I went out the other day for a ride with Salvo, that turned out to be a nice Century (100+ mile) ride. Here is the ride at Strava:

There was nothing particularly “epic” or any special goal of the ride. It was just an all-around pleasant day. Salvo had ridden the route in strong wind the previous week, and thought it'd be nice to do again.

We took a road that I had passed by many times. I had heard that it was gravel, yet ridable, so I'd been wanting to try, and today was that day.

I was surprised to find that so much of the road (all so far) was paved. I was also surprised to find that it had such a steep climb (830m @ 10%).

We returned up the mountain via a different road that Salvo had shown me last year, and that I also taken on the ride blogged about in “Cycling Through Bamboo Groves and Up Steep Mountain Slopes”. Joshua hadn't known about, so was pleased to learn of a new lovely climb.

Once we reached the top, Joshua went his own way to return home, as Salvo and I stopped for coffee and bread.

This cafe is at the top of a very fast descent, so I enjoyed that to get moving after the break. I just had fun, ending up with only my third-fastest time, though it would have been a KOM (“King of the Mountain” — the fastest registered time) had the KOM not already been mine. 😉

I'd made a route that diverged from Salvo's original ride so that we could stop by a restaurant that I'd found online that had good reviews.

Salvo's food didn't come, and didn't come, and didn't come, so much so that we started joking that perhaps they forgot. Then we started thinking that it wasn't a joke, and sure enough, they had forgotten. To make it worse, the dish in the upper left of my tray was supposed to have been a main flavoring for his meal, but now they were out of it. (By this time, I had completely finished my lunch.)

It was sort of comical, and they said “sorry” without really apologizing. The saving grace was that Salvo's lunch was very, very good. Mine was fine, but nothing special.

The descent that started here was lovely, and Salvo had been telling me about it for the whole trip, that I would really enjoy it, and it did not disappoint. Gentle curves under a canopy of lush green with a relatively-well-surfaced road. Super photogenic the whole way, but sorry, no photos, because I was enjoying it too much. I leisurely crested the pass after taking the photo above, then followed leisurely behind Salvo for half a minute before deciding to enjoy it in my style, putting a bit of zip into it. It was lovely. Salvo and I took 2nd-overall and KOM, respectively.

Here's the video from my front camera, to perhaps give a sense of the loveliness...

I wrote about Koinobori almost exactly 10 years ago, in “Koinobori in Biei, Hokkaido”, but this was the biggest display I'd ever seen by at least an order of magnitude. Each one was perhaps two to three meters long, and there must have been a hundred of them.

At the top of the climb was an adventure place, with ziplines and tree-top walks. Chatting with a staff member as we rested, this conversation took place:

Staff member:	“What country are you from?”
Me:	“I'm from America and he's from Italy.”
Staff member:	(turning to Salvo) “I speak some Spanish.”
Salvo:	(clearly being sarcastic) “I speak some Chinese, so we can communicate.”

Then followed a nice descent that I had been looking forward to, but I ended up registering the slowest recorded time because I got a flat...

I used to get flats all the time, until I changed to Continental Gatorskin tires. This was the first flat in about 11,000 wheel kilometers (6,800 wheel miles). In all those miles I'd replaced the tires as they wore out, but kept the same tubes. In any case, this flat looked like a pinch flat, which seemed odd because I hadn't just hit a rough edge or anything (the road was not bad), but I changed it and moved on.

I got another flat on a ride today, and in inspecting the tire more carefully, realized that the sidewall had been broken down in one area, so that was the problem. I'd gone more than 5,600km (3,500mi) on that tire, so I guess it was due for a change anyway.

I was quite tired by the end. It was my 18th century (ride of 100 miles or more), with 97km (60mi) of roads that were new to me. Was a good day.