A Visit With Rick and Lily Hancock
Rick and Lily Hancock at the Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂), Kyoto Japan -- Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂) -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 5600 — map & image datanearby photos
Rick and Lily Hancock
at the Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂), Kyoto Japan

I had the pleasure to have lunch today with Rick and Lily Hancock, visiting from Seattle. Rick has been reading my blog for years, and often comments, so we finally met IRL (In Real Life).

We spent all our time talking over ramen at Gogyo (五行) so didn't have much time for an outing afterwards, but walked over to the Rokkaku-do Temple for a few pictures.

Live Omikuji Tree -- Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/6.3, ISO 4500 — map & image datanearby photos
Live Omikuji Tree

As I described on this post six years ago, it's common at temples and shrines to pay a small fee for a random fortune paper. If you get a good one, you take it home, but if your fortune is bad, you leave it tied it to strings or sticks near where you got it. An example from earlier in the year can be seen here.

At the place today, they were tied to an actual willow tree.

Engulfed -- Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1600 — map & image datanearby photos
Engulfed
Common Scene Out of town school kids and the taxi driver escorting them around -- Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 500 — map & image datanearby photos
Common Scene
Out of town school kids and the taxi driver escorting them around
Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3600 — map & image datanearby photos
Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image datanearby photos

The temple dates back at least 800 years, presumably predating the Starbucks Coffee immediately adjacent to it.

Back Window of a Starbucks overlooks the side of the temple grounds -- Rokkaku-do Temple (六角堂) -- Kyoto, Japan -- Copyright 2015 Jeffrey Friedl, http://regex.info/blog/
Nikon D4 + Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 24mm — 1/400 sec, f/2.8, ISO 1000 — map & image datanearby photos
Back Window of a Starbucks
overlooks the side of the temple grounds

I feel a bit sorry for these in-city temples that have become hemmed in by modern progress, though I suppose whether an immediately-available Starbucks is a curse or a blessing likely depends on just how much you like slightly-overpriced consistently-made good-enough coffee.

(Rick and Lily are from Seattle, but have never been to a Starbucks, a pattern that I don't think they broke today.)

It's Rick's comment in April that really got me to dig into why Strava elevation-gain value for a bicycle ride is unreliable, eventually leading to a massive amount of work that ended up in The Voodoo of Elevation Gain and Strava (and How I Get Around It). But as it turns out, the desire for more accurate results caused me to eventually abandon the initial project favor of an even larger one that combines my ride data with road and elevation data from the Japanese government. I've finally built up a large enough corpus of data on area roads that I can now get very precise elevation-gain data for my rides. It's been a huge amount of work, and it's all Rick's fault.🙂

Rick has promised* to come back in the spring for an extended cycling vacation, so he'll finally be able to ride the Kyoto mountains he's said he enjoys seeing so much in my blog, and enjoy the fruits of the huge software project that his comment was my impetuous to build.


* He didn't actually promise.


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