Alpineophobia

Not to be confused with acrophobia, alpineophobia involves a fear of mountains. This malady is quite common among old, out-of-shape, cyclists from the swamplands of Florida. Thus, the one thing we do not want to see during trip planning is a Day One profile like this:

Okay, so it's not an HC climb, just a measly Cat 1 of 15 miles at an average 4.2% grade. Starting a half mile into the ride. Did I mention it's the 1st day? Unfortunately, it doesn't get much better the 2nd day as the ever playful bike gods save the climb for the last 8 miles of the day.

Well, of course, they made it shorter so it could be a lot steeper. I don't know about the math, but I'm pretty sure elevation grade is logarithmic. Keep in mind that, last trip, we decided we were getting a little old for all this physical exertion. Of course, we couldn't just face our own mortality and stop doing it, so we just added one or more SAG (Support and Grub) vehicles. If you have six riders and one SAG, everyone gets to drive once every six days and that becomes their rest day. We decided to chose by drawing straws (not yet able to determine if drawing the short straw and driving is considered winning or losing). We allowed for "volunteers", or as we identify them, "wussies". I'm guessing for the 1st day we will have multiple wussies and will have to draw straws to see who actually has to ride.