TrekJapan

I live on a USMC base in Okinawa Japan and our exchange doesn't have bike racks. Everytime I try to ride there I just can't find a good safe place to secure my bike. There really aren't any exterior pipes or guardrails to secure to. And the lock through the wheel thing won't do it here.

Despite the fact it's a US base bicycle theft is high. Mostly on Friday and Sat night when the drunks need a ride home I think but still the bike theft rate here is enough that I'm not leaving my $1000 bicycle basically unsecured for a half hour.

So I made a user comment on the exchange webpage. To my total surprise they called me this morning.

Now here's the kicker. I ran to work today. I decided while passing the exchange I'd run around it to see where was a good place to put a rack. Damned if I didn't find a bike rack. It's behind the store and is the "Series of U's" kind of bike rack maybe big enough for 5 or 6 bikes. Probably adequate.

The problem is that it's about 2' from the wall and cars park directly in front of it rendering it useless and cars parked in front of it explain why I never saw it before.

So anyway this guy calls me today about my comment and I told him I found the rack and what the situation was. He had contacted the Base Commander to see about bike rack construction and they told him they'd add him but they were building racks at various barracks around the base and he was low on the priority list.

But what he told me he'd do was contact base facilities and paint a spot in front of the racks so drivers could see it was a no parking zone and he said he'd inform the base police to have them ticket (if they found it appropriate to do so) cars parked in front of the rack.

Finally. I can ride my bike to the exchange again.

All it took was one user comment. (Okay I confess I'm darn near the highest ranking civilian on the base if not the highest ranking. That probably helped).

John