Raybo, in that location I would probably lean my bike against the wall and leave my lock stowed.

I have to agree that in many places I have been it would be hard to effectively use a mini u lock. I'd say that if I carried one I would take a cable too.

In these threads which seem to come up often, I always figured that the u lock proponents probably either toured in very different locales than I do or have not toured much.

One of the points I think cause some of the disagreement is the notion of what constitutes a small remote town. The example of Golden Colorado came up earlier in this thread. Perhaps I misunderstood, but I think it was being used as an example of a small town. I have to say that on most of my tours a town like that would definitely not be called a small town. First of all it is close to a big city and second it isn't small itself. On the TA we considered the dividing line between a small town and a large one to be whether or not it had a comma in the population. I might stretch that a bit to maybe include a town of 1,200, but for sure a town of 10,000 is not a small town in the context of rural touring. Also if it is within 10 miles of a big town it probably should be treated like it is in a big town.