Update to Update: Life would have been much easier if I'd read the Template VMethods documentation. If you're having problems: STOP, go there, read.
Update: Figured it out, OQ and solution follow. Editorial comments on the Perl and TT would be welcome.

my head hurts. I'm having a serious grok failure in working with Template
Given this Data::Dumper output from within my .tt2 file what would be the TT syntax for access/printing the name and dates from ab and ac?

   $VAR1 = {
           '20120317' => {
                     'sort_date' => 20120317,
                     'file_base' => 'Brew_Pub_Populaire',
                     'stoker' => 'Tom Organizer',
                     'date' => 'March 17',
                     'name' => 'Brew Pub Populaire',
                     'dist' => '100',
                     'email' => 'otherrider@example.com',
                     'cred' => 'RUSA',
                     'start' => 'Cornelius Pass Roadhouse'
                   },
           '20120331' => {
                     'sort_date' => 20120331,
                     'file_base' => 'Molalla_Foothills',
                     'stoker' => 'Michael Fastrider',
                     'date' => 'March 31',
                     'name' => 'Molalla Foothills',
                     'dist' => '200',
                     'email' => 'cyclo@example.com',
                     'cred' => 'ACP',
                     'start' => 'Canby, OR'
                   }
         };
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Update: Figured it out (many thanks to Date::Dumper!)

  [% FOREACH brevet =  brevets  %]
     brevet.key [% brevet.key %]
     brevet.val [% brevet.value %]
     brevet.val.name [% brevet.value.name %]
     brevet.val.date [% brevet.value.date %]
     brevet.val.dist [% brevet.value.dist %]
     brevet.val.start [% brevet.value.start %]
     brevet.val.stoker [% brevet.value.stoker %]
  [% END %]
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For the curious, the Perl that calls TT is something like:

my %tt_food;

foreach my $key ( sort { $brevet_config{$a}{sort_date} <=> $brevet_con
+fig{$b}{sort_date} }  keys %brevet_config ) {
    
    $tt_food{$brevet_config{$key}{sort_date}} = $brevet_config{$key};
}

my $vars = {
    brevets => \%tt_food,
};

$template->process( 'schedule.tt2', $vars ) or die $template->error();
[download]

note: Several updates as I worked through it.