Actually, out of the seven keys on my keychain, four are for my bike. One for the U-lock, two for the storage room I lock it in overnight and one five-sided key for the anti-theft wheel and seat-post skewers, just in case.
Tanks Pierre for the link. 15 Years ago on a relatives-visiting-holiday in U$A I’ve baught that mini tool… http://www.swisstechtools.com/proddetail.aspx?pid=6
for the keyring, but lost it some years later, without knowing it’s name
That’s what is happening here, but reversed from normal. Lots of people who post comments here obviously feel superior to others because they ride a bike everywhere rather than drive a car. It makes them look pretty pitiful, petty, and elitist. It’s kinda like that wonderful Prius Piousness. Douchebags one and all.
And “some people” hide behind a Guest login to insult others, assuming that everyone who posts something on here is trying to assert something over everyone else. Pretty pitiful and petty, I think.
I was just saying, as others have, that one can be a driver and a cyclist. And I think Pops was taking a pop (‘scuse the pun at people who wave, for example, Porsche keyrings around to show off.
Actually, the comment thing had logged me out and I didn’t notice until I posted. I went back and added my name to it, if you bothered to look.
I was also posting “in advance”. ie: I’ve been here long enough to see all of the overly-pious people who post about “cagers”. Their feeling of superiority bleeds out of their posts like an arterial flow. I knew they’d be posting later, so I pre-empted them.
I don’t care if people drive. I don’t care if people ride bikes (well, I do…it’s my business. But you understand…) I just can’t stand the “hey! look at me!” sorts – as illustrated in your waving of Porsche keyrings example. I was springboarding off of Pops’ post; not insulting him or attacking him.
“Douchebags”? Pretty personal name calling for someone who intends no insult, in my opinion. It’s rather a kettle-kettle, black-black remark.
Personally, I don’t think these “douchebags” here on the comments page are so much touting their superiority as pointing out that riding green transpo such as a bike is a bit better for the environment, makes them feel good, and is a viable form of conveyance. If that makes them feel a bit smug and “anti-them-pro-us,” so what? No skin off of any of our noses and certainly no excuse to be “pitiful, petty, and elitist,” in turn as you look down upon them from your lofty moral perch.
I think the more important thing about the cagers’ key rings is that they have the electronic fob gizmo. It seems that just about every car built in the last ten years requires one of those annoying things.
Everything old is new again. I remember when I was Tricycle Bill my folks had a car — probably a late 1940′s model — that had push-button start. One day, when I was left in the car while my mother went into a store or someplace, I remember pushing the button and starting the car. I wasn’t able to sit down for the rest of that day…but I did learn to never touch *that button* again.
Don’t know if it still happens, but a few years ago there was pubicity about thieves recording the signal from electronic key fobs and when convenient using it to steal the car. About their only advantage is, when you go indoors on a wet day you can point it thought the window and check whether you forgot to lock the cage door. I’m not against the appropriate use of technology, but since you have to be right nxt to the car to get into it, what’s wrong with having to insert a key in the lock?
Well, when you’re carrying a lot of items and your hands are full it’s easier to push a button with one finger than to insert a key in a lock and turn it. If several people are getting in the car you can unlock all the doors before anyone reaches it so no one has to wait. I like being able to start the engine and get the heater or air conditioner going while I’m still in the house and can’t even see the car. It’s also nice to be able to blow the horn and/or turn on the headlights from a distance to help locate the car in a crowded parking lot, especially at night.
The only problem with a remote start is that you can’t use the excuse that you can’t get into your frozen over car in the winter. Luckly mine doesn’t have one.
If there’s enough snow and ice that my car is frozen over, then the streets will be way too slippery to get out of my (very hilly) neighborhood anyway, so I’ll already have a good excuse to stay home. A couple of winters ago my sons and I had to put on our backpacks and hike a couple of miles to the store and back for groceries, because the snow was too deep and too slippery on the roads for either cars or bikes. (Before that, one of my sons got his wife’s car stuck trying to get over the hill at the end of our street.)
Many cars these days have a ‘rolling’ code so that unless you use the ‘captured’ code right away, before the owner uses their key again, the code you stole won’t work.
When I was on a training course in Germany once, a fellow trainee (from Sweden) was sooooo happy when he left the hotel that morning. His Volvo Estate was warm, the windows were clear and the engine pre-heated by an automatic calor-gas device that had followed it’s program. Even his driving seat was warm! He was quietly laughing at the drivers of BMWs, Audis etc who was following the icy morning mantra like the man in the U-Tube video link that Adam Posted…
My bike lock key sits on the same ring as my house and car key. They don’t leave my pocket either unless being used. The only keys I don’t have on my ring is my wifes car (I don’t drive it enough), the classic car (off site), motorcycle (don’t want the rest of the keys dinging it) and the bathroom key (that straight piece of wire).
