TILFT #1 - Commuting by Bike

The reason that I'm okay with the fact that I'm not going to be driving a car next year is because of the fact that I will be doing most of my commuting by bike instead. I've only ever owned one road bike in my life and I bought it the summer of 2006 before my 5th year at uni. I originally got it just to commute around Pittsburgh. It's a steel frame Cyclocross bike so it can go off road as well as on road, especially when I have fat knobby tires on it. Even though Pittsburgh it quite hilly, I loved the fact that you could just hop on my bike from where I lived and hop off of it directly in front of wherever it was that I was going. Didn't have to fight or pay for parking, I could take back ways much easier, didn't have to wait in traffic, and most importantly didn't have to pay for gas. I brought my bike out to Doha thinking I might be able to do the same. I've ended up using it more for exercise than anything else after having put road slicks on the old wheels and then recently getting a new lighter, faster set of wheels custom made for the bike. I've ridden that bike to school on the weekends a few times here and there but I'd be terrified to ride it in the morning during peak traffic. Fotunately, New York is a relatively friendly bike city with a few urban bike lanes and lots of greenways and bike paths throughout the city's parks. Even if cars may not be particularly happy to share the road with me, at least I know that they will (or have to by law) and won't try to deliberately hit me or honk loudly as they're coming up behind me just to scare the crap out of me while they're driving at 100kph.