Well, I’m officially one of the crazies now, as I biked directly to work today! I took the route I had planned, although I missed the turn at Evelyn, so I took Reed all the way to Fair Oaks. That added a bit of extra time and mileage. My stats for today were:
- Distance: 13.8 miles
- Avg. Speed: 10.1 mph
- Max. Speed: 30.0 mph
- Time Taken: 1h 22m
Ryan suggested an alternate route along the San Tomas Aquino/Saratoga Creek Trail, which I’ll investigate and possibly try out (if I can get on it somewhere South of Highway 101, perfect).
Jeremy Cole 
If you’re commuting by bicycle from San José to Yahoo on a regular basis, you might check out Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition‘s catalog of Hazardous Routes, which details dangerous freeway/surface street crossings. As you get more and more experience commuting, you become more and more confident on streets that some other bike commuters insist are unrideable.
My main commute follows Middlefield Road through Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and Mountain View for a total (on Middlefield) of just under 10 miles. Most of middlefield is fine. But, from the Santa Clara County line in Palo Alto for about three miles through downtown and midtown, Middlefield is two rough lanes in each direction with no shoulder and no bike lane (not to mention the retarded often-inattentive motorists). Still, with honed skills and good information, your commuting experience can be a rewarding (especially at three bucks a gallon) experience. I’ve lost 35 pounds since I started riding seriously in 2002 (14,200 miles ago).
Some good resources for information about commuting, technical issues (bike fixes, wet-weather riding, equipment tips), and other cycling information can be found at the aforementioned SVBC site, as well as Ken Kifer’s Bike Pages and Sheldon Brown‘s articles.
Good luck!