The Bell Ballistic 400 is a great inexpensive keyed bicycle lock!

I have just taken to cycling again after about a 12 year hiatus. I have always enjoyed cycling, when I was young it was a necessary mode of transportation as my family only owned one "family" car, a 1976 light-blue Pontiac Ventura 4-door. During the summer we were lucky, mom got the car on Wednesdays so she could take us to music lessons and the pool!

I equipped my first ten speed, which I built from salvaged parts, with a rack that mounted above the rear wheel, and the largest trunk bag I could find on the market at the time, which attached to tabs on the seat and sat on the rack. As a teen I was an avid electronic hobbyist and made many road trips on my bike to our local Radio Shack located in the strip mall. All of my purchases were put in my truck bag for safe keeping on my trip home.

My bicycle truck bag was also used to hold printed circuit boards I salvaged from televisions being thrown out at a local TV Repair shop. A lot of good resistors and capacitors on a TV printed circuit board, all you had to do was de-solder them!

My bike had been sitting in a crevice under the stairs since we moved into our house 12 years ago. Upon initial examination, it still looked in pretty good shape albeit covered in spiderwebs. There was no rust on the chain and rims, and the tires did not have any age cracks. I attribute its good condition in that our furnace room has a pretty low humidity due the heat of the boiler for six months out of the year. I inflated the tires, gave the bike a good bath, and was ready to go!

At first I just went up and down the street in front of our house testing the brakes and the gears. My 7 year old daughter was watching and she yelled "Dad, where's your helmet?" she then graced me with the virtues of wearing a bicycle helmet and said "You don't ride your motorcycle without a helmet, do you?"

Point taken, it never occurred to me to wear a bicycle helmet as I spent most of my life riding bicycles sans helmet!

After cycling for about a week just around our neighborhood I got bold and decided to bike to our local park which is about three miles away. There were several hills to negotiate between my house and the park but I felt up to the challenge. The park has a plethora of mountain bike trails through some really cool wetlands so I knew it would be worth the struggle. I made it to the park without being completely out of breath and I was about to take a selfie in the park to prove to wifey that I made it when my stomach made this unbelievably loud groan. I knew I had to seek a bathroom soon. The park does have facilities but I didn't have a bicycle lock so I didn't know if my bike would be there when I returned. I mustered up the courage and biked at speeds I did not think were capable and made it home just in time to drop the bike in the lawn and reach the bathroom. Lesson learned, don't leave home without a bike lock!

I needed a trusty bicycle lock, but didn't want to spend a lot of money. As a kid I had combination chain lock but always was afraid that I would forget the combination while on a ride so I used to write it down and affix it to the underside of the seat, not too secure!

After doing some research on Amazon, I settled on the Bell Ballistic 400 Key Cable Lock. The cable is 6ft long made of 8mm stranded steel cable covered in a plastic protective coating. The lock is also covered in plastic, presumably for corrosion resistance, and not to chip the paint on your bike. The key cable lock comes with two keys so I would recommend putting the second one in a safe place! If ,however, you loose both keys Bell has a replacement program. I believe you need to record the number on the keys BEFORE the key loss for the program to work.

The Bell Ballistic 400 Key Cable Lock retails for about $13 dollars on Amazon and will be sent to you second day if you are subscribed to Amazon Prime.

The Bell Ballistic 400 Key Cable Lock is a great bicycle lock for the price. Would I use this bicycle chain to secure my $3000 Marin Verona Elite, probably not. It is the perfect bike chain to secure my over decade old Pacific Quasar bike!