Before (not after)

I generally write about places after I’ve seen them, which displays an entirely different image than I had before I left. It’s also a little boxed-up and formulaic for an entire year of adventures.

I’m going to Germany and Austria tomorrow. I’m expecting to see lots of Christmas Trees, Santa Clauses, Beer, and some sort of raw meat that my sister told me about. I’m visiting Dita (and hopefully some more of my German Family) for Christmas, in Munich. Dita is Uncle Gene’s niece; she is from my Dad’s generation. Dita is something like my second-cousin-once-removed-in-law. My dad studied abroad in Austria when he was in college, and knows the German Family pretty well. While neither Margie nor Gene is still with us, I always think of them around Christmas time. Since I can't be with my imediate family, I can't think of a better place to be on Christmas.

It will be cold, but not colder than Finland. I’m hoping for snow, but I might not get it. I’ll do some tourist activities, but I’m interested in the people who I’ll meet. Last week someone told me he tried to say “entschuldigung” to somebody in Germany. He was corrected with what he felt was a slightly irritated, guttural, throat-clearing, impossible-to-repeat pronunciation. While he was offended, I thought it was hilarious and I hope someone does that to me! I might have to spend some time in coffee shops speaking very bad German. I don’t speak any German right now, so I’ll have to memorize a few phrases before tomorrow.

Eurajoki

Minna and Mika live in a little village just outside of Rauma. We all toured around the southern west coast of Finland, ate reindeer, and reviewed my lab protocols this weekend. Minna is serious about being a good adviser (we worked hard!). She and Mika are also serious about showing me the great things in Finland!


Old town Rauma's wooden buildings are filled with a quaint hustle and bustle of Christmas shoppers and coffee shops. It's known for its colorful wooden architecture. It's now a World Heritage Site and attracts visitors from far away places.

There's a new nuclear power plant being constructed in Eurajoki. The elaborate visitors' center had a number of hands-on energy and physics demonstrations, including a magic elevator that takes you down to the spent fuel storage wells (to store the spent uranium while its radioactivity decays for 2000 years). I mean, it was imaginary, but I still felt butterflies in my stomach as we pretended to descend hundreds of meters. Even though many of exhibits were geared toward children, Minna and I still learned a lot!

Turkish Night

My housemate, Pinar, is Turkish. As it turns out the Turkish folks have really good food and are excellent dancers. She and a bunch of other Turkish organizers threw a Turkish gathering in Building B. There are four buildings, A, B, C, and D. Each building has approximately 12 stories of people inhabiting it. There is one social recreation room for all four buildings, which happens to be in Building B. None of us have living rooms. I guess whoever was responsible for the construction of this student space did not value social space as much as me, or the Turkish folks. On top of having only one social area, it's always locked. Pinar asked if we could open it last Friday night to have a cultural event because she was interested in making food, playing Turkish music, and spreading Turkish cheer throughout Mikontalo (the four building housing complex). The building manager said "NO!" There are still some things that I don't understand here.

In spite of being harshly rejected by the building manager, the Turks realized that, even though the actual rec room was closed, the corridor outside the rec room was completely available for Turkish Night festivities. And having the event in the corridor included people who would have otherwise had a Turkless evening on their way to do their laundry or play racquetball. I made an effort to recruit these passersby, partly in protest of the building manager's antisocial behavior, but partly because the corridor was kind of a fun place to have Turkish Night.

These are two of Pinar's close friends, as well as some of the main organizers and cooks for the event.

Independence Day

Students march in the student parade, sporting hats that label them as particular majors at their universities.
These are a few shots of the Independence Day President's Ball. All of the famous people in Finland come and participate. I wasn't there, but my friend Audrey used my camera to take pictures of the television while we watched it on TV.

