So, the idea for the day was simple: join Antti's farewell ride until they hit gravel, then go off on my own to find a spot to set up a hammock and relax with a book for a while.

It didn't work out that way.

Antti is returning to Finland after many years in Kyoto. He's left his mark on the Strava leaderboards, and on his friends' hearts. His farewell ride was to be a gravel affair; I have no interest in riding on gravel, but I thought I'd join for the road part, bringing along my hammock to set up somewhere in the countryside to relax after reaching the gravel.

They decided to head up a road that is part of my Kyoto “Tree of Pain” ride (a ride with more than 4,600m/15,000' of climb). On the Tree-of-Pain ride I don't take it very far, because that would make the tree look lopsided. The paved road continues on to a 3.5km climb at more than 11%, which I'd done once before, but only the one time because it requires a generous interpretation for both “paved” and “road”. The whole way is strewn with rocks and all manner of debris, and for some stretches there's not even a pretense of pavement.

But that's what they were going to do today.

I figured that I'd bail some time during this climb — my hammock was calling, after all, and I hated gravel — but as we went, I somehow talked myself into doing the whole climb, even though the last ~600m is steep gravel. I guess I wanted to complete the segment. They'd continue on with their gravel play and I'd return down this horrible road back to civilization.

The road was even worse than I remembered. We had to walk some sections due to the sharp rocks, or mini landslides. It wasn't particularly fun, but it was nice to ride with friends. To make it worse, my rear derailleur was getting increasingly unsmooth and noisy, and eventually it got to the point where I couldn't move the pedals backwards. Adjusting the Di2 indexing didn't help, so I figured that I must have bent it slightly somehow. Sigh. I'd have to go to a shop after returning to the city. To make matters worse, the walking on the rocks broke one of my cleats (that locks my shoe into the pedals), so I couldn't put in power while pedaling without my foot slipping out. Double sigh.

At least I had my hammock to look forward to.

At the top, I lamented about my derailleur situation. Antti came over to look at it and found that the bolt holding it to the frame was super loose. Doh! I'd never thought to check that, never having had it come loose in my cycling career. A few turns of a hex wrench and it was good as new. Thanks Antti!

The others spent some time discussing the relative pros and cons of continuing in each of the two directions that the gravel road split from there. It turned out, I was told, that if I went the one direction, it would have some steep gravel sections that I might have to walk, but it would lead fairly quickly to a proper paved road that I knew. The other direction, which they decided to go, would have been much harder on my road bike. I didn't want to descend on the long horrible road we'd just climbed, so I thought that a few minutes of gravel walking would be worth it to get to the paved road quickly. Other than my derailleur and cleat, it'd been a great day, so off I went on the short but unknown gravel section.

And there began my real troubles.

The gravel path went softly downhill for a while, then plummeted steeply down for a while further. "Well, I'm definitely not going to want to ride back up that, so I'm committed to this route, I guess."

But after about 800m, I came to an intersection and had to check the map. According to my map, which was clearly incomplete, the main “road” (rough gravel path) that I was on did not lead quickly to a paved road, but it was more in the general direction than the alternative (which was not on my map), so I continued straight.

A few hundred meters later, I came to another fork. This time the alternative was on my map, and though it didn't lead to the paved road on the map, it went in that direction. This must be the road, so I took it. Very steep, and there was increasingly junk car parts strewn along the side, so I felt that yeah, I'm getting close to the proper paved road. Until it ended in the thick, steep forest, 250m from the road:

Sigh. I walked back up, pushing my bike. (Remember, I can't really ride up anything steep with my broken cleat.)

Continuing down, the road suddenly became paved (and got even more steep). Yay, this must mean that I've almost reached a proper road!

Hope was shortlived, as the pavement quickly gave way to gravel again. Sigh.

I came to another fork, this time where the main path I'd been on suddenly started going steeply up, parallel with the nearest proper road. The offshoot went toward the proper road, so I took it, diving down into a ravine.

