To me 'i climbed 1000 feet' means i ascended 1000 feet, plain and simple. This issue is just a peripheral aspect of a broader debate, as to what is meant by the 'grade' of your ascent. Tour-de-francers/tour-de-drugs advocates are prone to making ridiculous claims about the grades of various passes in the tour de france and elsewhere, forgetting that the "20% grades" [which is ridiculous on its face] they refer to are over extremely short distances, sometimes only a few tens of feet. I remember having a major discussion of this near a information booth in California's Mt. Shasta region. Some math skill dumbed down high school kid working part time that summer at the tourist info booth INSISTED that the road up shasta was a "25% grade for 10 miles!" Never mind that meant the total vertical climb was 2.5 miles, or nearly 13,000 feet; which was quite odd, since the campground at the end of the road was less than 10000 feet up.
The one about the rolling hills---10 hills of 100 feet-- is another issue. One of the reasons why the appalachians are far, far more challenging than the rockies is that, over the course of a full day riding in Kentucky, or Tennessee, or Vermont, one may ascend and descend ten, twenty, maybe thirty hills varying in local relief of 100 or even 200 feet. That easily adds up to thousands of feet of climbing, which easily exceeds the local relief of the vast majority of rocky mountain passes. And to boot, the grades on these "short hills" is often in excess of 5%, so its not surprising you end up bagged out at the end of the day! Arf.
By the way, my beloved state of Massachusetts is considering a bill to ban Segways from sidewalks! So not all is dark!
roughstuff