I’ve had two bikes stolen in my life. Both were locked, one outside of my dorm when I was a freshman at the University of Colorado, and another to a fence just outside of a summer sublet in a quiet Boulder neighborhood last year.

I also once locked a bike to my front porch and lost the key. It stayed there, chained to the wooden railings by the porch swing, for the better part of two years—even after I’d moved away—until one of my best friends went by with a chainsaw, freed it, replaced the rusty gears and gave it back to me as a graduation present.

So how hard is it to steal a bike? Would anyone question you if you took a bolt cutter to a bike lock in a public place? If you saw someone doing that, would you say something?