The other day I made an impromptu decision to ride to Amanohashidate (see at Wikipedia) the next morning. It's pretty far away, and in the end the big loop turned out to be 293km (182mi), putting it well past my 260km (160mi) “Cycling to Nagoya for Coffee” ride as my longest.

The evening before I made a clockwise route, but that morning decided to do it the other direction, thinking to put the easier leg on the return trip, so I made a new counterclockwise route (or, I should say, I whipped up a program to reverse route waypoints and re-map the route on GraphHopper.com).

I finally got out of the house at 8am.

I see Tobidashi-kun all over the villages around here, but saw very few on this trip.

I made reasonable time north, but a headwind started developing after Hanaore Pass, and it grew stronger the farther north I got. It wasn't all that bad, though, and I eventually made my way north enough to find snow on the road, just north of Kutsuki...

I came across a group of motorcyclists moments after someone had crashed, just as they were righting the bike. They had passed me not long before, driving carefully and conservatively, so I'm at a loss to guess how someone dropped his bike. I'm sure that they all had phones, but I stopped to ask whether they needed assistance anyway, to which they thanked me but said no. No one seemed injured, except I suppose the pride of whoever had dropped the now disabled bike.

From here it was 22 downhill kilometers to the city of Obama. The first little bit was a twisty mountain road, to reach the main national road, which was then a long fast downhill where speed so far has been limited by traffic having the audacity to go the speed limit (50kph).

This time was no exception, and I found myself drafting a dump truck lumbering downhill at 50kph. I love drafting big trucks and buses... it's as close to one can get to a magic carpet ride. But the road was pristine and otherwise empty, so on a long clear straightaway I blew past him. I kept on the same road for another 10 minutes before turning off, but I never saw him again.

Eventually I got out of the mountains and moved to a much smaller road that cuts through flat farmland. I thought I'd had the “magic carpet ride” drafting the truck on the downhill, but suddenly it was another plain altogether, with what was certainly the strongest tailwind I'd ever experienced. I was flying without even trying.

I was shocked to be hitting 60kph (37mph) on a flat without even trying. Normally on a flat without wind, I can hold 50kph (31mph) for a minute if I kill myself (Exhibit A), but here it was surreal. I was sitting up holding the camera with two hands, turning around to photograph the mountains behind me, and still easily exceeding 50kph. It was wonderful.

(As wonderful as it was, let's keep things in perspective. At yesterday's Paris-Roubaix race, the winner kept up an average of 45kph for almost six hours, and that includes the time spent crashing and waiting for his team to bring a new bike.)

Anyway, I made a Strava segment to cover the straight 1.9km (1.2mi) magic-carpet section, and easily got the KOM (“King of the Mountain” — the fastest registered time). I named it “Tailwind Sprint”. Oh how I wish I could go back and put away the camera and really give it a good effort.

Last week, on this ride beset by string headwinds, I did have one section with a zippy tail wind, and I ended up with the 2nd-fastet time out of more than 20,000 recorded. Again, if I had only known, I would have really tried to take advantage of the situation.

At one point I had to jig 90° to a parallel road, and so for that little bit I was broadside to the winds. Even though I was holding on tightly with two hands and expecting the gusts, it was a challenge to stay upright. The wind was very strong.

The lovely road seen above didn't exist on the maps that Strava uses, which is perhaps one reason that so few people have ridden it (I made a segment, but it shows only three people have ridden it). I've since added that road to the map data. It took about 10 seconds to add the road, but about three hours before I could make myself stop fixing things. The data in this rural area was horrible.

This was my fifth time to ride to Obama (previous visits covered here, here, here, and here), but on this ride I was only halfway to the halfway spot. If those tailwinds were to continue, though, I'd make short work of the rest.

Unfortunately, the same wind what provided the boost into Obama became a cross/headwind as I rode along the coast, and the next 75km were hellatious. I needed some of the “Genky” seen above. 元気 (genki) is the Japanese word for health and vitality... someone who is not ill is genki; someone very old who still gets around is genki; young children can be too genki for their weary parents; someone fighting feirce headwinds for 75km sees the genki seep out of them.

The circular road sign at left indicates that bicycles and rickshaws and the like are not allowed on the bridge, so I had to make an unexpected detour. I've since updated the map data so that this mistake won't happen to others.

Especially after the horrendous fatigue that struck me on this long ride the other day, I built restaurant stops into my plan. I was in good shape, but weary from the wind, so I was happy to stop for a while.

The first thing I thought of when seeing “kp” was “kilo-pascals”, but that makes no sense (52 kilopascals is about half atmospheric pressure, and would normally be written as “52kPa”, not “52kp”). Then I thought “kilo-parsec”, but 52 kilo-parsec is sort of a long way to ride a bike (it's about 1,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters), so it's probably not that. I did some digging and found that it means “kilo-post” (キロポスト), and marks the distance in kilometers from some starting location.

