I am fortunate to have free secure bike parking at my work - a chainlink cage with rack space for about 20 bikes. Of the two racks in the cage, one is ok, the other is one of those wheel bender types. As I am the only every day rider, I have come to feel a certain affection, bordering on ownership, for the 'good' spot at the end of the better rack.

Yesterday, I had a breakfast meeting and got to the office a bit later than usual. The cage was already about half full and all the bikes were sensibly locked to the good rack, leaving me to use the wheel bender rack I didn't let it bother me. Since I am usually in to work fairly early, I figured this would be a one time event.

Obviously some of the other riders have the same idea. I got to work this morning at 6:30 and there were already 3 bikes in there and another showed up while I was locking up Clearly this first come - first served thing is getting serious. Tomorrow I am setting my alarm for 4AM my bike deserves the good spot.

Make a sign that says "Reserved for Mercator" and stick it on your rack. Either that or just put your name on there. That way, if someone asks, you can say, "that's my name b|tch!"

I did the same a couple of spots when I was a messenger in Chicago, and once at a bar, all of which worked.

Alarm clock wars!

OMG, I thought I was the only one who did this. But I used to do it when I drove to work and wanted a particular wide end-space that some interloper kept getting into before me. Kept setting back 15 minutes until I finally beat her in by 5 minutes, then went back 15 minutes more from then on.

I needed a life, I suppose.

Am I the only one that finds this amusing?

No.

Leave your lock in the good spot.

I do that... to no avail. Sometimes it's hard to get to my lock with other bikes locked over it.

No, I think it's hilarious!

It would have to be a REALLY good parking spot to get me to wake up earlier, though. I am NOT a morning person.

Reading the thread title, I thought this was going to be about the daily argument with your late-sleeping spouse about why your alarm goes off so early every morning.

Umm, not that it ever happens at the Caloso household.

I thought it was going to be about hitting snooze too many times. I sometimes hit it as many as 4 times, drives my wife crazy.

I don't know how people use snooze. You just fall back asleep and WHAM you're up again. Why not just set it for when you want to get up?

A problem I fortunately do not have. My bike gets parked in my office. But maybe its a good sign that so many people bike to your work that there is such crowding.

Lobby the management to replace the wheel bender with a better rack?

I found that getting up as soon as I hear the alarm is a bad idea for me - too sudden a change from soundly asleep to up on my feet. I set the alarm for a bit earlier than my projected get-up time. This way the alarm sort of wakes me up and after silencing it I have a chance to gently ease myself into waking up fully. And the snooze feature is a safeguard in case "easing into waking up" turns into "falling back asleep again", which it often does.

+1

Sometime I'll set the clock for when I would "like" to leave, but will keep snoozing it until I "have" to leave. My wife really hates this.

Must be nice to not be the only bike commuter at work. Whenever someone asks about me riding in and I explain it, they look at me as if I need some sort of "cult deprogramming".

My bike goes in my server room. 'nuff said.

Well, I lost the first battle. I was so dense when the alarm went off that I hit the off button instead of the snooze button. Woke up at 7

Anyway, I am thinking about taking bmclaughlin807's advice. I am sizing up the server room for a bike spot today, maybe this is a war I don't need to fight.

Anyone else finds it worrying that employers allow bikes to be stored in a server room?

Because not everyone can just leap up out of bed the moment that annoying buzz sounds. Some of us like to ease into consciousness. It takes me at least 30 minutes to wake up.

About 20 minutes and a significant amount of caffeine for me . Trust me, nobody wants me leaping out of bed and onto the bike...

I have not had much experience with bike racks. What does the 'wheel bender' type rack look like?

The first rack is a wheel bender:
https://www.portlandonline.com/transp...=jiaea&c=deibd