The Life-Sized City Blog

Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I recieved a text message from Christian (at left, above) saying that he had spotted my red stolen Bullitt in his backyard in the Nørrebro neighbourhood. I called him instantly. (I mean INSTANTLY) and we went over the details on the bike. There was no question it was The Missing Bullitt. My friend Andreas and I hopped onto our bikes and flew off from Copenhagenize Consulting's offices in the centre of Copenhagen to meet up with Christian. Sure enough, there it was. My primary means of transport. Not locked to anything, with just a cheap wire lock through the wheel and frame. Christian had locked it with his own lock to the railing, just in case. The guy who nicked it peeled a few of the stickers off - the Bike Portland ones, the Cycle Chic one, but left the main stickers on the sides intact. DUH! The little seat where my daughter sits on the crossbar was gone, as was the wheel lock, but that's about it. Almost completely as I last saw ...

Photo by Diego Franssens - from interview in Belgian magazine Knack. Saturday morning, 11:30. Came out of the flat with the kids, heading for a toy store to buy a present that Felix would then take to a birthday party. Lulu-Sophia and I would then run some errands and hang out in the backyard. All of this would happen with my red Bullitt cargo bike. Which, I discovered, wasn't where I parked it. First thought... "Hmm, I thought I parked it there..." Second thought... "Maybe I parked it in the other spot..." Third thought, gradual realisation... "It's been nicked..." Not a foreign line of thought. Hell, I've had loads of bikes stolen before. But the fourth thought really says all about the role of the bicycle in Copenhagen - and in my life: "Shit... how I am going to get around today?!" Standing there with two kids - Felix was on his own bike - with things to do, places to go and stuff to buy and the cargo bike rug was pulled out from...

Our reader Rachel took this shot in Adelaide, Australia and fired it off to us. Thanks so much for that, Rachel. I quite like it. It reminded me of something completed unrelated. There is an old Danish superstition that if you light a cigarette directly from a candle flame, an Icelandic sailor dies. You can, however, save his life if you quickly light a match, let it burn halfway, grab the burnt end and let it burn the entire length, without breaking it. On a vaguely more related note, Icelanders believe in fairies and elves. They actually reroute roads to avoid rock formations where they may be living in colonies . And this in the most literate country in the world.

A bike thief got a shock yesterday when he stole a Christiania cargo bike from outside a shop here in Copenhagen. A man parked the bike and went into a shop. When he came out the bike was gone. A man had hopped onto it and rode off. The cargo bay had a cover on it, like in the photo above, and when the bike thief looked inside he saw three sleeping children, ages one, four and seven. Not quite what he bargained for when nicking the bike. The police were notified and all available personnel were set to the task of finding the children in the bike. When my wife and I saw this breaking news on the telly my first thought was that the thief would discover the children and then deliver them to safety. Sure enough, after he found them he hid the bike in a cellar entrance and asked the seven year old where they lived. He then followed all three of them home, notified some neighbours and delivered the kids. The police were called and he was arrested. " The bike thief followed the children...

Copenhageners line up on City Hall Square to get an RFID chip installed on their bicycles. The City of Copenhagen has just launched an innovative program aimed at tracking down stolen bicycles. The program is called "Få en lille chip på" or "Get a little chip on" and involves handing out 5000 free RFID chips that Copenhageners can put on their bicycles in order to participate in the pilot program that will run until May 2010. Here's a little film made about the first chip-handing-out event. Roughly 18,000 bicycles are stolen in Copenhagen each year [there are 1.9 million bicycles in Greater Copenhagen]. Many of them end up taking up space on the sidewalks and bike racks. The City wants to be able to track them down for you but also be able to keep the sidewalks and bike racks clear of bicycles that aren't being used. On June 4th, Copenhageners could show up on the City Hall Square [pictured] to get a chip installed and so many showed up that many ended going...