It's been a mostly-lazy New Year break for me, just hanging out at home with the family, working here and there on my Lightroom plugins, from time to time updating roads I cycle a lot at OpenStreeMap.org with much more accurate road data than they currently have, and some general vegetating.
I did get to bookmark the change of year with a last bicycle ride in 2015 up into the mountains north of Kyoto on the last day of the year. There was even a bit of snow. Brrrr. Then on January 2nd, I did a lazy ride to the Kuuya-taki waterfall with Alain, a French friend visiting from near Tokyo.
Panasonic LX100 at an effective 26mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.9, ISO 2000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Exiting the Waterfall
at the Kuuya-taki waterfall (空也滝), Kyoto Japan
When we arrived at the waterfall (which has appeared on my blog many times, such as “Cooling Down at the Kuuya-taki Waterfall”), a small group of what looked like members of a college karate club were taking turns going into the freezing water, similar to when I visited here last March.
Alain is a talented photographer, but was here for a bike ride so didn't have his real camera. He put the place on his “must return to” list.
Panasonic LX100 at an effective 35mm — 1/80 sec, f/2.3, ISO 1000 — map & image data — nearby photos
Candles
The return trip can go over or through a mountain. We went over it on the way, and though my time was not particularly special, it was the fastest properly-recorded for the short but steep segment. Strava lists my time as the 11th fasted, but it turns out that those listed above had either gone through the tunnel directly underneath, or had not made the full trip up to the pass.
Strava's segment matching has to be necessarily fuzzy to allow for the necessarily-fuzzy results one gets from consumer GPS units, and so it's not surprising that some efforts get assigned to a segment in error, but Strava gives the user no control over fixing these kind of Strava errors. It'd be nice if they allowed the user to remove a segment from the day's ride, and to allow other users to flag the incorrect-application of a segment to a ride. Sigh.
On the way back, we did take the tunnel. The beginning from this side is fairly well lit and wide and boxy...
Panasonic LX100 at an effective 24mm — 1/125 sec, f/1.7, ISO 1600 — map & image data — nearby photos
Entering the Tunnel
... but it gets dark and narrow and creepy...
Panasonic LX100 at an effective 75mm — 1/20 sec, f/2.8, ISO 3200 — map & image data — nearby photos
It's Actually Darker than This
I wanted to process it so that it reflected reality, but when I did it was mostly just black with a vague spot or two of light, so I settled on the rendition above, which is somewhere between reality and this overly-bright rendition from March.
My cycling one-year anniversary is coming up later this month, so that'll be a time for me to reflect on the past year. But never to pass up a chance to be a data geek, I compiled my 2015 stats...
Total distance: 5,756km (3,577 miles)
Total elevation gain: 86,810m (284,810 feet) this is actual gain, not Strava's voodoo gain
Longest ride: 228km (142mi)
Longest week: 486km (302mi) (rides of
228km,
115km,
and 143km)
Most elevation gain in one day: 3,356m (11,010ft)
Fastest speed: 76.7 kph (47.7 mph) at this location on this ride.
Longest non-stop ride: a 125km (78mi) section within this 203km ride during which the wheels never stopped.
My Eddington number at the start of the year: N/A
My Eddington number at the end of the year: 37 meaning that I had 37 rides of at lest 37 miles
Crashes: 0
Times I fell due to being clipped in: 2
Flat tires: 5 at least
Weekly distance over the year:
I'm certainly looking forward to 2016 as my first full year of cycling, though it's getting off to a slow start.