It's the rainy season in Japan, which means that when it's not hot and humid, it's hot and humid and wet. Earlier in the week Gorm and I had a wet ride in the mountains north of Kyoto that turned into a bit of an adventure.

We started off by cycling up to Hanase Pass, which is a litmus test of a climb that always strikes fear into my heart. It was my 21st time up, the first having been my crazy first ride a year ago February.

For Gorm, who is just visiting from Norway, it was his 5th.

I was happy to make a PR on the benchmark segment by almost a minute and a half, down to 30:40. I've still got a ways to go to break 30 minutes, or to beat Gorm's PR (30:19) for that matter.

Due to the light rain and feeling quite chilly, I was fairly miserable on the descent down the other side, but it was really beautiful. You'll have to take my word for it because I only had a crappy waterproof camera with me.

The descent saw the sun come out occasionally, which along with my drying off did wonders for my mood. After a hot-coffee stop, I was feeling good.

We weren't in any particular rush, so we took the time to try a little road I've wanted to check out for some while, which leads to The Bujoji Temple (峰定寺). The short two-kilometer road is lovely, but the apparently-pretty temple is not visible from the paved road, and we weren't dedicated enough to make the hike from the road.

We then rode over Sasari Pass (佐々里峠). The climb is shorter than Hanase Pass, but it does have its steep sections. I'd done it only two other times, and not for a long while. Especially since this was my first time to climb it since getting a real road bike, I expected to make a PR, and I did by over two minutes, down to 23:39.

It was Gorm's first time, and he clocked in thirty seconds faster than I.

After the lovely descent down the other side, we took a gamble on a route we hadn't taken before. I'd heard that it was fully paved, so it was worth a shot, but we'd have to backtrack if the road condition was too bad.

The photo above isn't the road we were considering... just a side road we took a peek at. Yet still....

I don't know what caused the flat, but I don't think it was a rock. The hole was very small.

In the photo I'm wearing ThinOPTICS tiny clip-on reading glasses that I keep in the seat bag. They're very tiny and light, and also very useful so that I can actually see what I'm doing. I'd think that any cyclist of a certain age would find them quite handy when needed.

I've ridden on this forestry road a couple of times with my Trek cross bike, which is more appropriate for gravel than my Rose road bike. The forestry road alternates between gravel and pristine pavement, but the gravel makes it off limits for today's bikes. The road up was pretty spotty, but I knew that the road down the other side had some areas that were much worse.

Last year the entrance to the road had signs saying “Road Closed” and “due to landslide All Lanes Closed”. By the time I'd gotten to this place along the long forestry road with absolutely no services, I was tired and thirsty, so I took my chance going down the closed road in the hopes of reaching civilization, or at least something to drink. After all, it's often easy for bicycles to get by obstacles that cars can't, like this or this.

On that trip last year, the road was in really bad shape...

That road was well and truly impassable, at least without rappelling gear. I had to re-climb more than 200m (660') of vertical ascent just to get back to the main forestry road, and continue another 10km until the next chance to exit.

This year I thought would be better, since I knew others had ridden it recently and told me, I thought, that it was all paved.

It's not all paved.

The sections of bad pavement I'd seen last year were replaced by gravel, so it was all gravel for 15 minutes until we finally got to some pavement, which was then very nice.

On the way home, we stopped by a cafe I first wrote about six years ago, “Yama no Ie Hasegawa”, for sustenance.

Gorm had deep-fried shrimp and fish; I had bacon-wrapped hamburger. Both were tasty, and washed down with Cokes.

The ride ended up being 114km (71mi) with about 2,000m (6,500') of elevation gain.

This was the second ride in a row that I'd ridden in the rain (the first having been a short ride to search, unsuccessfully it turns out, for an old iPhone I'd lost on a ride the day prior) so the bike was full of grime splashed up from the road.

So I spent the next day washing it, and after cleaning the relatively-new tires was horrified to find plenty of bits of gravel and such wedged into the rubber. I dug them out, but don't feel they'll last all that much longer, so I've already ordered another pair of different tires. We'll see.

The sheer amount of grime on every surface of the bike was stunning, and depressing, so even though I don't mind riding in the rain, I've avoided it since. It looks like I'll be able to get out on Sunday... I'm thinking to ride to Himeji, a ride of comparable distance to last week's ride to Nagoya, but one where the route looks much more appealing. We'll see.