As a general rule, I carry 7 keys and an electronic fob; the fob gets me on to my floor at work, and/or into the building after hours. one of the keys opens the door to my office, and another opens the drawers to my desk (which I almost never lock… I should probably take that one off the ring). One unlocks the hitch pin that holds the bike rack on my van, and the last three are for my U-locks. I only carry car keys when I’m driving. I could probably ditch one (or two) of the u-lock keys, but each lock fits a different situation/purpose…
At the office, the only key I need is for my desk. My employee badge gives me access to the building and unlocks interior doors, lets me use the elevator to the restricted access floor, and (along with my fingerprint) gets me into the secure server farm and unlocks the racks there.
I carry as few keys as possible. Since I get in a car only about once a month, that one stays in a drawer. Same key opens the bike garage as the main garage, and I always order in a new U-lock so that it uses the same key as my older ones. Kryptonite will do that for its Evolution series, so you can get different sized locks with the same key. (Which means I have a 300-year supply of bike lock keys in my desk drawer!) No tall lock makers publicize this feature, so just check on their website on with your local shop.
I wish I lived in a world where I couldl carry no keys at all, but at least I can keep the key load minimal this way.
I too dislike carrying keys – I feel the free-est on those extremely rare occasions I don’t have to carry any at all (or a wallet). However, my normal “carry ring” includes not one, but two fobs. One for the house alarm, the other is a TV B GONE. ( http://tvbgone.com/ ) to “zap” the ever increasing number of TVs in public spaces.
However, Yehuda’s ring looks like it has a car key on it. It looks like a “valet” key for a Mercedes-Benz…
I have two key rings attached to each other. One has my car key and remote fob, the other has my church key, house key, and office desk key. When I’m not driving I detach the ring with the car key and remote, and leave them home. I don’t have a key for my bike; my bike lock is a combination lock.
nope, not true. Long before I had a car I had a keychain for a chatelaine that must have weighed close to five pounds. I had keys for the theatre I cleaned, I had keys for my outbuildings and doors, and even some skeleton keys for old locks and keys for bathroom dispensers. Adding my car and my hubby’s truck keys just added to the size a bit. I always felt that people with lots of keys had lots of responsibility so it was a symbol to me of adulthood. I never have trouble getting it out of my purse and it often dangles from a belt loop.
Responsibility or slavery… well, it depends on the circumstances, I would say.
I will leave aside my personal preferences…
Just a side-note, one (perhaps) interesting experience. For some time I used to work at an old castle (very old indeed, almost 1000 years old, actually – no kidding: http://www.zamky-hrady.cz/2/bitov-e.htm)… and one of my (many and varied) responsibilities was to go through almost each and every part of the castle at the end of the day, checking and securing everything before “handing the castle over” to the security service guys for the night. That, of course, included handling a really large bunch of keys. (Yes, there was one “master key” that could un/lock many doors, but not all of them (by far) – many of the historical doors simply did not have their locks modified, and there were also security reasons for NOT having a universal access key). Many of the keys were actually historical artefacts, and also fine examples of iron-smith craft. The key to the main palace gate, for instance, was about 30cm long. Surely enough, this bunch of keys was quite large and heavy… but it actually felt very good to carry that around. Lots of responsibility associated, yes… a peculiar feeling of privilege, too … and, just on the side, the bunch of keys was so heavy and large that it could be probably also used as a weapon in the case of emergency. But, of course, this bunch had its limited use – I carried it with me only around the castle and only at certains times. Most of the keys were not allowed to leave the castle area anyway, according to the security protocol…
(oh, if you’d like to check the link, you need to remove the bracket and dots part – “)…” for it to work. Sorry. I cannot edit it in the previous, as this particular computer doesn’t communicate too well with the posting system).
Actually, back in my pre-car, juvenile delinquent days, I used to carry a big, heavy wad of keys on a heavy dog collar chain as a weapon that could be carried with impunity in the face of NJ state knife and conceled weapon laws. don’t know what half of them opened; they were just good heavy pieces of metal I had found in various drawers and cupboards at home.
Hey guys… if we didn’t have keys, we wouldn’t need pockets which would drive the price of pants down. Yippee!!!
Good for us, but it will put pocket sewers out of work and on unemployment.
