I commuted about 8 or 9 miles in the city (from Damen & Argyle to Michigan & Adams, for those from Chicago) on my early-90's lugged steel Schwinn MTB with dreadful stock Shimano 200GS drivetrain and 1.75" semi-slicks. I made a similar trip a few weeks ago as a dry run, but not during rush hour. Here are my impressions after my first real commute, in convenient bullet points.

•Total travel time, from the moment I walked out the door of my apartment to the moment I opened the door to my office, was about an hour and 2 or 3 minutes. I made very slightly worse time than I do on the CTA. This could be improved with a better route.

•Whoever told me Elston was a nice route going south to downtown was wrong. Crappy pavement, every single intersection is a 6-way, and hills. There aren't supposed to be hills on a Chicago commute. There are hills on Elston.

•Heading east through downtown on Jackson sucks big time.

•Straight bike lanes to the right of right-turn-only car lanes are a bunch of bullsheeit.

•My left wrist hurts. A dull soreness. I think my riding posture must be all out of whack.

•I sweated through my shirt (95% cotton/5% spandex) almost completely. Good thing I brought a spare.

•I was wearing a flannel, and a backpack. I sweated through the flannel on my back. I should probably just get a rack so this doesn't happen again.

•I'm a much more comfortable biker than I was a few weeks ago when I posted a thread on here saying I basically never learned how to ride a bike and hadn't been on one since I was 10.

•My metabolism is fired up and I have lots of energy, but I also want to go to sleep.

Next steps in my biking life: 1. Buy some cheap leather gloves after work. 2. Ride home via Adams>Wells>Lincoln>Damen. 3. Take the path tomorrow morning and see how much faster that is. 4. Sometime in the next several weeks, get a rack. 5. Next spring, replace my whole drivetrain with something less assy.

Cheers.