Pikkujoulu

We are nearing the end of Pikkujoulu season. Pikkujoulu parties are preChristmas parties, often associated with an organization, like work or your soccer team. During Pikkujoulu season there are commonly very drunk people found in slightly unusual places, such as hopping onto the train in the middle of a Monday afternoon, or in the interpretation center of the nuclear power plant. "Oh, there must have been a Pikkujoulu that just finished," everyone says. And then we all act like it's normal to be drunk in these unusual places.These are the pictures of my lab's Pikkujoulu party. As you may have guessed by now, my lab is different than the rest of Finland. This is Sannamari, Sakari, and Tea presenting their new invention that they constructed from materials found in laboratories and offices around the building. I think it was a multiple input device, but I can't remember what it was inputting to. Anyway, we had a Pikkujoulu science project contest at our Pikkujoulu.
Jaakko (standing up in black) was stuck with playing Santa, an important and ubiquitously unwanted position at Pikkujoulu parties. Everyone brought a gift that was originally supposed to cost less than two euros. But then people complained that you can't actually purchase anything in Finland for less than two euros. I jokingly pointed out that you could buy a stick of gum. But someone else countered with "well, it better be a cheap stick of gum," which is almost true here. So we upped it to five euros. It was still kind of hard to get something that was not a potato or a bottle of coca-cola.But we had a lot of fun, that's for sure!

I'm a November Survivor

It’s dark, the super reflective-snow-system has melted, and it gets way worse than this! That was the problem with November. I was dramatically confused as to whether I should stay awake or go to sleep. The darkness isn’t too much worse than Seattle’s darkness, but it is detectably worse than Seattle’s darkness. The shortest day of the year will be five hours and 20 minutes long. Until a certain point in November, every-day uncertainties in my research seemed like showstoppers. Homework assignments felt like they were taking over my life. But I survived. Here’s how:

After some very intense exercises on staying positive, lots of gmail chats and Skype sessions (Thanks to all of you who participated), November turned around. I had my first sampling day this month at a farm on the outskirts of Tampere. Outi (one of my colleagues at work) and I bravely faced the embarrassment that many scientists must face. We gathered feces to test our primers.

It was gross. Even the farmers laughed at us. We laughed too. But we got our first samples! We have millions of sampling days ahead of us, but the important thing is: we got started! If it’s possible in November, it’s possible anytime!

…and: I voted in November. Thanks to Yolanda, Dan, and a support team of Environmental Health alumni and graduate students, I received my ballot and did what I (and Yolanda and Dan) could in the election. The Finns are weary and still worry about Mr. Bush. Yes, he’s still there, but congress does have a lot of power, I try to explain. I think things will improve.

Other November accomplishments and happenings:

I’m now a regular at the Finnish salsa dancing school that Outi introduced me to. I’m learning a lot of words in Finnish like up, down, around, and left, two, three, four, right, two, three, four. And now with music...

Some of those same words also fit into my engineering vocabulary. Somewhat related to salsa, or at least dance, Outi and I saw the Estonian National Ballet perform Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The performance was truly amazing. Apparently the plot of Swan Lake can change slightly from performing institution to performing institution. The director’s comments in the program emphasized the importance of allowing beauty to stand up against the wrong and the cruel, and that the past is not as important as the present. However, I thought it was a bummer that the young prince Siegfried was either dead or very morbidly distraught by his decision to escape from his real-world responsibilities and live in his beautiful, imaginary dream world, as the curtains fell and the show ended. Perhaps he could have benefited from a brief thought into either the past or the future. Oh well. It was a beautiful performance. May Prince Siegfried rest in peace… and beauty.

Audrey and Lea officially introduced me to Finnish summer cottage culture, also in November. The sauna was very very close to 100°C. For those of you who aren’t experts on the Celsius scale, that is the temperature at which water boils. In case any of you are thinking about coming to Finland, I wrote up a little sauna instruction list, so you can start out on the right foot in the Finnish sauna:

1. Go inside the very hot sauna
1. If you feel like you can’t breathe, cover your face with your hand—it’ll pass.
2. Stay there for 15-45 minutes chatting (through your hand if it’s over your face)
1. there are special conversations in the sauna that happen nowhere else
3. Leave the sauna and get cold
1. Option 1—sit outside
2. Option 2—jump in the icy lake (Summer cottages are often on lakes, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find a lake)
3. Option 3—dive into the snow (well, roll around in the snow until you’re freezing cold again. Don’t dive head first.)
4. Go back to 1 and repeat 1-3 until you’re almost unconscious (2-3 times)
1. I prefer to end on 2, but you can end on 3, if you’re into being cold.
5. Cook sausage
6. Eat sausage
7. Don’t re-enter sauna after eating: the order is important there
8. Drink beer throughout the process.

If you feel like bringing your beer inside the sauna, it’s allowed, but you’ll probably only do it once. 100°C beer isn’t good. In fact, if it’s in a can (often the case in Finland), the metal may actually burn you. Be careful.

