Hi Everybody,

This is my first post here, but I have been lurking in the background for several months. This forum is great and thanks to everyone that has posted their commuting experiences. This has really got me pumped and today made my 2nd ride into work. This is actually my first ride into work at normal start time. So I had to be up by 4:30am to get on the road by 5am to make it to work before 6 am.

I ride a Giant OCR2 that I bought a couple of years ago. The ride is 9.8 miles to work, but will be 15 miles on the way back. The reason is that my first ride I did, I rode back the same way and the big trucks, dump trucks, and traffic was not to my liking. So I am going to take a different route home.

Again this forum is great to build up confidence. I started back riding in January and kept pressing on. Still don't have a lot of miles built up, but the riding is getting easier. One of the reasons for getting back on the bike was to cut weight. I finally hit the 200 mark and decided that I better do something quick. I'm now down to 190. So not bad for a few months of riding, and just turned 47 last week.

Thanks again to all of you.

ty