>>1714964what the fuck is under her shoe?
that's your bike elevator?
where is this picture from?
>>1715021Boulder isn't exactly built into the mountains. It's right next to the mountains. There are a few hills here in town, but commuters don't have to take them if they don't want to.
The whole city is 9 miles N->S and 2 miles E->W (average, 3.5 miles at it's widest point), surrounded by open space, so it's small and everything happens in a few concentrated areas.
If you need to get to certain residential areas then, yes, you will have to hit some hills.
There's 3-4 main N->S commuter routes, all within 1 mile.
The west route, Broadway, has 3 hills, but you can take the routes on the east side of town and then just cut straight across to your destination, and most places are accessible without many hills, if any at all, with a 1-2 mile detour from E->W on flat ground.
The central routes: 19th St, has 2 hills, and 28th, has 1.
If you go out to the bike paths further East and along Foothills it is as flat as can be. Everything else is recreational riding or neighborhood access and varies but for commuter routes you can just go around the hills within town.
To the north I can get to Longmont (15mi) with no hills as well, and they are about to build a dedicated bike highway in that direction, or you can take the recreational route to the West and it has some hills but it doesn't really go anywhere that people live or work, just farms and parks.
Going South to Denver is a whole other story, lots of hills that way, but nothing too horrible (there is one hill where you need to be in decent shape for) and it's a fully separate 20 ft wide (most of the way) bike highway for 30 miles.
If you want to do hills recreationally you can just go 1 extra mile west and it's basically one continuous hill with 3000ft vertical rise, but that is outside of town and not for commuters.
That being said, I can go almost anywhere on MUPs, and everywhere else in bike lanes.
