We had a nice social group ride to Onyu Pass, 75km (47 mi) of mountain roads north of Kyoto. The entire trip was about 150km (93 mi).

The first three hours would be just moving north, and would cover most of the length of National Route 367, thereby mostly mimicking the start of my recent “Stupid Cycling Tricks” ride.

I've cycled these hairpins eight times so far, but had never stopped for the view. Today was a relaxing ride, so I indulged. The big tower in the center is the subject of “Kyoto’s “I Fall” Tower” almost eight years ago.

Salvo had been getting into and out of an aero position just to stretch his back, and had to laugh when I asked him to repeat the process for the camera. But repeat it he did...

We all rode together for the first while, but I eventually had the idea to try to get some shots of the group from above, which meant going ahead enough to be above them on one of the many cutbacks.

Not coming across any good views of the road below with people in them, I eventually gave up the idea of getting a picture and decided to give a real effort for the rest of the climb.

First I had to catch Ionut.

We're more or less evenly matched, though he's a bit on the stronger side, but I had the advantage of not having put in any real effort so far this day. He had done the previous climb in a monumentally-fast 21 minutes, while I had taken 37 minutes of lazy chatting and photography.

Plus, he hadn't done this climb before so had no idea what to expect or how best to pace himself. It was my fifth time.

So, I beat him to the top by 10 seconds.

I'm really happy with my level of fitness these days (compared to my earlier self). Despite the slow start and the pauses for photography, my time of 24:16 was a new PR (personal record) by three and a half minutes. Compared to others in my group I'm still solidly a middle-of-the-pack rider; to get into KOM (“King of the Mountain”) territory I'd need to shave off an additional four minutes, and that's not going to happen.

(UPDATE: it didn't happen for me, but it did for Ionut, who got himself into shape and by the next summer he crushed the KOM.)

“Manseki, why did you take the group shot without me?”
“Don't worry, you were in background.”

The road continues on toward Obama and the coast, but the northern descent is not paved so I've not used this route for any of the times I've ridden to Obama (this, this, and this).

The main metrics for cycling as a sport are speed while climbing, speed over long distances, and intense sprint speed at the end of a race. But I tend to really enjoy fast descents, and tend to be very good at it, so that's what I'll talk about. 🙂

Everyone had started the descent before me, but I quickly caught up with them and then spent the bulk of the descent placing myself such that my bike's two cameras (one facing forward, the other backward) might get good views of others, in case I ever find the energy to edit the footage into an interesting clip.

So, considering that I spent most of the time riding with the group and no time trying to make a fast descent, it's not surprising that it wasn't my fastest descent of this mountain by a long shot. What does surprise me, though, is that even though it was only my third fastest, it was still faster than anyone else registered on Strava has ever done it. 🙂

After climbing and descending Hanase Pass, we returned to Kyoto hungry and satisfied. Some of us got together for nabe and drinks. It was a fun ending to a fun day.

The only downside to the day for me was the descent to Kyoto from Hanase Pass. I was shocked to find that I had made a PR, even though I had stopped at one point to put on my windbreaker, and had generally ratcheted back the pace due to the encroaching darkness. It's not a descent that I try to go fast on anyway, because some sections of the road are brutally bumpy, making parts of the descent decidedly unfun.

So, the PR was unexpected but not unwelcome. What was unwelcome was that the mount used to hold my front camera (Cyclic Fly12) and cycle computer (Garmin Edge 820) to my bike — a $60 K-EDGE Garmin Mount XL — snapped when I hit one of those bumps. The whole thing would have gone crashing to the ground at high speed except, thankfully, I had a backup tether for just such an eventuality. I had been thinking earlier in the ride that I should just get rid of the tether because the mount seems so strong.

Well, the mount is strong, but the bolts holding parts of it together, not so much:

The mount arm is actually two separate pieces joined with two small bolts, an odd design that creates a weak-link-in-the-chain point of failure in otherwise robust construction. I'm guessing that in this case, one of the bolts worked itself loose early in the descent, causing a lot of stress on the remaining bolt during subsequent bumps, eventually giving way on a big bump. The video of the descent becomes quite shaky leading up to the failure, lending credence to this theory.

This “one bolt worked loose” theory surprises me for a couple of reasons. One is that I had specifically checked the bolts for looseness earlier in the ride, trying to track down a rattling noise from the area. The bolts were secure. (It turns out that the rattling is coming from within the Fly12 camera.)

Furthermore, I thought that I had secured the two bolts particularly well, even using Loctite 222 to prevent them from working loose. I had noticed one bolt working a bit loose a month or so ago, so took care to make them snug with the Loctite. Apparently it wasn't enough.... perhaps next time I should use Loctite 262 High Strength Mil-Spec Red Threadlocker :-/

I can understand a design like this from an ease-of-manufacturing point of view because it lets you create separate halves for connecting to the bike and connecting to whatever accessory you want to mount, letting you then combine them in endless ways rather than having to specifically manufacture every permutation of bike-side/accessory combo. Still, it seems to place an inordinate amount of trust on two little bolts, and on the user's ability to tighten them properly and maintain vigilance that they remain tight.

I reached out to the company to ask about a similar mount with unibody construction, and to their credit they responded quickly with a desire to understand the failure and to make things right. (Merely by responding they have done more than TiGRA did when my TiGRA iPhone mount failed catastrophically, destroying my iPhone; TiGRA didn't even respond.)

I'll send the K-EDGE folks a bunch of photos and the video that shows the failure was during a ride (and not, for example, during a crash), and we'll see how things go. Not sure I'd want to trust the two-dinky-bolt design again. We'll see.

Update: As I write in “Update on my Bike-Mount Failure: K-EDGE Comes Through”, I'm trusting the mount again.