I bought a used mountain bike ('99 Kona Muni Mula) this weekend to use for short track racing and various off-road fun. I didn't get a chance to ride it this weekend, so I rode it into work today. This bike has a pretty soft suspension fork and knobby tires. I was able to get it off road for about two miles by cutting through the "park" under some power lines and the fairgrounds parking area, but I still had 8 miles of pavement.

Off road, this bike is a lot of fun to ride, even on something as lame as the grass and dirt under the power lines, but on pavement (as expected) it was brutal in comparison to my CX bike with slick tires. It made me wonder. I see mountain bikes with suspension and knobby tires at work fairly often. Do people really voluntarily work that hard?

My actual question: if you ride a bike like this to work, what kind of surfaces are you riding on most of the way?