Traffic and Weather together

Traffic and weather are impediments to biking.  It's the height of our short summer in the twin cities.  It's warm, light till late, and it is neither raining nor snowing.  The weather isn't bad, so let's talk traffic.

I've been riding to St. Paul a lot.   While there is not a single bike path going where I want to go, there are several routes work pretty well.  Much of the route is on a car-free bike path.  Other segments are low traffic.  Only a few blocks involve serious car threats.

Starting at my place, it's down the alley, to the end of the dead end block and onto the bike-crowded but car-free bike path.  I take this till it hits the Mississippi.  Someday they will re-purpose the RR bridge and add bikes to it, but not yet.  Then it's up river road bike path to the Franklin bridge.  Here we encounter cars.  There is  a bike lane over the bridge, and up the hill maybe 1/2 mile to University.  Behind University is a bike/bus only road, with bikable sidewalks as well.  This road curves around and drops you at the state fairgrounds.   While they are terribly crowded 12 days a year, on other days the grounds are deserted.  One route is thru como zoo and the como lake park, but I've been sticking to the fair grounds as far East and North as I can go and then taking a shady low traffic side street to my destination.

You can't always take a zero-car point to point route, but often you can get cobble together a route with a reasonable amount of coffin avoidance.