Manu Mohan and Manseki Kanemitsu joined me on light ride to Osaka Castle and back. It was my first ride with Manu since we tackled Seryo Pass three months ago.

Manu's bike is a folding commuter bike, which is not really appropriate for "real" cycling. It's too small for him and the range of gears is limited, but the ride to Osaka is not challenging except for its length. The round trip is more than 100km.

His rear tire seemed a bit low on air, something that would rob him of speed and power. If he had a normal road [...]

A month and a half ago I got an email out of the blue asking whether I'd like to have a free pair of wireless bluetooth headphones in exchange for a review on my blog. Well gee, sure, why not?! It's cheap advertising for them if I like them, but they risk bad PR if I don't.

In the past I'd tried small wireless headphones from Avantree, ECSEM, and Mpow before finding a pair I liked, "BlueAnt Pump". I was happy with those, but figured it wouldn't hurt to give another pair a try.

So, I was sent a pair [...]

A couple of Aussies on a cycling vacation in Japan contacted the Cycling Kyoto! group on Facebook looking for interesting rides in the area. A group of us ended up going on two rides in two days with Sarah Knights and Bridget Slocum, hard-core amateur cyclists that compete on the national level in Australia.

As it turns out, they're also fun people.

Manseki Kanemitsu and I met the girls near their hotel and moved across town toward the mountains to the west, picking up folks along the way....

After also picking up Mone Sakura, we headed toward the Arashiyama area [...]

It's been half a year since our vacation brought us to Horseshoe Bend in Page Arizona, so I guess it's time to finally post some pictures.

Just like the stunning Antelope Canyon that we visited earlier in the day, from afar the place looks like nothing special...

Being a desert, there's sand (very fine powdery sand) everywhere. A path through it leads from the parking lot up a long rise. Here's a photo from about halfway up, looking back:

When you crest the hill, you see pretty much what you saw everywhere else, except for the addition of a big [...]

San Francisco friends Eric and Gigi are in town again. We last saw them earlier in the year buying a Kimono and playing in the snow. Yesterday they made a visit to the Kiyomizu Temple, and I popped over to join them.

It was a Monday, but the place was crazy crowded like during a high-season weekend. The economy must really be doing better.

Eric and Gigi like to shoot portraiture, and the challenge in a setting 8like this is to find places and angles that omit the crowd, yet still lend a feeling of the location. As we instinctively [...]