Next week is a busy week of well water, farm, and septic sampling before heading off to Germany and Austria for the holidays. Have a wonderful break, and I’ll see you guys in the sauna!

Thankful in Helsinki

I realized a few weeks ago that I hadn’t left Tampere since I got here. Tampere is a lovely place and there’s no reason to leave… except that I’m a bit of a traveler by nature. I’m in a country with affordable trains and busses that can get me anywhere. I can even get affordable airline tickets that make travel within Europe almost mandatory. And, I was brought here by a fellowship that actually wants its recipients to travel and learn about Scandinavia. I was frightened by my stationary realization. I promptly left.

Luckily Audrey and Lea brought me to Lea’s summer cottage in Mouhijärvi, right around then. It was enough out of Tampere to remind me of the outside world. There was lots of travel talk at the cottage since Lea takes pride in her travels to 70, count ‘um, 70 countries. I ate reindeer and we roasted sausage on the fireplace! This is the local polar bear (from back when we used to have snow).

Last weekend I was very thankful to be in Helsinki eating turkey and telling stories with a collection of Finns and Americans. There’s a group of Fulbrighters there that talk about things like the role of feminism in Finnish translated English literature, complicated by the fact that the Finnish language does not specify gender, other than by context. Someone had just gotten back from a conference in Morocco, which reminded me that life isn’t always easy, but made me want to go there. Paula and I talked a lot about her dissertation topic, which was very hard for me to understand. It will include the role of imagination in the architectural experience. I learned that architechture is much more difficult than engineering. It was fun (and educational) to hang out with an architect in such a designer city like Helsinki. The city glistens with very stylish and classic designs… of all types of things, from teacups to skyscrapers, that had originated from Finnish designers.

Proof that I'm here:

If we must have security cameras, this is the way to do it!

Science, Art, and Leisure

I met with Minna on Wednesday to introduce her to my project and learn what she does in Rauma, in Western Finland (where the sea freezes and you can actually skate on it). Hopefully we'll work together. She'll probably do some advising with the microbial source tracking techniques. Minna introduced me to Audrey, another American... here in Tampere! We happened to have a lot in common, but even if we hadn't, we were both so excited to find another American that we still would have talked for at least four hours last night! Minna, Mika, Audrey and I visited the Art Museum, and many other tourist destinations around Tampere today.

These are views from the Space-Needle-equivalent in Tampere. There is also an equivalent non-enthusiasm among locals for going up Tampere's observation tower. I've heard several people brag that they've never been to top of the tower. I thought it was a nice view and it helped with my sense of direction challenges. I might have to go up again when the city is completely covered in snow. Unlike Seattle, Tampere changes quite a bit, depending on the season. The frozen lakes change into skiing and skating grounds. No more boats.



Just for the record: I never went up the Space Needle during the three years that I lived in Seattle.

Snowy November

White… HALLOWEEN!

Challenging.

IT was challenging.

Walking home from work, was challenging.

Through my eyes, it was snowing on Halloween. Nobody else saw it like that. Don’t even joke about that… orange and black, candy-eating holiday around here.

“You know, it originated from the pagan holiday to celebrate the dead, just like Día de los Muertos in Latin America. Except in the States, we don’t like to talk about dead people, so we dress up in costumes and eat candy instead.” I tried to explain, but it didn’t come out sounding very noble.

“We don’t celebrate Halloween in Finland. Some stores have decorations out, but it’s not a Finnish holiday.”

“Don’t you guys celebrate All Saints Day in Finland? It’s related.”

“Oh yeah, when is that again, was it last Saturday?”

No! It’s this coming Saturday. And I want to go to the cemetery and light candles and celebrate dead people, like a genuine Finnish person! My image of Finnish people parading themselves to the cemetary and partaking in ceremonial procedures on All Saint’s Day... was false.

In my Finnish class today, my instructor spent about 20 minutes telling us about the midsummer festival that happens in June. It sounded like a lot of fun. There are bonfires and music and everybody’s happy, and energetic. Though I realized this holiday of which she speaks is in June. We are in November. Alas, June is a long way off. I’m worried I might forget these new keskikesän juhla vocabulary words by June. I raise my hand (not necessarily culturally acceptable in Finland, in general we don’t ask questions in class).