Dang you bad keys!!!
yup, used to do that loads – and would discover the hole as my change bounced off my knee and rolled out of my trouser cuff. Pockets used to get smaller as I sewed across the hole.
keys are the only thing you carry in pockets???? Where do you put your book, your digital gadgets, your TOOLS? (leatherman, swiss army knife, firesteel and pocket knife). I mean, there’s just so many useful things to carry around! I have to use a separate bag (call it my purse) because many of the clothes I get at stores just don’t include pockets. Apparently it’s wrong to spoil the line of a woman’s body with something practical like pockets because the shape of our bodies is more important than comfort, preparedness, convenience, or even our health. Curiously enough, the fewer pockets an article has, the more it’s likely to cost.
You know what I wish for? A keyfob-sized garage door opener so that when I get home on wet rainy days I could reach into my pocket, press the button, and the garage door opens so I can just ride the bike right on inside.
Hey Rick!! That there might even be a subject for a cartoon — a half-width overhead door on a garage, strictly for bicycle access, either as an “in a perfect world” sort of view or as a sign of conspicuous consumption among the cycling set.
Considering garage door electronics are small enough to fit in a rear view mirror, one could cut apart a HomeLink garage door opening mirror (from a junkyard, say); program it and use it.
I have a massive bunch of keys half of which are for various bike locks, the other half for my house. My car key sits on it’s own on a seperate key fob.
probably a winter/summer thing. it takes more time to plot out a story arc than a one-line daily, and in summer there’s much more cycling to be done. You wouldn’t want the author to give up his bike, would you?
(can’t help it, my mind seems to be trained to search for “a look from the other side” constantly)…
- more cycling, on the other hand, would mean more inspiration, and also more thinking time, at least in my case.
I have even considered mounting some notepad or something similar on my handlebars – when riding, I usually get the most and the best ideas, but, on a longer ride, as the ideas pile up, it can be difficult to bring them all home. Stopping every odd moment to note something down isn’t a good solution…
Actually, out of the seven keys on my keychain, four are for my bike. One for the U-lock, two for the storage room I lock it in overnight and one five-sided key for the anti-theft wheel and seat-post skewers, just in case.
…and although I drive a car and a van, their keys are kept separate, in a pot somewhere, because I don’t often need them in my pocket.
Whereas my D-lock keys are on my always-carried keyring along with my house keys. And one of these truly excellent tools: http://www.swisstechtools.com/proddetail.aspx?pid=5
Never leave home without it!
Tanks Pierre for the link. 15 Years ago on a relatives-visiting-holiday in U$A I’ve baught that mini tool…
http://www.swisstechtools.com/proddetail.aspx?pid=6
for the keyring, but lost it some years later, without knowing it’s name
I use an Axa Defender RL…the key is in the lock until I lock it. No losing or looking for the keys.
Don’t some people use keys as a status symbol of the Bourgeoisie?
That’s what is happening here, but reversed from normal. Lots of people who post comments here obviously feel superior to others because they ride a bike everywhere rather than drive a car. It makes them look pretty pitiful, petty, and elitist. It’s kinda like that wonderful Prius Piousness. Douchebags one and all.
And “some people” hide behind a Guest login to insult others, assuming that everyone who posts something on here is trying to assert something over everyone else. Pretty pitiful and petty, I think.
I was just saying, as others have, that one can be a driver and a cyclist. And I think Pops was taking a pop (‘scuse the pun
at people who wave, for example, Porsche keyrings around to show off.
Actually, the comment thing had logged me out and I didn’t notice until I posted. I went back and added my name to it, if you bothered to look.
I was also posting “in advance”. ie: I’ve been here long enough to see all of the overly-pious people who post about “cagers”. Their feeling of superiority bleeds out of their posts like an arterial flow. I knew they’d be posting later, so I pre-empted them.
I don’t care if people drive. I don’t care if people ride bikes (well, I do…it’s my business. But you understand…) I just can’t stand the “hey! look at me!” sorts – as illustrated in your waving of Porsche keyrings example. I was springboarding off of Pops’ post; not insulting him or attacking him.
“Douchebags”? Pretty personal name calling for someone who intends no insult, in my opinion. It’s rather a kettle-kettle, black-black remark.
Personally, I don’t think these “douchebags” here on the comments page are so much touting their superiority as pointing out that riding green transpo such as a bike is a bit better for the environment, makes them feel good, and is a viable form of conveyance. If that makes them feel a bit smug and “anti-them-pro-us,” so what? No skin off of any of our noses and certainly no excuse to be “pitiful, petty, and elitist,” in turn as you look down upon them from your lofty moral perch.
I think the more important thing about the cagers’ key rings is that they have the electronic fob gizmo. It seems that just about every car built in the last ten years requires one of those annoying things.
