And then again, Pittsburgh might just kill me.

From my apartment, I have four options for how to get to campus:

#1: Take the bus. This involves some walking and lots of waiting and then an annoying stand-up crowded ride. Not an option in nice weather.

#2: Roller blade. Potholes + Hills = Sudden Death. (Confession: my roller blades are in Michigan, so this is not really an option. But: it would be my favorite option if safe.)

#3: Walk. Forty-five minutes downhill there. Forty-five minutes uphill home. Big time commitment.

#4: Bike. Twenty minutes downhill there. Twenty minutes uphill home. Only one stupid intersection.

On my long Mondays, I choose #3. But tonight, I decided that #4 wins for Wednesdays and Fridays, when I only attend a one hour Sanskrit class. The bike, however, needed a tune-up. So this evening I pumped up my tires and made sure that my bike was still in working order. In the process, I rode the bike all of 25 blocks in a big huge circle—

—and nearly died. Sometimes it’s the Pittsburgh traffic that scares the biker in me—but it wasn’t traffic tonight. The hills. The hills nearly killed me. Blood red face. Lots of lactic acid coursing through the muscles. And I have a muscle in my thigh that is still twitching. Maybe I’m not getting old (see tubing anecdote from last week). Maybe I’m just out-of-shape or something.

This, though, isn’t really possible either, since two weeks ago I rode nine miles on flat terrain. So, really, it’s just the hills that are getting me.

What is it about hills? Why must they be so blastedly horrible?

Seriously, taken either literally or metaphorically—hills require from-the-gut determination. (My car doesn’t like them either.)