Streets!

I live deep in the urban core of KCMO. I'd have to ride for probably more than an hour just to get out of town and get on a rural road (which may not even be a nice road or go to anywhere I'd want to be), and even then I'd have to devise some way to get past all the Interstate mousetraps that gird the city. Since I don't have any good way of getting out of town, I'm a city cyclist. Lucky for me, there are some marvelous city streets to ride. Kansas City's boulevards are awesome! Wide lanes, nicely landscaped medians and right-of-ways, beautiful old houses set way back. If you're going to be a city rider, these are like the Cadillacs of city streets. Plus there are a few parks, like Kessler Park and Swope Park that have roads through them. Roads, not MUPs. All you get on those roads are bikes and cars. You want fun, ride through Swope Park...a few hills for variety, lots of nice, wide, swoopy curves, very little auto traffic, no stoplights! It's one of my favorite spots in the city.

Of course, I ride ordinary secondary arterials and any number and condition of little residential side streets, but given my druthers, I'd pick an all-boulevard route, especially when I'm introducing a new rider to street riding. They're wide enough that cars have plenty of space to get around a rider without "buzzing" and are usually quite scenic.

Good grief--I'm a street connisseur.