There are hills and hills, too.

The kind some of you are talking about - where you can sit and spin for long periods of time - those just don't exist around here. What we have is grades of normally 12-13% and up to 20%. The kind of hills where you're going to fall over if you don't mash the gears, and whatever your bottom gear is, you're in it. I was mostly joking about the hypoxia, but a hill here, you'll definitely see some pretty impressive heart rates. The only salvation is there's usually no more than 200 feet of elevation gain on any individual hill. That's actually why they don't bother to put a grade on them - it's because trucks can climb them without blowing their engines out.

Those long, shallow hills sound like fun.

+1 on hating the flats, though. I rode the flats all winter. Boring and WINDY. ALWAYS windy. (See the thread about wind...)