Originally Posted by
Shahmatt
If it's a regular bike it may not have been a bait bike. It could have been a genuine mistake on the owner's part.
Maybe you could have locked his bike with your own lock and put a note on that with your number on it asking that person to call you in order to open it.
That's a bad idea, though well-intentioned. What happens when the note falls off and blows away? The owner gets back and sees some jerk locked his/her bike with no way to remove it. If I was the type to leave my bike parked unlocked and unattended for a quick trip inside somewhere, and came out to see someone else had locked it without my permission, note or no note, I'd be
absolutely furious.
The owner may very well have had a good reason for leaving it unlocked. IMO best to just leave it alone. My rule of thumb is I don't do
anything to anyone else's bike without their explicit permission. About the only exception is to move it to the side of the road if it's left in the street, which has happened once with some little kid's bike. Probably got too excited when his mom called him in for dinner.
