Originally Posted by
RabidUnicorn
That could work, but if I wanted to go anywhere else, I'd need to carry the locks there.
In all seriousness I had the same dilemma when I got my first road bike. It wasn’t all the expensive but I used it for our club rides and I would have been devastated to lose it. So I bought a MTB at a garage sale and used it for hardware runs and quick stops at the grocery store. Still I wanted something a bit nicer for coffee runs on the weekends and I wasn’t going to bring my road bike anywhere I would be out of sight of the bike. If I did take the road bike it was somewhere that I would be sitting next to it or I could bring it inside. I bought a flat bar road bike, a Masi Cafe Solo. Nice bike but not quite as fast or nice as my road bike. Still I didn’t like putting five pounds of locks on the thing so I would haul out the MTB anyway.
I ended up buying a new frame and building a new road bike. I thought I could sell my Masi and upgrade my old road bike for coffee shop runs. Still I think my old road bike is too tempting to ride to Lowes or Home depot and who wants to carry all those locks on a road bike? So I think the answer is keep you nice bike, whatever it might be, for rides where it will not be out of your sight and carry a light lock. The cruise the garage sales and get a cheap bike to commute or run errands on. That is the heart of the N+1 Rule.