Here I got within 200m of the proper road, but again the path just ended.

This is getting tiresome. I started to walk back up, then I realized that I had lost one of my cleat covers, which I had been using to make walking on the rocks easier. So, the whole time I'm pushing my bike back up as I return toward the main path, I'm scanning the rocky ground for my lost cover.

I didn't find it, but I did eventually realize that I'd now lost the other one. Triple sigh.

I really didn't want to continue on the main path. By this time I realized that it wasn't going to connect to a proper road for several kilometers. I had hoped that it would all at least be downhill, but now I had this steep climb to look forward to. I couldn't ride such a steep road uphill with my broken cleat, and that's just as well because I was in no mood to do it. I pushed the bike for a long time.

Eventually it started downhill again, and the road was ostensibly paved (again, using the words “paved” and “road” generously), so I thought that finally my ordeal would be over soon. How quaint.

The road got somewhat nice and steeply downhill, so now I hoped it'd be a breeze to return to the proper road.....

I came around a curve, and found that the road had disintegrated and was covered by a jumble of fallen trees due to a landslide. There was no freakin' way I was going to retrace my steps, so I very much wanted to get past it.

I have some experience climbing through/over this kind of jumbled piles of trees (see “Surveying Supertyphoon Jebi’s Damage North of Kyoto, Part 1” and Part 2), but for this I had to take a different tack.

I left the bike and walked back uphill far enough until I found a place where I could climb up the mountain on the non-slide side, and make my way across to just above the landslide. I could see from there that the road just beyond the logjam was clear, and that I could probably get back down to the road safely. Good enough.

So, I returned to fetch the bike.

So, I was safely past. My shoes were waterlogged and my legs were covered in bloody scratches, but I had gathered no leaches and no broken bones, so I felt triumphant. (I see now that it took just 13 minutes for me to get past, but it felt at the time like it was an hours-long endeavor.)

You'll notice how devoid of rocks the road is on the downstream side of the blockage, and that's because it was a stream. Water was rushing down the road, edge-to-edge, and that had cleaned away all the rocks. Yeah.

So, past this obstruction, I continue back to civilization!

Or not.

While risking my life trying to get around the previous jumble of trees, it was very much on my mind that the last thought that went through some people's mind right before they died was “Yeah, I can do this!”.

I still had a long way to go before reaching a proper road, and I didn't know how many more of these landslides there might be before then. I had climbed up into this second jumble to see whether I could find a way past, and I couldn't. But even if I did, I might not be able to get past the next one, and I might not be able to return. It was just too dangerous, so I bit the bullet and decided to retrace my path all the way back to where I'd left the others, then descend on that horrible road we'd ridden up.

Getting back around the first jumble of trees was even harder from this downhill side, and I still don't know how I was actually able to do it. The embankment that I had to scale was extremely steep without much to hold onto.

But I made it, and slowly walked back up the mountain.

The whole time I was descending the horrible road we'd ridden up, I just knew that I'd get a puncture, as the cherry on top of the day, but I didn't. I've been using Continental Gatorskin tires for about five years, and have not had a single puncture flat since. (Well, I've had three pinch flats, which were because I hadn't kept enough air pressure, and a few flats because the tube seams had just given way due to age or poor manufacturing; the tires have performed perfectly.)

Eventually I made it back into cellular range, and found a message from Antti saying that they were having beers by the river in the city, so I decided to forego the hammock and go directly there. I felt so stinky and disgusting that I thought about heading home to clean up first, but in the end I found them all chilling.

In the ensuing discussion, it turns out that I had been told to make a specific turn just ~200m from where I left them, but I hadn't heard that part, nor even seen that turnoff when I went by. (I did see it on the way walking back, and figured that that must be the way. I was very tempted to try it, because I really didn't want to descend the horrible road we'd all ridden up, but no, I wasn't going to take any more chances today, so I stuck with retracing my steps.)