This is a question about bike locking.

Suppose you have a bike that is nice enough but not very valuable. Maybe worth $300-400 if sold legitimately on Craigslist. In this case we're talking a 30 year old road bike with nice vintage components. It's not a $3000 carbon bike or anything like that. But you are going to park that bike in the high school racks all the (school) day, every (school) day.

What level of locking do you think is required?

Part of me thinks a medium grade U lock and locking skewers is plenty. Reasoning is, casual thieves (meth heads, tweakers, joyriders) won't bother with a U locked bike, any U lock, they'll just move on. There are plenty of cable locked bikes. And the pro thieves are looking for more valuable bikes to use their grinders on.

Part of me thinks a high grade U lock AND a heavy chain is needed. Reasoning is, the bike will be there every day so eventually some pro will decide he wants it, maybe just a little score on a slow day when no $3000 bikes are ripe. Only chance to dissuade him is to force him to make four cuts through the thickest shackles available.

What do you think? I've read that the vast majority of stolen bikes in Portland were cable locked or stolen from garages or cars. That is what got me thinking about what locks to supply my son with.