I dont have them yet but I plan to pick some up because I have been told my many people that it really makes a difference. The bike store guy keeps trying to sell me a road bike. He says it will greatly improve ride quality and speed but right now in my situation it seems really irresponsible to drop $800.00 on a decent bike (even though I would put it to good use and get a return on my investment). I have been scanning Craigslist but it's difficult to judge what is decent or not because most of the sellers seem like they dont even know much about the bikes they are selling! So I'll keep my trusty MTB and mod it to work for me. Next purchase: new tires for sure.

I use a road bike but I think it's smart to keep your MTB for awhile at least. After commuting for a year or so you'll have a better idea of what you'd like to change if anything.

+1 better to get what you want when you have the experience to actually know what you want.

My commuting started with a mtb for 5 years and then switched to a commuter style bike. The best part of a commuter bike is getting your head up so you can increase awareness.

The one item that will kill your interest in commuting are flats. So the first/only required place to spend money is on tires that can handle your route without flats. I mean zero flats. one a year is one too many.

Plenty of threads on this site describing the best tire / tube solution but ultimately your location / ride will determine the proper tire setup. Your local LBS, unless they are awesome at supporting commuters, may not have the knowledge to suggest the correct tire / tube setup.

Personally, on my mtb, I only found one tire that I could trust and that was the Specialized crossroads armadillo. - you have to be care full and buy the armadillo version. They are expensive but last in my experience up to 10,000 miles so they pay off in the long run. I only holed once with those tires - a 2 inch nail that pierced the sidewall. Its not a slick so you can use them on trail and road. (My commute with them was 70% trail 30% road but regulary rode on road and they dont give you the hum like a knobby tire. Ive also taken that bike with those tires on 100 mile rides on all road)

Its a fast tire and had no problem nearly matching my road bike speeds.

Commuting is complicated if you look at all the details involved and what it takes to solve them. But this is true of everything.

In real life, it's a slow refining process. If you do a dry run on the weekend, you know what you need to change immediately. Eventually, you'll know what to wear on each type of weather day, and you'll be placing everything in the right place in your home so you're ready to leave whenever you need to. You can take months to refine your gear and your process, and you can have a disaster-free commute every day from the first day.

Yeah, despite all these hot tips, you'll probably have no appreciation for what todo with them until you get more experience and if you try to follow 7 pages of tips from the beginning you'll be in a straight jacket because after all that effort **** still goes wrong.

Well put, electrik. This is like other things which matter a lot, like having your first baby.

I was a long time recreational rider before I decided to park my car and start commuting full time... since I already rode a lot and commuted a fair bit it was not hard to jump right into 5-6 day a week commutes and treated it just like I would long distance riding and touring and had most of the kit I needed.

Since I have always worked on my own bikes the issue of repairing things on the road was not there either.

I now live a car free life and my bikes take me everywhere and riding 80 km for lunch does not seem unusual but it is still something you build up to and as you ride more and put in the miles you will adapt yourself and your bike to optimize your experience.

Relax, it's only a bike ride.

Do you have any other bike shops easily available? The way I picked the bike shop I use is that when I started riding again it was the only one that asked what I wanted instead of telling me what I needed.

Today, I was humbled. I have a hundred years of riding bike in bad weather, but today, the weather beat me. I attached my trailer and headed out for the pharmacy. It was cold and rainy. The rain made my head cold, and I discovered that my jacket is no longer waterproof. Rather than proceeding to my next stop, the supermarket, I went home and took my car.

Tomorrow I will waterproof my jacket and cover my helmet with tape, which I'll remove in the spring.