You can be a luddite and eschew the remote unlock and use just the key. As for push button start, I can’t say.
Everything old is new again. I remember when I was Tricycle Bill my folks had a car — probably a late 1940′s model — that had push-button start. One day, when I was left in the car while my mother went into a store or someplace, I remember pushing the button and starting the car. I wasn’t able to sit down for the rest of that day…but I did learn to never touch *that button* again.
Don’t know if it still happens, but a few years ago there was pubicity about thieves recording the signal from electronic key fobs and when convenient using it to steal the car. About their only advantage is, when you go indoors on a wet day you can point it thought the window and check whether you forgot to lock the cage door. I’m not against the appropriate use of technology, but since you have to be right nxt to the car to get into it, what’s wrong with having to insert a key in the lock?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDyxdXzjF9s – if you haven’t already seen it!
Well, when you’re carrying a lot of items and your hands are full it’s easier to push a button with one finger than to insert a key in a lock and turn it. If several people are getting in the car you can unlock all the doors before anyone reaches it so no one has to wait. I like being able to start the engine and get the heater or air conditioner going while I’m still in the house and can’t even see the car. It’s also nice to be able to blow the horn and/or turn on the headlights from a distance to help locate the car in a crowded parking lot, especially at night.
The only problem with a remote start is that you can’t use the excuse that you can’t get into your frozen over car in the winter. Luckly mine doesn’t have one.
If there’s enough snow and ice that my car is frozen over, then the streets will be way too slippery to get out of my (very hilly) neighborhood anyway, so I’ll already have a good excuse to stay home. A couple of winters ago my sons and I had to put on our backpacks and hike a couple of miles to the store and back for groceries, because the snow was too deep and too slippery on the roads for either cars or bikes. (Before that, one of my sons got his wife’s car stuck trying to get over the hill at the end of our street.)
Many cars these days have a ‘rolling’ code so that unless you use the ‘captured’ code right away, before the owner uses their key again, the code you stole won’t work.
When I was on a training course in Germany once, a fellow trainee (from Sweden) was sooooo happy when he left the hotel that morning. His Volvo Estate was warm, the windows were clear and the engine pre-heated by an automatic calor-gas device that had followed it’s program. Even his driving seat was warm! He was quietly laughing at the drivers of BMWs, Audis etc who was following the icy morning mantra like the man in the U-Tube video link that Adam Posted…
Yet another reason I don’t care to own a new car – all the American market gadgets and gizmos that cost money and break…
My bike lock key sits on the same ring as my house and car key. They don’t leave my pocket either unless being used. The only keys I don’t have on my ring is my wifes car (I don’t drive it enough), the classic car (off site), motorcycle (don’t want the rest of the keys dinging it) and the bathroom key (that straight piece of wire).
As a general rule, I carry 7 keys and an electronic fob; the fob gets me on to my floor at work, and/or into the building after hours. one of the keys opens the door to my office, and another opens the drawers to my desk (which I almost never lock… I should probably take that one off the ring). One unlocks the hitch pin that holds the bike rack on my van, and the last three are for my U-locks. I only carry car keys when I’m driving. I could probably ditch one (or two) of the u-lock keys, but each lock fits a different situation/purpose…
At the office, the only key I need is for my desk. My employee badge gives me access to the building and unlocks interior doors, lets me use the elevator to the restricted access floor, and (along with my fingerprint) gets me into the secure server farm and unlocks the racks there.
I carry as few keys as possible. Since I get in a car only about once a month, that one stays in a drawer. Same key opens the bike garage as the main garage, and I always order in a new U-lock so that it uses the same key as my older ones. Kryptonite will do that for its Evolution series, so you can get different sized locks with the same key. (Which means I have a 300-year supply of bike lock keys in my desk drawer!) No tall lock makers publicize this feature, so just check on their website on with your local shop.
I wish I lived in a world where I couldl carry no keys at all, but at least I can keep the key load minimal this way.
I too dislike carrying keys – I feel the free-est on those extremely rare occasions I don’t have to carry any at all (or a wallet). However, my normal “carry ring” includes not one, but two fobs. One for the house alarm, the other is a TV B GONE. ( http://tvbgone.com/ ) to “zap” the ever increasing number of TVs in public spaces.