“Isn't there another holiday coming up on Saturday? What happens on that holiday?” I was thinking I could learn some new vocabulary words that I could actually use. And maybe if I tried to bring it up in Finnish instead of in English, people would tell that they do something exciting on All Saints Day.

My Finnish instructor thinks for a moment and starts to say no, sorry, we do not have a holiday on Saturday. But then she remembers about All Saint’s Day. “Oh yeah, that holiday. We don’t really do anything. I think the stores are closed.” And then she moved on to practicing the numbers, sort of irritated that I disrupted the flow of things. §

Today is the day after Halloween and we are covered in snow. Even though I only live about three blocks from the University, I got lost on my way home yesterday. I got pretty cold, but I figured out where I was before my ears froze (that really happened to my friend Eija). Everything looks completely different when it’s covered in snow. And it’s not just covered, there’s at least a foot of snow! On Halloween!

My cousin Abby, who was born shortly after I left for Finland decided to go with a lobster costume this Halloween. That's the spirit!

No matter what they say, HAPPY ALL SAINT’S DAY on Saturday!

Footnote:
§ We practiced the numbers in Finnish class by telling each other our age. I’m so old that my partner couldn’t count that high yet. I had to teach him how to say 30.

Tampere at Night

Source Tracking is Hot!

It must have been good enough, because it convinced them to scrape 2500 euros off of wherever they could scrape it from. “But we need some sexy language,” my adviser informs me. “For scientists, this is good, but non-scientists need to know why microbial source tracking is sexy.” Huh? Sexy?

I had a meeting with my advisers on Thursday where I presented the basics of microbial source tracking (MST) and my proposed study design. It was a good idea to have this meeting because I’ve been doing A LOT of learning, A LOT of literature reviewing, and A LOT of meeting with people who know more than me on such topics as MST and molecular tools. Molecular tools are beginning to govern the environmental engineering field. But the techniques are vast and the methods are complicated. For example, you can be an expert in environmental engineering and know very little about MST.

If you don’t want to read the long winded version, I’ll skip to the punch-line. MST is hot because:

• It’s fast! It can prevent people from getting sick, or even dieing of waterborne diseases, by letting them know their water is contaminated much quicker than ever before.
• It’s informative! In addition to finding out that the water is contaminated, we may be able to find out who is responsible and how big of a risk it is.
• The technology is getting easier and quicker and will be automatable for long term monitoring in places like drinking water treatment plants or swimming beaches.
• The same protocols may be applicable from Lilongwe to Santiago, that’s one of the things I’m testing (though not those two particular locations).

If you would like to learn some new cocktail party words and some science, keep on reading.

I may have read more papers during my first month in Tampere than I read for my entire thesis. There’s nothing to show it-- no data, no concrete scientific conclusions, no eloquently crafted proposals-- unless I present what I’ve learned to someone else. Thus the adviser meeting.

Tuula is right. Microbial Source Tracking is sexy. If our drinking or swimming water is contaminated, we’ve never been able to tell who is responsible, what type of animal the contamination came from, or where we need to focus our management efforts. With microbial source tracking, this is all possible. One of the biggest challenges of living with so many people on earth is keeping human and animal waste separate from drinking water. It’s an enormous industry for lucky people who have municipalities with drinking and wastewater infrastructure. However, it’s an enormous risk for many rural areas, particularly in less developed nations, that do not have this infrastructure.

Historically, we have monitored water contamination by growing indicator organisms (E. coli, fecal coliform, Enterococci, etc.) from drinking water samples. This tells us if the water is contaminated. It does not tell us what to do about it or where the contamination came from. The options have been either to guess where the contamination came from, or to post signs warning people not to swim if contaminant levels are high. Monitoring indicator organisms is relatively easy, but takes two days (of potentially exposing swimmers to waterborne pathogens) to get the results.

The basic concept of MST is to match microbes from a polluted site to their animal or human hosts. To understand MST, you have to know that microbes are everywhere, on your hands, in your mouth, in the air, on surfaces, and most importantly all over your digestive tract. Most of them don’t cause us problems, and many of them help us. MST capitalizes on microbes to trace contamination to its source. Matching genotypic or phenotypic microbial profiles suggests a link between the origin (septic tank) and contamination site (reservoir or swimming beach). It’s important in watershed management and risk assessment. Microbial source tracking has the potential to be fast. It can also be automated for utilities, once we work out the kinks. We’ll know within a few hours if our water is contaminated and if we should contain the septic tank across the street or the upstream factory farm.

