A couple of Aussies on a cycling vacation in Japan contacted the Cycling Kyoto! group on Facebook looking for interesting rides in the area. A group of us ended up going on two rides in two days with Sarah Knights and Bridget Slocum, hard-core amateur cyclists that compete on the national level in Australia.

As it turns out, they're also fun people.

Manseki Kanemitsu and I met the girls near their hotel and moved across town toward the mountains to the west, picking up folks along the way....

After also picking up Mone Sakura, we headed toward the Arashiyama area of Kyoto, past Hirosawa Lake...

Some of the photos above have that “overprocessed” look, because they're overprocessed. I'm still not comfortable with my new cycling camera and find it all too easy to bump the settings out of whack without realizing it, so these photos were all wildly underexposed. It's only through the magic of shooting raw and compensating in Adobe Lightroom that I could recover anything. The HDR-ish look can get old very quickly, but can perhaps be cool in moderation.

After leaving the city there's an immediate short but intense climb to Rokucho Pass (750m at an average grade of 10%). I was happy to have made a new PR, and Bridget took the QOM (“Queen of the Mountain” — the fastest female recorded at Strava for a segment), her first of many. The comparable achievement for men is, of course, “KOM”.   I don't have any.

This hill is followed by a short descent of epic twisties. I went down early to try to set up for some shots of the others coming down, upon which I discovered the aforementioned camera-setting issues. I was in the process of trying to fix them when Sarah came barreling down, so I screwed up the shot. So, again, I rely on some overprocessing to try to eke out a result...

As far as “recovery processing” goes, on technical level I had better luck with this shot of Manseki a few months ago.

With the blotchy sunshine splattering through the trees, it probably wasn't the best choice of a spot to begin with. The blotchy sunshine creates trouble for the camera, but did create a wonderful mood for the ride...

The plan was to ride north to the quaint village of Miyama, essentially repeating this June ride with Gorm. From the train station the road rises in a long climb up and around Mt. Atago. Mone had to be back in Kyoto early, so she returned after the climb, while the rest of us continued north.

I missed most of what Manseki explained about this statue next to the Hiyoshi Shrine, but it had a bunch of stuff for cyclists, including a log book for visitors that Sarah is writing in. Behind the statue were a few bicycle-related things one could use like chain oil. I'm not sure what it's all doing there, but it made for a fun photo op.

The statue is next to the Hiyoshi Shrine (日吉神社), which is also good for a photo op...

I think this descent on Route 477 is one of the most beautiful descents in Kyoto, comparable to the southwestern descent from Mochikochi Pass. Just beautiful and relaxing (so long, at least, as no one crashes).

Unfortunately, it started to rain lightly (we hit the unlucky 10% on a day with a 10% chance of rain), so we had to take it particularly slowly, but it's just as well because with the road being closed to traffic, sticks and other debris had accumulated more than normally.

I held them back with the camera for long enough, and they took off...

The rain got stronger so I stopped under a tree to put the camera into a waterproof bag, but first waited to snap shots of Kumiko and Eric...

It was my first ride with Eric since the long ride to Obama at the start of the summer where he got two flat tires. As we rode together lazily downhill, I made the mistake of asking whether he'd had any flats since.

Big mistake on my part for disturbing the wa of the tire gods... literally 15 seconds after his answer of “No, none at all since then”, his tire suddenly deflated with an insistent hissing.

We hoped our troubles would be behind us after making it past the silly closed off area, but the unexpected rain and Eric's flat were just the beginning.

Continued here...