My favorite hill.

John, in his always-excellent Cycling Spokane blog, recently wrote about his favorite hill .

That got me to thinking about my favorite hill. I rode up it, as usual, coming home from work yesterday. When the snow gets too deep, I will have to switch to going straight up Monroe.

When spring rolls around, I am always happy to be back on my usual route.

The usual route is to go up the hill on Wall St. between Deaconess and LC. When it dead ends, hang a right on the brick street which takes you up onto the parking lot. The trees smell very good on this brick-lined street - like pepper trees. Once you're in the parking lot, keep heading south and up. When you get to the street, turn right and head down the hill toward the stop sign. This is where all the Lincoln Streets and Lincoln Places and Monroe Streets funkify.

Take an immediate left at the stop sign - up Lincoln (trust me, it's Lincoln). It is one steep mofo. In the summer, the shade is fantastic though. Soon you peak out and, again, head down the hill. Lincoln splits up into 9th and Lincoln. Go left (Lincoln) - it's downhill and then back uphill, where you will see the stairs in front of you at Cliff Drive. Go right, at the stop sign, downhill and then, almost immediately, hairpin left up the hill. Turn right at the top of the hill and, guess what, you are back on Lincoln. Lincoln ends at Wall. That's right. You won't see Lincoln again for a while. Stay on Wall until it goes downhill and then hits 14th Ave. If you want, you can take a right on 14th and say hello again to Lincoln, where it seems to have jumped a couple of blocks to the west and is perpendicular to its former self. In fact, you really should. Me, I'll take a little jog to the west, and continue down and then up Wall.

Either way, you have to head up the hill some more.

I like this route because of the immediate and continual losses of hard-won gains in elevation. It is very cleansing - penitential if you will - after a night at work seeing some (and hopefully alleviating some) very strange, and often sad, problems. No matter how tired or cranky I am after work, this hill wakes me up and makes me happy.

As a bonus, I can always deviate a little and pay my respects to where all the street name weirdness comes to a head.

Here are some somewhat useless pictures of what I have been trying to say. The elevation is to 14th. I don't know if I believe the chart. I will have to GPS it someday.