In my study on Finnish well water, I’ll be looking for either cow or human fecal contamination (or both). I’ll use Bacteroides, a type of bacteria found in human and animal digestive systems. Bacteroides is a good MST indicator because:

1. it cannot grow in the presence of oxygen (it cannot grow in the environment, only in digestive systems)
2. it is abundant in human and animal digestive tracts
3. it only grows in rumen, digestive tracts, and body cavities (not on rocks, on bugs, in the soil, etc.—if it’s in the environment, it came from something with a digestive tract)
4. its DNA varies consistently, depending on the host (animal) in which it resides

I’m using PCR to test for the presence of a DNA sequence in Bacteroides. PCR is a way of amplifying DNA sequences to concentrations that are high enough to visualize using agarose gel electrophoresis. From reading papers on other MST projects, I’ve found some regions of Bacteroides DNA that are found only in humans, and some other regions that are found only in cows. These are the regions that I will amplify.

If the cow specific regions amplify, dairy farms are a likely source. If the human regions amplify, local septic tanks are a likely source. If nothing amplifies, either the well is not contaminated or there’s some other source besides cows or humans (I’ll pick wells that do not have any other likely sources, but nothing is ever 100% certain in science).

Proud to be Tamperelainen

Guess what! I'm already tamperelainen! I was never Quiteňa, Borboneňa, or even Mexicana, after living there for months. I wasn't even always a Seattleite after living in Seattle for three years. Occasionally people in Seattle would get on my case for being a Californian and contaminating the Seattle area with my... Californianess. However, my Finnish professor told me that you become tamperelainen, immediately after you move to Tampere. For someone who's only ever truly been Californian, it's very liberating.

Chains!

We were talking about traveling to different places in Finland. Kirsi, who’s teaching me everything I need to know about molecular techniques, and her husband are planning to head to her folks' house this weekend. Her parents live in a little village, 600 km north of Tampere.

“If we’re lucky, we’ll get there by midnight on Friday,” she said.

“Yeah, but it depends on the weather too,” Katariina chimed in. She was pointing out that it might take even longer. Apparently Kirsi’s village has already had one snow storm this year, even though it’s only the beginning of October.

So, I was thinking about Kirsi, and her trip through snowy terrain and… yikes! Driving in the snow? “So will you bring chains?” I asked. You know, then if it doesn’t snow, she wouldn’t have to put them on; if it does snow, she could just pull right over to the side of the road and put them on… piece a cake.

Katariina almost died laughing. “Chains! Can you imagine!” And then she laughed a whole lot more. “We’re covered in snow for at least five months per year.”

I realized I had said something wrong. But the Southern California part of my brain couldn’t figure out what it was.

“We don’t use chains in Finland, Laura. We use snow tires here.”

Oooooh yeah, I’ve heard of snow tires before. I’ve never used them, but my friends Patrick and Jenny talked about putting them on their car one winter.

Shoot, I’ve never even used chains before. Boy, it’s gonna be an interesting winter for me.

“Chains, ha!”

Sieni Mushrooms?

It started with a conversation at lunch today. Several of us from my department eat lunch together. We talk about cultural differences, stuff that happens in Finland, UFOs, and sometimes they come up with things for me do. Anna asked if I liked orienteering... as if I were familiar with orienteering, had tried it a bunch, and then decided if I liked it or not. I do vaguely remember orienteering at Girl-scout camp when I was ten. I think it mostly involved practicing inside a lodge. Maybe the next day, after we got some experience, we were allowed to try it outdoors. It was all very slow: following directions, writing down coordinates. It was very boring.

"I've never tried it," I told her. It was almost the truth. There were six of us at the table. As it turned out, all five (other than me) had been on fairly extensive orienteering expeditions... in the actual forest. Most people didn't like it, or claimed to be bad at it.

"My sense of direction is so bad that I get lost even with a map and a compass." or "I used to like it, until I missed a whole lake and had to find my way home without it." Apparently, the Finns learn to orienteer as part of their upbringing. It seemed kind of like Americans learning to play soccer or softball. Some of us are good at it, some of us aren't, but we all know the basics.

