Errand bike thread....

[xeney]

I guess this is somewhere between an errand and a commute: my husband and I both work at home, but it is hard to get anything done with the baby in the house even though there are two of us and we can trade off. So I am working in coffee houses every other day, with my laptop.

The downside to this is that instead of simply choosing my coffee house by the quality of the coffee and the strength of the free wireless, I have to also consider the quality of the bike rack! There are two great places in my neighborhood with wireless, but man, both of them have crappy bike racks. I don't want to wind up at Starbucks (not local, coffee not as good, have to pay for the wireless) but their bike rack is a lot sturdier.

I will probably say something to the management. In the meantime, I chose the one that gets the most bike traffic, on the theory that there are nicer bikes than mine to steal.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Wow Xeney, that's an interesting situation you are in!
I see you are in an urban area with probably plenty of bike stealing to worry about going on.
What kind of lock(s) do you put on your bike? I would think that even a fairly crummy bike rack would be ok if a thief couldn't hack through your lock and would have to take the whole bike rack along with your bike. What is that arrangement for you?

My husband and I work at home too. Our children are grown and have flown the coop, though.
Where I live (rural, small town) bikes don't get stolen too often, but it does happen sometimes, and according to our local police, cable locks are occasionally cut with bolt cutters. So I wound up getting a very heavy duty U-lock and heavy cable combo. I just don't want to lose my bike to some slimy thief.

In my area, there are NO bike racks (well except one at the school and one at the library, that's it. No racks at all on Main Street or at the supermarket, bank, PO, cafe, drugstore.... So I have had to get a bit creative about locking my bike to sign poles, railings, benches, trees, stair banisters, etc.
It's funny really, because now wherever I go I find my eye automatically scanning the surroundings for suitable "bike anchors"....even when I'm not on my bike!

So I guess my question to you is- can you lock your bike to perhaps a parking sign or bench or tree instead...and do you have reliable locks?
What makes some of those racks you describe unsuitable?

[xeney]

I use a Kryptonite combination U-lock. It's pretty good. My favorite coffee house, however, has an "arty" rack that is very pretty, but made of that thin rusty-looking metal ... I think you could cut through it with actual scissors, and certainly you could just throw the whole rack in the back of a truck. There are street posts (no parking signs) but they are usually already occupied by other bikes, and I don't want to carry a cable big enough to go around a tree. I'm not too worried about theft at that spot, really, but the rack is so flimsy that my pink mixte (which does not balance well due to the rear baskets) probably wouldn't even stand up without falling over. It's just a horrible rack to use at all, never mind the flimsy factor!

The coffee house where I am working today is probably fine. Lots of bikes, lots of sidewalk food traffic. The racks are very old fashioned and flimsy, but really their biggest problem is that they are usually fully occupied so there is not much room.

The city recently removed most of the parking meters here and replaced them with two-bike bike racks, but they are only on the busier streets (side streets didn't have parking meters to begin with). That is what makes the Starbucks, etc., better for bike parking.

Aren't they cute, though?