Return of the Indonesian Bike Rack

(Yes, that was a horrible play on Star Wars in the title. I'm on a ton of cold medicine right now, leave me alone.)

And now, ladies and gentlemen - the last post in the Indonesia bike rack tour de force.

Yes, this IS the meanest bike rack you've ever seen. It's kind of like normal Indonesian bike rack decided to make like Bruce Banner, get exposed to gamma rays and then, when it got angry, become a ridiculously large, spiky and dangerous version of its normal self.

I mean, I'd be scared to even try and chain a bicycle to this thing for fear if it biting me or crushing my bike to smithereens. Yikes.

Okay, so the first photo doesn't really do it much justice, but I promise you, this isht is HUGE. Next photo please:

Yeah. Check this beast out! It's not really even corralling or blocking anything but a few parking spots - nothing the little cone below couldn't do - but if you even had second thoughts about hopping out of the Civic and moving the cone, forget it, the mega-gigantic bike rack is there to give you the smack-down.

(I confess to attempting to move this thing solo - but I got laughed at by no less than three or four guards. I'm no Wonder Woman.)

I'm throwing in a bonus photo of I. Grunfeld, who I helped out on an ungodly midnight site build. This is the bike rack as owned by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta - as it was around 3 a.m. when I took this photo, I forgot to take shots of the accompanying but mismatching bike rack, which only accomplishes the feeling of variety here in Indonesia.

(There's a horrible "variety is the spice of life" joke to be made here, but I think I've already made it in a previous post and am too lazy to reference myself.)

For having bike rack that would intimidate the Hulk but is in a land where the average height of its citizens hovers around 5'2" - FOUR bicycles out of four.

Indonesian bike rack, part 2

Now we move on to the increasingly more, ah, secure versions of bike rack in the city of Jakarta, Indonesia.

You can see they've moved past the innocuous red-and-white-striped variety, and now manufacture bike rack in the colors of a bumblebee: black and yellow, which already say "danger! Stay away!"

And it's even got the signature bee sting in the form of spikes on not only the top of the barricade, but also the bottom, rendering the actual racking of bikes impossible.

Confusing, yes, but goes to show that this particular bike rack was meant for barricade, not for racking anything mobile. Its the equivalent of trying to park your car in a spot that has tire spikes pointing straight out.

Not sure what the hell this bike rack is actually protecting right now, other than standing guard at probably the nicest mall in all of Indonesia (we're bourgeois like that), but I'm not going to debate its current function.

That said, if I were in a pushy crowd and trying to escape, I'd definitely think twice about climbing over this rack for fear of puncturing myself. I mean, this is some mean bike rack (that can't actually rack bikes).

Then again, wait until you see the ultimate in Indonesian security...stay tuned!

For a gripping three-part post about...bike rack, THREE bicycles out of four. One for each post. Duh.