Well, I consider myself a commuter now. I made it a week. I'm looking forward to continuing this. =)

I read this whole thread a few times before I started, and now I think I have two things to add.


1.) FIT, FIT, FIT!

I don't mean you need to go pay your LBS $200 to tell you where your bars should be (although it's probably not a BAD idea, mind you) but make sure your saddle is in the right place, and you're comfortable riding. I didn't for the first few days, and then I fixed it. OMG what a difference.

I guess if you're a cyclist who's just starting to commute, this is a no brainer, but for people like me who got a bike TO commute, well, it was amazing the difference.

and

2.) Timing is everything.

I didn't like how crowded the train was, so I tried taking off an hour earlier to catch the previous train. Before 7, where I live, the streets are (reletivley speaking) empty. My commute went from being a battle zone where the winner stays alive, to a nice pleasure ride where I saw maybe 20 cars passing me in my lane the whole way, on major arteries.

So take some time to play around with your schedule, and your route might get alot nicer.

anyway, thanks again to everyone on here for helping me out. I'm really liking this and hope to actually regain some level of cardio from my commute. =)

-- James