Today I went with Manu Mohan on his first “real” cycling ride.

Manu is a National Scholar student of linguists at Kyoto University who happens to part-time at the convenience store near me, and his easy smile and cheerful attitude made me want to connect with him beyond the 30-seconds snippets at the cash register. When he saw on Facebook that I was into cycling, he expressed interest.

So today we got together for an easy, untaxing first ride.

I somehow had it in my head that he lived near Nijo Castle halfway across town from me, so I suggested that we meet there. It turns out that he lives a short walk from me, so it was silly that we both went over there to meet! But it wasn't totally out of the way from where we were going to go.

Wanting an easy yet satisfying route for his first ride, I thought of my first ride earlier in the year, so we headed north up the gentle slope that is Kyoto city proper toward the mountains.

Manu's Wachen BF-70F folding bicycle is designed for convenient city travel, and not really appropriate for hills, but he hit his first hill better than I did...

He seemed to be fine to continue, so we headed into the mountains, up toward Kibune.

Manu is a native speaker of English and an Indian language I don't recall (Hindi?), and even though I came to Japan before he was born, he's much better at Japanese than me. He also speaks Chinese and French, and dabbles in others. Out of my league.

Manu's bike is not appropriate for the mountains... it's designed for convenience in the city. It can fold up into a conveniently small space, and it's intended for moving in city traffic.

At 14kg (31 lbs) it's heavy, it has short cranks so that you don't get much leverage on the pedals, and its lowest gearing is still a heavy 52/28 (1.86 front-to-rear ratio), meaning that for every revolution of the pedals, you have to give it enough power to rotate the tires 1.86 revolutions. If you're going up a steep slope, that's a lot of power needed each time around.

(By contrast, I think my bike has a lowest gear ratio of about 0.8, meaning it's much easier to keep going up a steep hill.)

Nevertheless, I asked whether he'd like to try continuing farther up the mountain. Beyond where we were, the road quickly becomes quite steep and twisty, and I thought perhaps a taste of this would be useful information for the future.

So we forged on...

Before turning around, I wanted to give his bike a try, and let me tell you it was difficult. Much much much more difficult than mine. When he tried mine, he felt like he was flying...

With my bike he thought he could continue, so we switched and continued on...

Besides being inappropriate for the mountains, Manu's bike is really inappropriate for me. It's probably a bit too small for Manu to begin with, but for me it felt like I was riding a toy like this.

I took it as a challenge... my first assault (if you could call such a slow-motion effort) of Seryu Pass from the difficult southern approach would be on this bike.

We took our time... we'd ride for 50~100m, then rest, then ride again, then rest again. It got ever steeper.

Manu never gave up, never complained... just kept pushing on. After 3.3km (2mi) of ridiculous 12% grade, we made it to Seryo Pass (芹生峠). It was my first time by bicycle to the pass from this side.

By this time it had started to rain — it's now the rainy season in Japan — so we headed down slowly and carefully. It's easier going down.

Some of the views were really nice, though the photo doesn't capture it at all 🙁

We got quite chilly on the way down, so we stopped in Kibune for hot tea and hot noodles. But by the time we left, the rain was coming down in earnest, so we got soaked in no time, and absolutely froze heading home. The UnderArmour “Storm” windbreaker I brought along and used for the first time was not as waterproof as I had been led to expect, making it the first UnderArmour product (among very many) that I've been disappointed in.

Chilly return aside, it was a fun day and I really enjoyed to get to know Manu more. He's busy with school and work, so I don't know how much time he'll have for cycling (or, with that bicycle, how much inclination), but I hope we ride again soon.