Istanbul Tea said, "I know that someday I'll be able to ride longer and in less pain but I sure would like to know when...
right now I would love to be able to pedal and just enjoy the houses, buildings and scenary that I pass by but I find when I try to do that it's just a feeble attempt at trying to cover up how much discomfort I feel as a result of how badly I let myself go over the years.
When will my muscles stop screaming at me?"
Istanbul, my hat is off to you. Ya got guts. But I don't think as many people are
snickering under their breath as you think. If they are, they're just shallow idiots anyway, so don't pay 'em no mind. I see heavy people on bikes all the time, and I admire them. So many others, thick and thin, have just given up, and will wither into vegetables. But not you. I can sense your desire and commitment.
You may not like to hear this (about them burning legs), but mine always burn for the first few miles, till I warm up. Then, for me anyway, the burn seems to change into a more pleasurable burn, more like a "pump". A pump that I now crave all day long.
There's also tons of other forms of excercise you can do to keep your mind interested. I also lift weights and spend thirty minutes a day beating on a punching bag. Actually I don't even have a punching bag. I use a boat cushion wrapped around a small tree in the woods behind my house. I kick it and punch it till I drop. Then I do it again. Then there's the most brutal of all excercises, the squats. No doubt about it, squats suck. But they also happen to be the most effective excercise there is for increasing one's metabolism. Start off with just an empty bar on your shoulders, or no bar at all. Just hang onto a post or something while your muscles learn the movement. Do as many reps as you can. When you can do fifteen or twenty, put a little weight on the bar, to get your max reps back down to eight or ten.
When I was a kid, I had a martial arts instructor that made us "duck walk" back and forth across the dojo. He also made us do that Russian dance, where you're squatting down and extending one leg at a time, back and forth. That was brutal, but it worked great. We totally dominated every tournament we went to.
The reason I bring that up is because, I find that I lose weight much faster, doing repeated max burn workouts than I do just pedaling a bike for hours at a time. I know, they say that's the best way to burn fat, but for me, a max burn workout seems to burn fat all day long, rain or shine.
You can do this. Good luck, and just keep PUSHING!