[davelobi]

Been gone a while (life) but thought about y'all today doing a round trip to the store.
There's two ways (virtually the same distance) I can take. One has a long and quite steep stretch that is a hypermilers dream stretch. I, almost subconsciously, usually take the wheee downhill on the way to the store and avoid going back up it on the return trip by using the other road.
Today it hit me like a pie in the face that from home to the store and back home puts me right back at the same parking elevation as I started from. The two different roads have identical height changes albeit in different forms. Technically the same amount of work is being done to traverse either road, ie round trip on same road, results in the same amount of total elevation traversed.

Let's call the steep hill one road A and the more gradual one road B. Remember road A has the steep downhill on the way to the store. You could drive the round trip 4 ways, AA, AB, BB, BA. I know you can't see, or experience, the length or gradient of the inclines or declines from my description. Use any and all methods (p&g, dfco, etc, etc) to make the commute. Seat of the pants thinking here, no scangauge etc.
What route do you take and why?