Thanks everyone!
Sorry it took me a bit to respond back..
to answer everyone's questions :-)
a) My commute is about 5 miles one way, so I end up doing about 10 miles a day total. I'm trying to do every other day for now as it is somewhat hard getting motivated in the mornings.

I would love to talk about group rides. I know someone who is considering the bike across America. Could you give me more information on this?
Thanks everyone for the responses. I will try to contact you individually since you can't respond/reply to one post at a time (maybe I'm doing something wrong here) :-)