I spent the most wonderful day on Friday cycling around the mountains beyond Uji City, near Kyoto.

I had gone to the area earlier in the week for what I called a "Kasatori Festival", doing the climb up Mt. Kasatori from all four directions. It's a tiny mountain that I visited on one of my first bike rides, at that time finishing just one of the short climbs utterly spent.

I'm in better shape now, though the ridiculously-steep Eastern approach climb killed me.

While futzing around with the ride data afterwards, I realized that this was the area I visited [...]

I'm back in Kyoto, after spending the better part of a month with my folks in Ohio. Mom continues to recover from her February stroke. I snapped a few photos out the window as we crossed The States on the Cleveland → San Francisco flight.

An hour later crusing along well above the clouds, I noticed another plane keeping pace with us in the far distance (just a tiny speck, dead center in this next photo).

Not quite the closeup view from eight years ago. 🙂

I arrived back home in Kyoto last Wednesday evening, and slept well the first [...]

I enjoy reliving a bicycle ride by reviewing the statistics on Strava, seeing how well I did on certain stretches of road compared to how I've done before, or perhaps how I compare to my friends.

In the Strava universe, sections of road are broken up into "segments", and if your ride traverses a segment, you'll get info about how you and others have done on it. If your ride transverses lots of segments, you'll get a lot of info.

Segments can be created by any Strava user at any time, which on one hand is really great and flexible, [...]

My niece Jena, who appeared on my blog six years ago today with "Uzu iPad App Reviewed By 23-Month-Old Jena", said she'd like to see more wigglegrams, so here are a couple from my photo archives just for her.

The first one comes from a November 2014 trip to the Flower Temple (花の寺) in southern Kyoto that produced "A Quick Peek at Kyoto’s Hanadera Temple" (with its own wigglegram), and "An Among-the-Fall-Colors What-am-I? Quiz". This wigglegram features Damien, his red hat, and a big bell.

This next wigglegram is from a trip to the Kongorinji Temple (金剛輪寺) a few [...]

My brother Alan and his family stopped for a bit by my folks' place on their back home, for some fun and relaxation. Prior to saying goodbye, Titi joked around...