Ya gotta make do with what ya got. I bemoaned the lack of hills to climb in the area. The hardest climbs in the area are probably the equivalent of riding up from Sausalito to the Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing even matches the East Bay Hills which were no more than a thousand feet of climbing. I asked someone at a bike store about climbs and apparently they do these "sprinter's climbs" that are readily available and they do them over and over again, but it's just not the same as steadily hammering up Mt. Diablo or Mt. Tamalpais or the Santa Cruz range mile after mile. There are no climbs here that really test you.

What I have noticed is that even though my rides barely break 30 miles, they are faster than in the Bay Area because of the lack of climbs. Rides averaging 18mph were raising my eyebrows, since in the Bay Area they averaged 15mph. So I thought OK, I like climbing but there are no climbs here, I suck at sprinting, might as well work on that.

Mind you, riding in New Jersey sucks because of the car culture, but my parents live in a cozy, quiet suburban town, so if I don't leave the town limits, it's pretty peaceful. But it's not a big town. From the far end of the north side of town to the middle is less than 2 and a half miles, and it's not even a mile wide, but there are some natural loops formed by the roads, pretty much all flat. So I went out and just rode these loops over and over again for 20 miles, averaging almost 19mph. It was pretty nifty, if a bit . . . repetitive. Whatever. I think I did the larger loop three times and the smaller loop six times.

It felt kinda "time trial"-ish, but I wasn't even really pushing it. I just went out for a casual ride wearing street clothes and no PowerBars or water. It was cool because I can do that sort of thing without any preparation, or I can prepare and really push it if I want to, or I can just do it really casually and enjoy the rich, conservative, Republican, suburban peace. Yay me.