Bike Ride: Depressing or Motivating

This morning I came home from work and asked my wife if I could go for a ride.  She rolled over in bed and said to keep it short.  So I decided I'd do part of a ride that I hadn't done for a few months.  The ride is only about 7 miles total 3.5 miles down and 3.5 miles back up about 1,500 ft.  I think it's a cat. three climb having a 6% grade avg. so it's a pretty good ride and I've used it alot for training since it's close to home.  I new it was cold so I dressed the part taking note of my advice to self from my previous post. The ride down I take pretty slow because there are switchbacks and you cannot tell if cars are coming or not.  I also take the trip back up pretty slow but there's not much I can do about going any faster, it's just steep.  Today the ride seemed especially difficult.  I think part of why it seemed difficult is because the road was a bit different in that the road has changed.  It is rather dirty and new graffiti has been added to the road so calculating where I was was more difficult.  The road seemed more steep that I remember and longer!  More steep because I had to get out of my seat more often to keep from stopping and tipping over.  Longer becuase it was longer that is it took me longer to complete than the last time I did it by about four or five minutes.  So as I was riding I had a flow of emotions.  It started with being depressed becuase I figured the reason that the ride seemed so difficult and long was because I was in worse shape that I was previously but rather than dwell on that fact which might have kept me from riding for a while after my attitude changed to well I better do this more often and get back into good form.  I think this attitude is so essential in most of our activities and I'm glad this time it came to me.  There is always more to do and a way to get better.  For cycling the way is to spin those wheels.   

It looks like a bike path but it's a single lane road.