Fumie had her annual fall ballet recital yesterday, and it was amazing. Sadly, no video was allowed this time, but she's really progressed in technique and presentation. She is a real ballerina.

She did the technically-demanding "Swanilda" variation from Coppélia's act three, wearing this:

この記事は長いですが、簡単な要約すると、新しいサイクリング用の靴を慣れてきました。

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted "Trepidation and Anticipation: Moving Up to Cycling Shoes", which opens with the same photo seen above, and in which I admit my anxiety of riding with shoes that physically clip to the bike's pedals. The fear arose from not being able to put my food down in an emergency, thereby causing me to fall over, perhaps on nasty rocks or at high speed, or, even worse, in front of friends.

Prior to this change, since I first got bitten by the cycling bug in January, I'd ridden 2,978km (1,850 mi) [...]

FYI, I've just updated the page for my Photoshop calendar-template-building script to include pre-built PSDs for 2016 (and 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020), in case you can't run the script but have Photoshop and want to make some custom calendars.

This post picks up from "Bridget and Sarah’s Tour-de-Kyoto, Part 1" about a great ride with a couple of Aussie girls visiting Kyoto. That first part of the story left off 3½ hours and 41km into our ride, after Eric had fixed his flat.

We got almost four whole minutes farther down the road before the next flat, this time on Sarah's bike.

Despite the rain, things got bright after that because we didn't get another flat for almost a full 30 minutes!

The rain abated a bit, so later when after having crested a short mountain pass, I went [...]

They said "Road Closed", but no road is closed on an epic day of epic cycling done epically.

I wasn't originally planning to cycle today, but a hastily arranged plan for a short ride to attempt the most-heinous Momoi Pass (east) while riding clipped in without falling or otherwise stopping.

But in the end no only did I conquer that personal goal, I went on to have the most epic cycling adventure with Andy Clark and Nigel Randell.

The ride was only 100km (62mi) long, with only 1,841m (6,040') of elevation gain, but it was epic and I'm too exhausted [...]