Hills That Kill Me

I'm a wuss. Actually, I think I'm trying to jump into the cycling "season" head first. See... the weather in California is such that the biking season here has been going on for awhile. So I feel like I have to be on par with the weather, when in reality, I've been on my bike a grand total of 3 times now (counting today, and last week) in 2008. Anyway. What does this have to do with my daily routine? Marlene started work today. That means that I need to start up some sort of routine. Seeing as how I'm pretty sure that I've gained back most of the 10-15 lbs (depending on when I started counting) I lost while in Calgary since we moved here (thank you lack of gym and abundance of burritos) I've decided that I will start biking while she's at work, and also do the household chores. So I found a road today that was a pretty sustained climb, and just off the "regular" route. And by regular I mean the route that we did last time and we plan to use fairly often. Yes, we did plan this route as our "regular" route before we even moved here.... For today's adventure I used 'street view' and 'terrain' on google maps. If you don't have street view in your area, then I feel very sorry for you. It's the best thing in the world in my opinion (at the moment). Anyway. For the first time in my life I had to give up (on a cycling related thing, I've given up lots of other times). At first I went through all of the, "I suck so bad, I'll never be able to this, that, and the other. Why do I bother," but then I came to my senses and realized I need to ease into things a bit. Plus, not only would this road be hard for me cause I haven't been biking all year (besides on stationary trainers), I think it would be hard for me if I had put in a decent season in Kingston or Calgary because it's longer and steeper than the rides I typically would do. Anyway. You may be wondering why I'm blathering on about all this crap, and why I think you'd be interested. Mostly I don't expect people to be interested, but I figure if I write stuff like this down, it means I can't give up. If I say I want to ride Mt. Diablo in a respectable time in the fall, and I write it here, then I'll be more likely to hold myself to that, cause right now, after today's ride, I'm thinking that sounds down right impossible.