Updated August 23rd, 2008. See corrected math and discussion in the comments.
I was recently asked: "How can get around town by bike without going up and down so many hills?"
Avoiding hills is often not an option, so I have to re-frame the question in order to answer it: "How I can be comfortable riding in hilly terrain?".
For a cyclist used to driving, there may be an adjustment about what to expect. A car may (unnaturally) travel the same speed up a hill, across the ridge line and back down it.
Bikes tend go much slower up hills and much faster down them. I've come to appreciate this. It's participation in the natural rhythm of gravity. It makes kicking back with cruise control and watching the world through a screen seem all the more eerie.
