Good luck on your commute this week! I'm sure with your enthusiasm you'll do just fine. It's all "up top" (mental) anyway, huh?

We're glad you decided to post. Men are welcome- so long as you don't mind being surrounded by a bunch of really great women (yeah, because most men just hate that ). This is a great group- very supportive and helpful. I think you'll like it here.

I've used various mirrors, but have recently decided on one that I just LOVE. It's the one that CA_in_NC suggested. If you have more than one helmet, you can just buy the little piece that sticks to the helmet and move the mirror from one to the other. I've used the Take a Look and others that fixed to your glasses, but the extra bulk on my glasses bothered me. This one is very movable (easy to adjust when I put the helmet on), and gives me a good field of view. Of course, you'll just have to buy one and try it for yourself to see what works best for you.

Unfortunately, we have very few bridges here (the ones we do have are concrete roadway), so no advice to give here. Just be careful of tire eating gaps. I went down on the road HARD one time when a gap caught my tire and threw me off the bike. Ouch!