This is the same rotating bridge seen on my blog nine years ago.

Amanohashidate is a strand of land a mile or two long bisecting a bay, comparable to San Diego's Silver Strand, but much smaller. From the ground, there's really nothing interesting to see about it.

I wanted to share a photo on my Facebook page to show that I had reached the place, but the typical scene from the ground wouldn't have indicated much about where I was, so took a photo in front of a sign board with the name. I continued the silly “long ride for a cop of coffee” thing I started in “Cycling to Nagoya for Coffee” by using a can of coffee from a vending machine as a prop.

It wasn't on my original plan, but I was feeling good and I didn't have to be home by a particular time, so I decided to cycle up a mountain to a scenic view spot. Most folks go up the cable car seen above, but there's a road as well, 2.8km @ 10%.

The steep lead up seen at right was brutal, especially coming after kilometers of climb, so I was happy to have the excuse to take a photo as a reason to stop. But then, after the hairpin, it got even worse, reaching Nasty 20+% levels. At least for this section the road surface was fine.

The maps in this area were atrocious so I was playing it by ear, but from what I could gather, after I had climbed up to a temple, it was just a short ride over to the scenic-view spot. It turns out, though, that the “short ride” included 150m (500') of steep descent:

I don't quite get what's going on with this road. It's a public road (“Kyoto Prefectural Road 616”), but there's a makeshift sign saying that only buses and pedestrians are allowed (no vehicles allowed, not even bicycles). I hadn't seen this makeshift sign on the way in, but even if I had, I'm not sure I would have let it deter me. The government has specific signs it uses on public roads to indicate vehicular limitations, such as the “no bicycles and rickshaws” signs seen above; I question whether a makeshift sign expressing one person's desire for the road eclipses my (tax-paying, I might add) right.

Anyway, I didn't have these philosophical thoughts on my mind at the time, with the need to return up the same steep road filling my thoughts.

After relaxing for a bit, I made most of the 150m climb back up towards the temple, but just before arriving realized that I had dropped my taillight. Upon reaching the sandy path an hour earlier I'd wanted to make sure it was fully charged for the long ride home which would be mostly in the dark, so I attached it to my portable charger. It's easy to fall out, so I wrapped the pair in a bag and stuck it in the back pocket of my jersey.

Apparently, it had poked through the bag and fallen out. I figured it must have been at the scenic-view spot, so I descended to get it. It wasn't there, so I made the 150m climb back up to the temple.

One of the draws for me to have made the long climb up to begin with, besides the view, was to leave my KOM mark in the area by hitting the descent in my traditional manner. That plan fell by the wayside as I descended slowly, to try to find my taillight that had presumably fallen by the wayside. Besides not wanting to be out a $50 light, I sort of wanted to have the light for the return trip home.

Didn't find it.

I hadn't been planning to return to the sandy landbridge, but did so looking for the light. Never found it. It's got my name and phone number on it, so perhaps I'll eventually get it back. It is Japan, after all.

Finally giving up, at 5pm, after just a bit over 100 miles of riding, I started on the return trip home. I planned a more direct route than the one I came on (the return would be just 130km / 81mi), a route that went over some mountains but didn't seem to — in the rough research I'd done the night before — have all that much climbing.

My biggest stress for the return was battery management. By law and common sense I needed lights in front and back for the many hours I'd be riding in the dark. I didn't care about the front so much except in a city, but I always needed to care about the back. My Fly6 rear camera functions as a tail light, but I worried how much battery I had. I also worried about running out of battery on my phone and on my Garmin cycling computer (the latter of which was recording my ride, and displaying my route so I knew when to turn). I had one portable recharger battery, but managing it so that I could keep everything important going filled my thoughts.

I didn't think the overall return had much climbing, but I knew it had one doozy at the beginning. But first, my plans called for dinner at a restaurant I'd mapped out at the foot of the climb....

It turns out that this road often splits and rejoins, with one branch being the original straight (steep) way, and the other being a longer, twisty, more mild climb. My routing software had given me the shortest route, which was of course the steepest. I would have chosen exactly that had I paid attention, but it turns out that not many would, because only three people using Strava have taken it. By comparison, fifteen have taken the easiest route, and seventy have bailed on the road altogether to take the easier modern bypass. All in all I guess the point is that few people ride here at all. /-:

At 8pm I was still 3½ hours from home.

I had been very wrong about there not being much climbing. There was lots, and I was slow. I got home around 11:30pm.

Here's the Relive.cc video of the ride: