I commute about 32 miles round trip, three days a week.

Most of that ride is on a levee-top towpath alongside the Savannah River... think century-old trees draped with Spanish Moss, numerous sightings of deer, river otter, egrets & cranes, bats, and rattlesnakes. Often, at 6:00am, I am the only human out there, and I have this nice wide, flat, well groomed dirt road all to myself. Evenings, I must pick my way around the joggers and dog-walkers, but there's plenty of room.

The paved portion of my ride starts with a few miles of rural two lane blacktop... a great pre-dawn test of one's survival skills, and on the other end of the levee ride, a few miles of decaying urban city streets, featuring the popular bus swerve-around and homeless wino bunny-hop.

I've tried several bikes on this ride, and wrecked two beyond salvage. Presently, I'm using a ten year old Trek 7900 alloy framed hybrid, with Zefal mudguards and Cateye lights. This particular bike, which was dubbed "rainbike" years ago, has a total of 62,000 miles on it, to date... and it certainly looks it.