A couple of weeks ago I had a nice 130km (80 mi) ride with Manseki and Gorm, in an area to the south-east of Kyoto I'd never been. Here's the trip as seen at Strava:

Our exit from Kyoto was on the riverside path toward Osaka. We used my new egress route to avoid the bone-jarring mud and bumps of the riverside route in the southern part of the city, then continued on the riverside path that I first posted about here.

After crossing some big rivers, instead of heading southwest toward Osaka, though, we headed southeast toward Uji. It [...]

When cycling, I use Shimano SPD-SL cleats and pedals. They're great on the bike, but when walking around, if one doesn't use cleat covers, they quickly get torn up and end up looking like this.

So, I use cleat covers whenever a stop involves more than a little walking around...

They're easy to pop on, but once on, to pull them off you have to grab a thin tiny little tab of very hard rubber and pull out and away...

Under the best of circumstances, they come right off. But with the weird angle you have to reach to pull [...]

Yesterday's cycling was a bit different from what I normally do of late. I was honored to be invited on Vincent Flanagan's annual "Kyoto Rooftop" birthday ride, on an often-gravel forestry road that follows the undulating ridgeline across 65km of mountains north of Kyoto. (You might remember Vincent from my bike fitting at Pedalforth.)

First we ride about 60km (37mi) northwest of Kyoto to get to the far end of the forestry road. Then snake around on the ridgeline road for about 65km (40mi) east. Then return home over Hanase Pass.

I added a little extra at the end, the [...]

It's the rainy season in Japan, which means that when it's not hot and humid, it's hot and humid and wet. Earlier in the week Gorm and I had a wet ride in the mountains north of Kyoto that turned into a bit of an adventure.

We started off by cycling up to Hanase Pass, which is a litmus test of a climb that always strikes fear into my heart. It was my 21st time up, the first having been my crazy first ride a year ago February.

For Gorm, who is just visiting from Norway, it was his [...]

I recently did a 260km (160 mile) bike ride from my home in Kyoto over to the city of Nagoya, and back (view at Strava). It took all day.

この間のサイクリングは京都から名古屋までの往復しました、距離は260キロでした。長い一日でした。

A line of mountains separates the two areas, so I had to go over them each way, but other than that bit of mountain riding, the rest of the ride -- the majority of the whole ride -- was just slogging through city or suburbia that might have provided interesting diversions if I had the time to stop and enjoy them, but as a "point A to point B" ride, [...]