I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike ... alive. Biking Angelenos, what's the safest route to take North from Venice Blvd. to Sunset?

→[More:]I bike to work in Venice Beach from my home in Hollywood every day. I can manage the ride down just fine, because morning traffic tends to be slower, but I have yet to find a route home (after dark!) that doesn't make me regret my existence.

I started out taking Venice to La Brea. That is the fastest way I've found, but it's also mighty slim on the margins. There are certain stretches which are harrowing, but once you get north of, say, Beverly, it's fine. Still, that's a good couple miles of pulse-pounding tension. Uphill.

Then I thought I'd try cutting off of La Brea to Highland where it links up near Olympic. This was a terrible, terrible idea. People take Highland to avoid La Brea traffic and enjoy going twice as fast, on a street half as lit, with an even smaller margin for error on my part. It's the closest I've come to being clobbered off my bike, and it sucks. Homicidal power-exec/supermodel drivers LOVE Highland below Santa Monica. And they love trying to kill me. Apparently.

Going to work today, I took Santa Monica through Beverly Hills to Sepulveda. Another bad idea. Sepulveda narrows considerably south of Santa Monica, and while it's mostly downhill going towards Venice, it'd be a pretty painful ride uphill on the way back, PLUS the joy of dealing with the narrow roadway, and the fact that the terrain is bad. No thanks.

On the way home tonight, a co-worker suggested Sentinela/Bundy to Santa Monica, so I'm going to give that a whirl. But I'd love to know what the widest, least pockmarked, and (ostensibly) least homicidal streets are which connect Venice Blvd. to my part of town.

Any thoughts, my L.A. biking brethren (or sympathetic motorists)? Should I try going all the way past La Brea to take another street North, or is there a good alternative on the West side of town that I haven't tried yet?