My Gary Fisher got stolen back in college the first week I had it up. Had it locked up to a bike stand in front of my friend's dorm, came back an hour later and it was gone without a trace. Even my Kryptonite lock was gone.
My buddy has an SV650 with him in Worcester, MA while he's doing a med school rotation. Worcester aint exactly a scenic town, and he's heard from friends that bikes get stolen all the time down there. A couple of weekends ago he was in town, so we went to Lowe's and picked up their biggest and thickest steel chain and a giant masterlock. He planned to chain the bike up to a giant pipe on the back of his apartment building..
Needless to say, a few days later he went down to leave for work and saw some bite marks on the chain from a thwarted bolt cutting attempt. That one puckered up his butt hole pretty quick. Thankfully, that chain held and the fuckers were probably just going around trying different bikes.
Here's the kicker: A few days after that, he was down at his bike cleaning off some old decal glue, and he sees this rough and gruff Hell's angel-looking Harley poster boy walking up to him. We're talking a guy with a kevlar beard and a shaggy old hound dog that was older than dirt striding alongside to boot.
The first thing my buddy thought was "Oh shit, stabbing incoming. Where's my trauma kit?"
The guy goes, "You staying in this building?"
My friend replies, "Y-Yeah, I work at the hospital up the road."
"Heard someone tried to steal your ride."
"Yeah, they weren't able to get through the chain though. I think they-"
"Don't worry, that's not going to happen again." And he just walks off.
Talk about win. 8)