My commute to school is 20 km (one-way; 40 km RT), consisting of about 1 km residential, 7 km suburban, 4 km residential/light commercial, and 8 km industrial/commercial. It's pretty level for the most part, save a "valley" and an underpass. Once I get into the latter 12 km (res/light comm, comm/indust), the roads are absolutely piss poor, which makes me thankful I have a mountain bike. I ride a 2001 CCM Heat MTB with fat uber-knobby tyres.
On a good day (no 30-40 km/h winds facing me) I can sustain about 35-38 km/h. Facing those winds, my speed drops to about 27-30 km/h. Before I used to be all about the large gears and low rotation, a la Ullrich. I've definitely changed, and now pedal at quite a fast cadence. I used to primarily use 6th gear, but that has dropped to 4th (facing wind) or 5th/6th (not facing wind). Despite that, my speed is quite a bit faster and my legs recover better. My HR is also higher, but it feels good. (Bike has a 7spd cassette).
I wear looser biking shorts and a t-shirt, along with my backpack, helmet with mirror, glassess (or sunglasses, depends), bike gloves, and stiffer shoes. I have front and rear blinkies that I use on overcast days, or at night. I ride on the road for 19 of the 20 kms, where there's 1 km of bikepath that links the suburb to the main part of the city. I usually ride 15-60 cm from the curb, though if I'm riding in the parking lane, I'll ride in the middle as there usually isn't anyone behind me, and I have to change lanes to pass parked cars. I make sure I'm out of the door range. I always, always, always stop for red lights. It's a pain though, as they're not synchronised all that well for bikes. I stop for 85-90% of stop signs; others I roll through after I've made sure there's no one around. I follow traffic laws as I would with a car (save the odd stop sign).
Today, I raced a couple busses. I totally won. With one bus, it was a 5 km race, and I beat the bus by a few minutes. During times of congestion, it's just beautiful passing all the cars...
I enjoy seeing commuters on my route; there's a real sense of brotherhood. Even if I'm faster.
Other than commuting, I ride a bunch in the city. My preference has changed from trail biking to road biking. I still do some trail biking, but lately the weather has not been great for it. Sooo much rain...last comple times I tried going, I got totally swamped. There's a nice gravel trail that's pretty decent in the rain.
I'm saving up for a road bike (Giant OCR A1), so hopefully I'll be able to make my commute even faster! Ah, the woes of tuition...
