Archive for the 'General' Category

General posts

Century of Wazuka Climbs, Part 2

This post picks up on last month's "Century of Wazuka Climbs, Part 1", about what was for me an epic day of beauty and climbing, and some trials and tribulations. "Part 1" ended with a delicious lunch, so this part picks up from just after.

So, after lunch, I made my way south to the deeper, even-less populated mountains of the Wazuka region of southern Kyoto Prefecture.

I thought that I had posted these guys before, but it seems that I didn't. It's the same intersection as this photo from "Tea Tour with Manseki and Gorm" last year.

This mild [...]


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Fall-Foliage Wigglegram from Kyoto’s Flower Temple

My, how time flies. I took this wigglegram in 2014, which surprises me because it doesn't feel like I've been doing them nearly that long. Last year I posted another wigglegram from the same outing, in "A Couple of Autumn Wigglegrams for My Niece Jena".

I had briefly touched on the outing in "A Quick Peek at Kyoto’s Hanadera Temple", which itself has a wigglegram, so I guess I was in the mood that day.

This temple is wonderful to visit, but it's difficult to get to by public transport. I'm more likely to bicycle by, as it's near the [...]


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A FIT-to-GPX Converter that Understands FIT Version 2

I've complained for more than a decade about what a horrible company Garmin is (such as here in 2006, here in 2013, and here last year, among others). The only thing worse than their hardware design is their software design, but it's a strong competition to the bottom, backed by an apparent company-wide disdain for their customers.

The latest evidence of this disdain is new firmware for some of their cycling computers that renders them utterly incompatible with Garmin's own desktop software, and, for good measure, almost all other track-processing software in existence. Of course, this "feature" is not even [...]


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Lovely Century Ride Into Hyogo

I went out the other day for a ride with Salvo, that turned out to be a nice Century (100+ mile) ride. Here is the ride at Strava:

There was nothing particularly "epic" or any special goal of the ride. It was just an all-around pleasant day. Salvo had ridden the route in strong wind the previous week, and thought it'd be nice to do again.

We took a road that I had passed by many times. I had heard that it was gravel, yet ridable, so I'd been wanting to try, and today was that day.

I was surprised [...]


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Nigel’s Birthday Craziness: Ascending Hanase Pass on a Mamachari

ナイジェルさんは誕生日に際して花背峠まで登った、ママチャリで。

Nigel Randell usually does something sort of crazy on his birthday, such as this ride two years ago that I joined in on for a short portion.

This year, Nigel rode his heavy rusty mamachari (built-like-a-tank city bike) up to Hanase Pass, the 600+ meters of climb (2,000') being a challenge on the best road bike.

Neil, whom we've seen on my blog here and here, among others, is an extremely strong rider, but today on the occasion of Nigel's mamachari ride, was creating a challenge for himself by riding an old used bike with the seat dropped all [...]


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