I finally shot a few pictures of one of my bicycles, a KHS alite 2000, Ser# U91290239. (The KHS serial number decoder indicates that this frame was manufactured in December 1999.)
This was a demonstration bike that I bought at the end of the 2000 season with a steep discount from Peak Adventures here at CSUS. It’s way more of a hard-core mountain bike than I need, but I had to get something more durable than my Takara touring bike for riding around Galt. (The rural roads out there were brutal on my tires, tubes, and me!)
When we moved back to Sacramento last year, I wasn’t sure of the condition of the roads on my commute route, so the first time I bicycled to work I chose to ride my moutain bike. Ever since then, my bicycle commuting has been almost exclusively done on this bike. I’ve rigged up a few “bells and whistles” for my commuting convenience.
The bicycle commuter cup from Soma Fabrications is my favorite addition. Bicycling+caffeine=heaven! When I pull up to a stop light at a major intersection and take a swig from my cup, I make a point of looking at nearby drivers–there’s always somebody laughing their ass off at the sight of me stradling my bike and sipping coffee.
My BC 1600 cycle computer from Sigma Sport is on the left bar. This particular model is no longer available, but it’s similar to the BC 1606L. The winning feature of this cycle computer is its ability to work on two separate bikes with different wheel diameters, so I can record all my rides on both my moutain bike and my touring bike. I also don’t need to remember how to operate two different computers–I just twist the computer off of one bike, toggle the “which bike?” button on the back, and mount it on my other bicycle. It’s not quite as sweet as the bicycle detection feature on the current BC 1606L, but it’s not much trouble.
Lastly, some mundane safety- and convenience stuff. Fenders are a requirement if you ride on wet streets and don’t want a bunch of road crud all over your bike (and your back). A rack, along with some panniers, will allow you to carry almost everything you need to and from work. (I also tote a laptop computer back and forth, but I carry that in my backpack to minimize vibration.) My rack and fenders are by Planet Bike.
A seatbag is a great place to carry a spare tube, patch kit, tire “irons” and multi-tool. Most seatbags have a loop onto which you can mount a taillight. Don’t be stupid (like me)–go and buy yourself a taillight before you get stuck riding at night! My light kit only cost me about $15, and it included both the blinking taillight as well as a headlight. It even included the batteries! These are CatEye lights, and since Soma uses a CatEye mount for their coffee cup holder, all I need to do is slip off the cup holder and put the headlight into the mount. Unfortunately, this means I can’t sip coffee on the morning commute if I leave before sunrise. 
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