scooter from being wheeled away. When I was at my dealership, the Vespas were lined up right next to each other as close as they could be fitted. I thought, how is he going to get the one in the middle out, the one the dealer wanted to show me, without moving all the other scoots first.

The dealer just stood in front of the Vespa and lifted it up by the handlebar. He then pulled it out rolling it on the back wheel like a wheelbarrow. I guess with two broomsticks strapped to the floorboards, a thief could even run away with a Vespa, if the back wheel is not secured.

I, and a good few other people, witnessed a KTM being stolen in broad daylight from beside John Lewis' on Oxford Street. They just used two short lengths of scaffolding through the wheels, picked it up and threw it in the back of a van with a matress on the floor. Bold as brass. Arsepipes.

Pond filtration system.... sounds they're 'shopping' for a nice hydroponic garden system.... yes, those are tomato plants, really