I am looking to control some motors using the PID on my mega, which I think
I can figure out no problem.  gonna use a nice slow PWM timer to control
it, however I know 0-~10% will just make the motor whine and not overcome
its own friction.  I want to make sure the loop does not end out sitting in
that range.  Is it possible to make the pid start from 0, but jump straight
to some value X, then do its normal thing?  

I can very easily do this outside the PID itself, but I figured I would ask
first, maybe there is a "better" way.

Cyrus,

You might look at a 'locked antiphase' setup.  Here is a quick link to kind
of explain it. There are several others on youtube.  Basically you are
controlling the motor in both a positive, and negative direction, all the
time with a 50% duty cycle resulting in zero rotation.  As you increase, or
decrease, duty cycle, the motor turns in that direction fairly linearly.
Give it a look.

http://hackaday.com/2011/10/27/video-pwm-on-the-atmega328p/#more-59727

I"m not sure that that would help me, since my issue is that I need to
"jump over" the  low current setings that do not actually move my
mechanical system.  however that is a really nice thing you pointed out, I
found this AMAZING resource googling that
http://modularcircuits.tantosonline.com/blog/articles/h-bridge-secrets/
half is super simple and straightforward, the other half requires a paper
and pencil for me to follow along with what he is saying.

sadly I am using a half bridge chip that I am quite fond of, so I can't
actually reverse current in my motor.  And since it is coupled to a valved
pump, there is no backwards anyways.