Sudo Won't Work after change/mistake in Path env

Question

I'm a Mac newbie and just upgraded to Node.js 0.67. After running node, the installer says "Make sure that /usr/local/bin is in your $PATH."

And I try to run node but as expected, it doesn't run without the path change.

So not really knowing what I'm doing (yes!), after some research I do this:

export "PATH=/usr/local/bin"

And node runs. But sudo doesn't. Which I think means I screwed up the environment variables.

sudo: command not found

Then in another Terminal window (that was open when I messed this up), sudo does respond; both windows have the same path. But in that window, npm is no longer available.

Can anyone help get me back to sudo stability?