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.

Welcome to the HHCMF! We are an amazing group dedicated to eradicating the world of its overpopulation of donuts. They're a naturally occurring fuel source that we can happily indulge in w/o fear of gaining weight. This phenomenon makes us naturally more desirable by the opposite sex so feel free to indulge in that too. Have fun stay outta the door zone.

Welcome to the club!

Irregardless of whether you get a rack or not, cotton is annoying for any activity that involves sweating. Wool or polyester is the way to go. You would be quite a bit more comfortable. Plus, polyester dries out in no time flat. Visit target or walmart to find cheap polyester shirts. Wool can be had cheaply at thrift stores.

welcome again

+1

Sounds like you're well on your way! Keep up the good work!

If you keep riding through the winter, you will have less assy by spring ;-)

Welcome! Fuel yourself and rest yourself, you seem to have the swing of things well under control, though. Routes will change as well as your cycling skill and comfort on the streets increases.

May want to keep the bike as-is and maybe look into a different bike (off eBay/Craigslist) after you've had a few months to assess what it is you really want/need (ie, maybe a roadbike with rack lugs for example)

Congrats, and keep it up

Nice!

Experiment with your route, and you'll probably find something that works.. I think you should aboslutely ride your bike for a while before you upgrade anything on it(other than the rack, get one of those). You very well may find that you want a more roadish bike.

Jer

If he keeps riding through winter, he'll have a cool single speed by spring.

Congrats on your first commute. DataJunkie is spot on recommending wool or poly shirts. Wet cotton during cold months can be dangerous to your health. You'll hammer out the best route soon enough & your commutes will be much more enjoyable.

"Irregardless" is not actually a word. Technically, it's a double negative.

I'm already pretty sure I want something more roadish, but I'd like to upgrade this one as well. No sense in letting a nice lugged hardtail frame go to waste with trashy parts. I can be a 2-bike man.

And it's true, irregardless is not a word. This reminds me of a joke. So this guy is in Miami, teaching English to a classroom of immigrants. He says, "In English we avoid using two negative statements one after the other. That is a grammatical error called a double-negative, can actually be interpreted as a positive statement. However, there is no such thing as a double-positive in English. Does everybody understand?" And a guy in the back of the classroom says, "Yeah, sure."

cotton kills. x-nay on the ottonkay.

Congrats on the commute!

Your point being what exactly? I am not an engrish major nor does your asininity mean anything to me.

Keep that up and I am switching to a combo of geek speak and text messaging lingo.
Or I will bury you in programming related mumbo jumbo.

I think your ride home via Adams, Wells, Lincoln, Damen will be a lot better. Especially on Wells and Lincoln, it is not difficult to outpace cars. You don't even have to go 20mph to do that. It puts a big smile on my face everyday. The only hard part may be Adams. There are tons of CTA bus routes heading West on that street. Take a look at https://www.cityofchicago.org/Transpo...ap/keymap.html for an on-line bike map. It may help you avoid Adams.

Since you are on Michigan, another suggestion is to head East to lake Michigan and then take the bikepath north all the way to Lawrence or thereabouts. It may add a mile to your commute, but this time of year it is not busy at all and quite relaxing.

It's my typical commute. Into downtown using the bikepath, going North using Wells, Lincoln, Southport, and Clark.

Have fun commuting in Chicago!
Duppie

Awesome. You've probably learned more on your first commute then some folks will learn in a year (or in my case, several years!).

I wasn't being an ass. No reason to get touchy. I was just letting you know.
Maybe I should have put a smily face at the end of my post.

Commute times reduce rapidly over the fiorst week or so as you figure out the best route and the best ways through your route. It also becomes safer when you know all the potholes and hazards leaving more brain capacity for the unexected. (always expect the unexpected).
Your bike looks fine for the job, consider adding full-length bolt-on fenders and rear rack. When you become more confident, some toe clips will add some efficiency for very little outlay.

https://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irregardless <- I just couldn't resist.

I'm not being touchy. Welcome to my sense of humor.

What's N Clark St like for commuting? Goes roughly in your direction, looks wide and not too-trafficky. But it does seem to have a lot of lights.

Think you'll definitely enjoy the ride down Lincoln more than Elston. Lincoln is much more enjoyable as there are actual buildings and stuff around you. I really enjoy the commute that way. Anyway, just a couple words of advice for cruising down Lincoln:

1) Pay big time attention when going by the couple Starbucks along the way. A coffeshop increases the chance of being doored by a factor of ten.

2) If you cut down Wells, be real careful by Walter Payton school. Tons of clueless soccer moms in Range Rovers, on their cell phones, drinking coffee. The are evil. They want to hit you. They want to door you.

3) If you're willing to cut a bit west on the commute home, Halsted/Clybourn/Southport (bike lane on Southport) has a lot less traffic than Lincoln. Lincoln traffic during the evening is worse than the morning.

Clark often resembles a sardine can. I imagine it would be a pretty frustrating biking street.

I used to live on Southport. Nice street for biking, but so is Lincoln. We'll see. I'll keep my eyes peeled for coffee drinkers and soccer moms.

Outstanding! Thanks for posting your impressions and I'm glad it worked out for you, irregardless of assy drivetrains and all. I doubly impressed that you're doing this as a brand new cyclist.

RFM

Maybe he just misunderestimated your sense of humor