jyossarian: I will also give that a try.
I have to take what mother nature/the highway departments give me as pavement and landscape, but I'm sure I could try to hammer with everything I have at a low gear up a slope just as much as I could sprint on flat land. Even my neighborhood is nothing but slopes. It's all good in HIIT I guess, I'll do anything to get my heart pumping and shed some more of this weight (believe me, I've got the diet down to a science O-o; I have a lot of calorie counts completely memorized, my BMR etc I just dont know how much cycling actually burns)
Steady, long inclines seem to kill me too but I like the pain. I attached a picture of one I encountered in Kentucky where I learned to drive. Never seemed like much of a hill til' I tried to pedal up the freaking thing...