The part about “not wanting your bike to stand out on the rack” puts me in mind of a bit in one of William Gibson’s “Bridge Trilogy” books, where he described the ride of a professional bicycle courier: she’d gotten a bike made of some incredibly expensive, lightweight, and strong high-tech material… and then wrapped it up in duct tape, sprayed it different colors, and generally made it look like a piece of trash. It still rode like a dream but it looked like a nightmare, and the idea was that it would always be the last bike anyone would want to steal from anywhere it was locked to.
Someday when my Patreon is doing better, perhaps I will blow half a year’s rent on a really, really nice bike and do something similar to it. Hide in plain sight. Right now my bike is just a cheap $300 thing with a dented-up chainguard I haven’t bothered to get fixed.
