I've been commuting via bike ever since I started my job about 3 months ago. I live in Midtown (near the Fox Theater) and work downtown near Woodruff park. The total distance is about 2 miles.

I mostly stick to one-way streets (Courtland/Juniper for going to work) and ride in the street. When I first started, I tried to ride as close to the curb as possible, but soon realized this only served to encourage people to attempt to squeeze around/pass me without changing lanes. I ride at a fairly decent speed, and since my commute is mostly on one-way streets, there are plenty of other available lanes for people to use if they need to pass me.

Part of my commute goes through a somewhat rough neighborhood; my only negative experience so far was when some wanna-be thug decided he wanted to "try" me by stepping out into the street in front of me even after I verbally warned him of my approach (he was staring directly at me as he did this). He ended up laying on the pavement and I was still mounted and upright. I'm not really sure what the proper way to handle the situation was, but I stopped to apologize. After he threatened to "beat my ass" a couple of times, I managed to chill him out and we parted ways. I've since been advised by friends elsewhere that such bike vs. pedestrian encounters follow a code of "street justice", and since he was clearly in the wrong and ended up on the pavement, no further discussion was necessary. I'm not quite experienced enough to offer my own suggestion on that topic, so I'll just say try not to run into overly aggressive pedestrians in questionable neighborhoods.

The commute itself is pretty nice, though be prepared to do a lot of shifting to adjust for the extremely hilly terrain. It took me a little while to figure out what the best routes were so that I could spend most of my time riding downhill rather than uphill.