Yup, that is crazy.

A few years ago I was at a Borders book store in downtown Washington DC on 14th Street, a block from the Treasury building and two blocks from the White House. Over the loud speaker, the store manager is asking for the owner of the bike locked to a street sign outside the door to come to the front desk immediately. There were some Secret Service guys at the desk and they were going to cut off the bike for some potential threat--explosives in the seat post is about the only thing I can imagine. I think they only must have been doing this because some people were travelling by in a motorcade.