I am lucky enough to have bike rack right by the front door of the police department, so I am covered for theft by any but the most brazen. For protection from the weather, I cover up the handlebars, the seat, and the milk crate on the back with plastic bags. It makes me look like a fussy dork, but the nice thing about being over 55 is that...I don't care.

I have hear of, but not tried, two ideas for security. One is to get two locks of different types, like a cable and a U lock, to make stealing the bike more work than it's worth. The other is to cover the bike with reflective tape, bumper stickers, etc, to "dorkify" it and make undesireable to thieves. That second idea would be variant of one of the above ideas, to get a really nice used bike and conceal its niceness somehow. Of course that doesn't cure the nagging worry you always would have that somebody MIGHT steal it because it's not parked in a safe place. For any given item, there probably is always someone out there who would steal it.