Penny,

I definitely agree that anything involving purposeful separation of tire and ground is tough -- especially going uphill!

At one of the lunachix clinics, I mentioned this, and they made us ride up a hill and pop our wheels up over a two by four on the way, over and over again. It really helped.

I think the trick is to practice on stuff that's so small you would normally just roll over it. There's a bridge on one of my rides that has a little lip -- maybe an inch or two -- where it meets up with the dirt road. Whenever I cross that bridge, I make a point of lifting my front wheel over the lip, and then lifting my front wheel again as I come down off the bridge (it's one ofthe type that arcs over the stream). Then, at the top of the first real climb of that trail, there are a several water bars -- depending on how much "oomph" I have left, I try to lift my wheel over at least a couple of them.

The theory is that I will get comfortable timing the lifts on trivial stuff, and eventually get to the point where I will be confident enough to try it on bigger things. That hasn't happened yet, though =P