Today, my FOURTH bicycle was stolen. Ok, it wasn't technically mine, but that makes it even worse.

The first bike which I really considered mine was a 24" tour bike with a 3-speed Sturmey Archer hub. It's probably still at my parents' place.

Fifteen years ago or so, I got a mountain bike as a present. No suspension, nothing fancy. I remember that it had a Shimano Exage derailleur. But it was a nice bike. I had it for several years, until one day I lent it to my sister, and it got stolen. That was in Italy. I suppose it was locked with a crappy cable lock, I don't know.

As a replacement, my sister gave me an extremely crappy old mountain bike. Shortly after that, I pretty much stopped cycling for several years.

About three years ago, I got a Specialized Allez Sport. It brought me back to cycling. I then sold the old mountain bike.

This March, I got a Specialized XC, my first bicycle with suspension. In June, I took it to Barcelona on vacation, where it got stolen. The lock (a cable lock) got cut during the day on a very populated street. I cursed Barcelona and Spain and thought that this would never happen in Switzerland.

Two weeks later my Allez was stolen in Zurich. Same lock. I cursed again and bought some high-quality U locks.

Now I'm in San Francisco and I borrowed a friend's bike. It came with a cable lock. Today I locked it to a traffic light in a well-lit, highly frequented street (Martet and Powell, just where the cable car turns, for who's familiar with SF) and went into GAP to get a pair of socks. I came out five minutes later and it was gone. That makes it the THIRD in the last 4 months.

The bloody irony is that I even brought a good U lock from home, but I didn't have it with me because I had removed it from my backpack for a longer tour yesterday.

Being responsible for having someone else's bicycle stolen sucks even more than having your own stolen.

This makes a total of 7 bicycles I have owned. 1 is at my parents', 1 I sold, 2 are my current bikes and 3 were stolen. Plus my friend's which got stolen. I'm still against having more police, harder punishments, or more surveillance.

Am I just extremely unlucky?