I took a short ride out to check out the status of Ochiba Shrine. It's still a few days... maybe three, maybe five... from peak. It seems early this year. When I first posted about it five years ago, it was from a Dec 2 visit.

Yet, the next year I visited on Nov 14, and it was about the same as it was today (Nov 18). Maybe it takes time, because the same year I posted one of my first wigglegrams from the shrine, with full-carpet photos taken on Nov 25.

Even more surprising to me is that last [...]

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I just got back from yet another ride to Onyu Pass, the fourth in half as many weeks. (The first three were blogged about here, here, and here.)

This time, like the first, I went with a group of friends. Also like the first, I brought along the real camera (Nikon D4), but this time I also brought some real lenses. I haven't looked at all the photos yet, wanted to post a few.

To be continued...

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So, I made a third cycle ride in a row up to Onyu Pass the other day. The first trip on a Monday was a lazy social ride of 149km (93mi). Later that week I did a faster solo ride that topped out at 165km (103mi).

This third trip the Monday following the first ended up being 206km (128mi).

I had three goals for the ride. The first was to improve my time on the 58km (36mi) mountainous stretch from the Ichihara area of Kyoto to the top of Onyu Pass. This involves a mile of elevation gain (more precisely, [...]

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It's still six weeks before the fall colors arrive in Kyoto, so here's a look forward with a few shots from various outings last year.

My cycling buddies would be surprised to know that they likely pass this garden fairly often. (Those curious about the location can follow the map link under the photo).

今回の更新は去年の秋のいろいろ。

Other posts from the outings that these photos came from include:

"Great Day in Kyoto’s Colorful Northern Mountains, and at Strava’s Kyoto Office" "Cycling to Kyoto’s Ochiba Shrine Amid the Fall Colors" "The Tenjuan Temple (Fall Colors and a Wigglegram)" "Wigglegram of a Pleasant Couple [...]
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Just a quick writeup with some pictures of a nice group ride that I did two weeks ago with some of the stronger riders from Cycling Kyoto!. I was by far the newest, weakest, slowest, least experienced among them, but they're a nice fun group so they made me feel welcome.

今回の写真は二週間前のサイクリングの事です。

It was wet from a recent rain, so quite slippery. Discretion is the better part of valor, so Tomas aborted the attempt. I didn't even try. But as Rick H had suggested, I did measure the slope with the Compass Tool in my iPhone:

UPDATE: I originally wrote [...]

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