I'm not really sure what a "Walmart shopper" is...I'm not one! :-) I'd be a Target shopper. The Walmarts here just make my skin crawl.

Hell-uv, I was in your exact position last summer, but I needed to be on my bike more often than just the weekends, so I had to bite the bullet and get used to roads. Luckily, although my road doesn't have a bike lane, I start out against the homeward-bound flow of traffic in the evening, and get to a road with a bike lane as fast as possible, and then I can get to _really_ rural/low-traffic roads from there. I'm out in the country, so mostly the drivers are careful, and I know the couple roads where they are not. I've finally built up enough of a base that I can actually ride to the bike trail rather than driving, too! (It's about 20 or 30 miles).

I do a lot of exploring on routes that the bike club publishes, that I can get to from my house. The roads are usually pretty low traffic.

Nanci