Some good explanations, thanks all. I drove to work about the same time I would need to do so one a bike this morning, and took note of traffic etc. There's one long section of sidewalk that apparently is officially a bike path that I'm going to use, but beyond that the road looks good. Fortunately not to many folks are driving to work at 530 AM. I'm off tomorrow and am going to ride out there and back in the afternoon just to see how it goes in heavy traffic.

-Jenrick