However, Yehuda’s ring looks like it has a car key on it. It looks like a “valet” key for a Mercedes-Benz…
I have two key rings attached to each other. One has my car key and remote fob, the other has my church key, house key, and office desk key. When I’m not driving I detach the ring with the car key and remote, and leave them home. I don’t have a key for my bike; my bike lock is a combination lock.
nope, not true. Long before I had a car I had a keychain for a chatelaine that must have weighed close to five pounds. I had keys for the theatre I cleaned, I had keys for my outbuildings and doors, and even some skeleton keys for old locks and keys for bathroom dispensers. Adding my car and my hubby’s truck keys just added to the size a bit. I always felt that people with lots of keys had lots of responsibility so it was a symbol to me of adulthood. I never have trouble getting it out of my purse and it often dangles from a belt loop.
Hmmm. To me a bunch of keys is a symbol of subtle slavery.
Responsibility or slavery… well, it depends on the circumstances, I would say.
I will leave aside my personal preferences…
Just a side-note, one (perhaps) interesting experience. For some time I used to work at an old castle (very old indeed, almost 1000 years old, actually
– no kidding: http://www.zamky-hrady.cz/2/bitov-e.htm)… and one of my (many and varied) responsibilities was to go through almost each and every part of the castle at the end of the day, checking and securing everything before “handing the castle over” to the security service guys for the night. That, of course, included handling a really large bunch of keys. 
(Yes, there was one “master key” that could un/lock many doors, but not all of them (by far) – many of the historical doors simply did not have their locks modified, and there were also security reasons for NOT having a universal access key). Many of the keys were actually historical artefacts, and also fine examples of iron-smith craft. The key to the main palace gate, for instance, was about 30cm long. 
Surely enough, this bunch of keys was quite large and heavy… but it actually felt very good to carry that around. Lots of responsibility associated, yes… a peculiar feeling of privilege, too … and, just on the side, the bunch of keys was so heavy and large that it could be probably also used as a weapon in the case of emergency. 
But, of course, this bunch had its limited use – I carried it with me only around the castle and only at certains times. Most of the keys were not allowed to leave the castle area anyway, according to the security protocol…
(oh, if you’d like to check the link, you need to remove the bracket and dots part – “)…” for it to work. Sorry. I cannot edit it in the previous, as this particular computer doesn’t communicate too well with the posting system).
Actually, back in my pre-car, juvenile delinquent days, I used to carry a big, heavy wad of keys on a heavy dog collar chain as a weapon that could be carried with impunity in the face of NJ state knife and conceled weapon laws. don’t know what half of them opened; they were just good heavy pieces of metal I had found in various drawers and cupboards at home.
Hey guys… if we didn’t have keys, we wouldn’t need pockets which would drive the price of pants down. Yippee!!!
Good for us, but it will put pocket sewers out of work and on unemployment.
Dang you bad keys!!!
yup, used to do that loads – and would discover the hole as my change bounced off my knee and rolled out of my trouser cuff. Pockets used to get smaller as I sewed across the hole.
keys are the only thing you carry in pockets???? Where do you put your book, your digital gadgets, your TOOLS? (leatherman, swiss army knife, firesteel and pocket knife). I mean, there’s just so many useful things to carry around! I have to use a separate bag (call it my purse) because many of the clothes I get at stores just don’t include pockets. Apparently it’s wrong to spoil the line of a woman’s body with something practical like pockets because the shape of our bodies is more important than comfort, preparedness, convenience, or even our health. Curiously enough, the fewer pockets an article has, the more it’s likely to cost.
You know what I wish for? A keyfob-sized garage door opener so that when I get home on wet rainy days I could reach into my pocket, press the button, and the garage door opens so I can just ride the bike right on inside.
Hey Rick!! That there might even be a subject for a cartoon — a half-width overhead door on a garage, strictly for bicycle access, either as an “in a perfect world” sort of view or as a sign of conspicuous consumption among the cycling set.
Considering garage door electronics are small enough to fit in a rear view mirror, one could cut apart a HomeLink garage door opening mirror (from a junkyard, say); program it and use it.
I have a total of 20 keys that I must always carry with me and none of them are for a car and only 2 of them are for my house.haha.
I have a massive bunch of keys half of which are for various bike locks, the other half for my house. My car key sits on it’s own on a seperate key fob.
I enjoy YM everyday, but I kind of miss the story arcs… Seems like it been heavily on one liners recently. Just a thought…
probably a winter/summer thing. it takes more time to plot out a story arc than a one-line daily, and in summer there’s much more cycling to be done. You wouldn’t want the author to give up his bike, would you?
(can’t help it, my mind seems to be trained to search for “a look from the other side” constantly)…
- more cycling, on the other hand, would mean more inspiration, and also more thinking time, at least in my case.
I have even considered mounting some notepad or something similar on my handlebars – when riding, I usually get the most and the best ideas, but, on a longer ride, as the ideas pile up, it can be difficult to bring them all home. Stopping every odd moment to note something down isn’t a good solution…