The other night, Jimmy Kimmel asked his national TV audience, "No offense, but do we really need to stop traffic for Joe Biden?"

Yeah. We probably should.

I mean, according to Kimmel's hilarious, weep-for-democracy video of average Americans on the street, Biden holds some kind of "assistant" position in the White House, even though he looks like just another Republican running for Congress. Or maybe he's the governor of California. He definitely doesn't look like someone who would be President Barack Obama's friend. In fact, he may be that guy who played that dude in "Pineapple Express."

In case you don't know, Joe Biden is vice president of these United States of America. And he'll be in Portland for a political rally and fundraiser at the Oregon Convention Center on Wednesday, stalling traffic along the way.

The rally for Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley is set to begin at 2:30 p.m., with Biden taking the stage about 2:45 at the Oregon Convention Center. The rally is free, with doors opening at 1 p.m., but RSVPs are required.

In fact, using past presidential and vice-presidential visits to the Rose City as a guide, we can pretty much say getting around will be a nightmare in much of the city for several hours as the Secret Service stops public transit and blockades streets and highway overpasses along the motorcade route.

Here are five things to help you avoid wasting hundreds of stressful heartbeats in gridlock caused by the man who is just one heartbeat from the presidency:

1. Air Force Two is expected to touch down at Portland International Airport around noon and Portland police say the ensuing traffic could be a mess until 6 p.m. Police will start blocking off streets about 10:30 a.m.

The congestion will likely be worst around the Convention Center. Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard could be closed to all traffic from Multnomah Street to the I-84 overpass. Area businesses will have some access for foot-traffic only.

2. MAX Blue, Green, and Red trains will not serve the Convention Center station from about noon through 5 p.m. TriMet suggests riders use the Rose Quarter Transit Center stops if planning to take the MAX to attend the rally. Bus stops near the event will also be closed. Check out a complete list of bus lines affected by Biden's visit.

3. So, what's the motorcade's planned route from the airport? Yeah, that's not something the Secret Service likes to share. The official word is "no comment." The unofficial word: It's one of several possible routes through the city that will be chosen once Biden lands in Portland. Tip: Stay off Interstate 84 east and I-205 north if you can, especially during the evening rush hour. If that's your commuting route, try to go home early.

The last five presidential and vice-presidential visits suggests it will be Interstate 205 to Interstate 84 to the Oregon Convention Center. No administration dating back to Clinton has veered away from the freeways during a Portland visit.

4. Looking for real-time presidential traffic updates from touchdown to wheels-up? Hard Drive will be live-blogging slowdowns and closures during Biden's visit. On Twitter, the hashtag will be #BidenPDX.

5. So why don't Biden and Obama just hop on a helicopter and avoid traffic altogether? Well, it's not so easy. I answered that question and several others about the complicated logistics of the White House road show in a 2012 column following the president's last visit to Portland.

Here it is:

I imagine U.S. presidents have been disrupting traffic since George Washington halted the carriage to retrieve a stray barrel of his coiffure powder from a Philadelphia street.

OK. Historians will probably quibble with that.

But we can hold this truth to be self-evident, President Barack Obama's visit to Portland on Tuesday left a lot of evening commuters feeling as if their freedom of movement was seriously violated.

When the 20-vehicle presidential motorcade was on the move, traffic locked up like Congress in an election year. Just as the P.M. rush hour heated up, authorities closed Interstate 84 eastbound for nearly 30 minutes.

For many drivers who contacted me about the Obamajam, the main question was: Isn't there a way to transport the leader of the free world without shutting down highways?

"How about a helicopter?" asked Patrick McGough of Gresham, a construction worker whose commute home Tuesday was an hour longer because of the I-84 closure. "They could have used Paul Allen's helipad at the Rose Garden."

Robert Baird of Wilsonville suggested an empty "special MAX train" for Obama from Portland International Airport and back. "Logistically, it makes sense," said Baird, a retired funeral and cemetery trust administrator. "That's door-to-door service to his event at the Oregon Convention Center."

Neither mode would have probably allowed Obama to make his cheese-sandwich stop at the Gateway Breakfast House. Still, these are legitimate questions.

The Secret Service, charged by Congress with keeping the president alive, declined to discuss the planning of Obama's Portland visit.

So, I turned to a former agent and experts on the agency for help.

Here's some dark context: Obama faces more death threats than any other president. More than 30 a day, according to Ronald Kessler, author of the best-selling "In the President's Secret Service."

In the shadow of that constant threat, the Secret Service prefers to use the motorcade whenever possible, Kessler said. For decades, the agency has been perfecting the mode of presidential travel. It's a known entity.

"It provides the most protection," Kessler said, "and the best way to take evasive action if there is an attack."

The motorcade travels city to city in giant military cargo planes. Obama (code name: Renegade) is ferried around in a Cadillac limo known as "the Beast." Besides defensive and offensive capabilities, the armor-plated first ride is outfitted with a direct phone line to the Pentagon. It also carries bottles of the president's blood in case he needs an emergency transfusion.

Meanwhile, the long line of vehicles contains up to two decoy limos, traveling staff, the president's physician, press vans, an ambulance and agents carrying some serious fire power.

It helps that Portland's traffic, when compared to other cities, is fairly manageable and the airport is only 12 miles from downtown, said Jeffrey Robinson, co-author of "Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life in the Secret Service."

"I've been to Portland," Robinson said. "It's easy enough to get around, especially when you can turn off all the red lights for the motorcade."

Yes, presidents have used Marine One as an alternative to the motorcade. And the 40-by-40-foot heliport atop a Rose Garden parking garage is only a couple blocks from the convention center.

But that landing zone likely can't handle Marine One's weight and size, said Dan Emmett, a retired Secret Service special agent and author of the excellent "Within Arm's Length: The Extraordinary Life and Career of a Special Agent in the United States Secret Service." What's more, the location could come with too many security vulnerabilities.

"Just because a helo pad exists in proximity to his final destination does not mean it is suitable," Emmett said.

Chris Oxley, the Rose Quarter's general manager, said the Secret Service has never contacted him about using the heliport.

So what about that special MAX train?

"Won't happen," Kessler said. The Secret Service would never put the living, breathing embodiment of our democracy on a regular vehicle or light-rail train, he said.

The security challenges would be mind-boggling, the experts said. For example, if something happened between stations, the president would be stuck on the tracks with no direct route to the nearest hospital.

And talk about disruptions. Regular bomb sweeps of the tracks would also require the Blue, Green and Red lines to be shut down for the day, TriMet officials told me.

In his book "Presidential Travels: The Journey from George Washington to George W. Bush," Willamette University professor Richard J. Ellis writes of a time when anyone could physically strike the president. In fact, that's exactly what Lt. Robert Beverly Randolph did to Andrew Jackson on riverboat in 1833.

Unfortunately, these are crueler times. The closest most citizens get to our president these days is the exhaust and exhaustion of traffic snarls left in his wake.

-- Joseph Rose