Making the grade

So, I am pretty new to cycling. I'm still undecided on the correct pronunciation of "panniers"; I still get nervous that I'm going to tip over at a stoplight clipped in on a loaded bike. On the other hand, I have been excited to be the one helping someone else change their tire tube (lord knows I have experience wielding a tire iron); I've been the one lending maps to cyclists going in the opposite direction and recommending campsites. I'm getting there.

In spite of the number of miles under Ollie's tires, I am still learning the language and culture of the biking world. And the math. If my bike computer tells me I'm biking at roughly 12mph, why do I only make it about 7 miles in an hour? Oh. Right. The snack breaks. And the hills. One thing that I'd heard seasoned cyclists talk about often when I was back at the bike shop during the weeks leading up to my departure from DC was this or that "insane climb for x number of miles at an x% grade...." What the heck was "percent grade"? 2 miles at 8%? I had some vague sense that this was meant to be impressive, perhaps something I should know before setting out. I was too shy to ask.

Not long after I departed, I believe it was somewhere early on in my battle with the Appalachians, I began to recognize these truck-pointing-downhill signs. (Usually the signposts were back over my shoulder, facing traffic heading down a hill I had just dragged a fully loaded Ollie up.) More recently, I learned that percent grade simply refers to the slope of a hill. So a 7% grade means a rise (or fall) of 7 feet for every 100 feet of forward travel. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Except that it is. (Ollie, back me up here.)

My god, if I ever meet the man who designed Highway 1, or any of his descendants, I'm going to punch 'em in the nose. The 5-mile uphill stretch going into Redwood National Forest back in northern California? 6-7% grade. How about Big Sur? Ditto, with screaming downhill lengths cramping my brake-gripping muscles as intensely as the narrow, twisting, murderous uphill stretches wore out my legs. I mean, who *does* that? Didn't anyone think about the math?

Say a cyclist bikes 13.5 miles uphill on an unknown but constant grade (x), and 2.5 miles downhill at a 7% grade. Assuming equal elevation at the starting and ending points (total distance biked is 16 miles -- that's the bottom of your triangle), what was the uphill grade?

You know how real life math problems are all the rage in education? This is a real life example: even without taking into account the unflagging headwinds or knowing exactly how much weight I was hauling the ride south from Lompoc 2 days ago was intense. My question is: how intense? There was a cute, sweater-vested math teacher at the school where I used to teach whom I might've asked if I'd come across this problem a year ago. Since he's not around, I'll ask my fearless readers. Go on, break out your pencils and your calculators. How intense *was* it? Whomever posts the correct answer for the percent grade on the way up that thirteen-and-a-half-mile-long incline gets a postcard from Joshua Tree when I get there. (And if math isn't your forte, fear not. I used to tell my students to do their best. If they couldn't think of the right answer, if they could make me laugh I'd give them partial credit.)

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