I never had to deal with the "do I drive or do I ride" issue. What I can say is it took only a couple of weeks before the novelty of cycling to work wore off and it felt normal.

Challenges, however, never seem to go away. At first it was finding better routes, adding hills, adding miles. My direct route is only two miles. These days, in good conditions, three of my four workdays I add up to 18 miles to each direction. Adding speed is the current challenge.

Others are poor weather, night commutes, and days where I just don't feel up to snuff. I tried cycling through the winter, and that brought its own set of challenges. Turns out that, at the very worst I don't mind it, and most days it's pretty good. Every day brings that "I did it!" sense of satisfaction.

The getting in shape aspect was something I really had to work on. My goal was simple--I wanted my commutes to become the easiest rides of my week. In order to do that, I had to do training rides. It's amazing how quickly those rides helped my commutes, but also how quickly they became my favorites.

This was especially true in the early months when a little bit of training went a long way in improvements.

Grocery runs were my other challenge and training rides. There's a short steep hill, which I had to power up fully loaded with foodstuffs. At the top of the hill, if you can believe it, is an underpass, so I'd lose all the altitude I gained, and have to climb back up. In the early months I'd be soaked and wobbly by the stoplight at the top of the underpass. These days it's an easy spin in the middle ring.