Anna likes it. And she invited me to join her orienteering team. I didn't realize it was a competitive sport... with teams. "Do you like to run?" she asked. Run? While orienteering?

There were three of us on the 4km team (Anna, Ari, and me), and one person was her own one-man 3km team. We drove for about 30 minutes to the starting point. You see, orienteering courses have to be in a different location every week because those darn orienteerers learn their way around the forest quickly.

Ari lent me a compass. That was key. The other key was having Ari and Anna on my team. I actually have a poor sense of direction. When we first pulled into the parking lot (the starting point), I couldn't help but notice the outfits on the other competitors... oh the outfits! People really get into this. There was a variety of attire, but the hardest core people were wearing... superhero-like costumes: bright blue tights, a red shirt with a fluorescent green vest over it, and plastic leg warmers (apparently to keep their legs dry when crossing lakes!). They were dressed... like Night Captain, but brighter. We were often in the middle of the forest (away from all trails), looking at our compasses and maps, and then, out of nowhere, a brightly colored bundle of energy would come plowing through, leaping over tree stumps, flying through the air. We had to be careful to keep out of their way. The forest outside of Tampere is like the Olympic National Forest in some ways. There was about six inches of moss covering the ground and growing on trees. Running through it required agility. I only fell down once, but I had a few other close calls. Our team was of moderate competitiveness level, compared to the other teams. We ran, and we took it seriously, but once in a while someone would stop and say something like "oh hey, look at this mushroom. What kind of a mushroom is it? How to you say mushroom in English?" And then we'd start running again.

I was surprized how fun it was. You don't really notice that you're running because you're too busy looking for rocks, mounds, valleys, and other hints on the map. It was a good way to see the forest... as long we you didn't mind the periodic superheros leaping by. I heard that we had it easy this week. Sometime you have to climb trees and cross rivers!

We finished the 4km course in one hour, nine minutes, and 55 seconds. It was an all-time record for me! I'm totally doing it every week!

Tampere!

This is International Student Housing, where I live. It's a fairly modular building (inside and out), and it's concrete blockish nature takes some adjusting at first. The pink stripes across the front crack me up! Finland is not afraid of the color pink!

Tampere! It's Finland's third largest city, and its 200,000 inhabitants feel that they live in the city (not a suburban town, but an honest city). People continually tell me about the cultural differences between Finnish cities and rural areas. Once I asked some co-workers how to say "excuse me," in Finnish. One of them asked if I wanted to say it in the country or in the city.

"In the country you can just bump into somebody and then keep on walking. You don't need to say excuse me." Then he chuckled, and everyone else argued with him.

"Why do you always say things like that? I always say excuse me if I bump into someone."

So it might be debatable, but most people tend to agree that city folk are more outgoing. Though it seems small to me, Tampere has a central downtown area with tall buildings, theatres, clubs, two universities, lots of shops, a soccer team, and a famous ice hockey hall. It even has a Fringe Festival in November, regularly scheduled Finnish music shows, and it's (ironically) a bit of an afro-cuban salsa dancing hub. Compared to my hometown (of 300,000 people that barely makes the U.S. map), there's a lot to do in Tampere.

I'm working on a well water contamination project at the Tampere University of Technology (TUT). My adviser and one other student have been characterizing the groundwater flow, and measuring chemical and microbial indicators of contamination from surrounding farms and septic tanks for the past year. I've officially joined the project, and I'm planning to use microbial source tracking methods to show the a link between the source of the contaminants and the wells. My adviser, the faculty in my institute, and the other students and researchers have been incredibly supportive both academically and in getting me moved in. People have lent me curtains, blankets, dishes, a bike, and much good advice on getting started as a student at TUT and one of the 200,000 residents of Tampere.

So, even though I accidentally erased my hard drive installing Windows XP last night, I feel pretty settled into my apartment with (post Windows XP installation) functioning Internet access, curtains, bed sheets, dishes... avocado green vinyl flooring-- everything I need.



This is the bike that one of my co-workers has let me borrow for the year. I can't wait to cruise around the endless bike trails between Tampere and Hervanta. There's only one gear working right now, but one gear is all I really need.



These are the bikes of the people that live in my building. I noticed the nice shelter to protect them from the weather, but what's even more noticeable is that many of these bikes have no locks!