We had an eclectic little ride the other day to celebrate Joshua's birthday. Unlike a common ride that makes a big loop through some gorgeous mountains, this ride stayed closer to home, hopping from interesting point to interesting point, at a slow, fun pace.

It was my 16th time to ride with Joshua, since joining him on a NORU bike tour two and a half years ago.

It turns out that one can use this dirt trail to get around having to descent the "Nasty" 21% slope. Personally, I'd rather just descend on the road because neither my bike nor [...]

Where does the time go? I'm finally following up to "Minh and Nghia Photoshoot Preview" about two weeks later than I expected.

After having a coffee and chat to get to know them a bit, we headed toward the always-photogenic Heian Shrine. I wore Nghia's backpack so it wouldn't bother the photos, and we got down to it...

I never really expect anything to come of the first shots, since we're just starting to get comfortable with each other and with the situation, but what came immediately after the shot above pretty much foreshadowed the entire day:

I don't recall [...]

Alexis, a cycling Frenchman living in England, contacted NORU for a private bike tour around the far-flung mountains of Kyoto. Joshua set him up with a bike and took him around, while I tagged along for photos.

Right after this photo is the first real test of cycling ability, a short, steep climb that averages 10% over 760m (half a mile), but has some 17% sections.

When you're contacted out of the blue by someone for a bike ride, you're not really sure of their level and what would be appropriate/fun/challenging/daunting for them, so this initial climb would be a [...]

I did a fun photoshoot today with Minh and Nghia, vacationing from San Jose, CA.

We're all American, but they had almost as much trouble with my German-ancestry name as I did with their Vietnamese-ancestry names. Her name is pronounced "min", like the start of "Minnie Mouse". His sounds like "knee-ah".

I literally haven't seen more than a smattering of the photos I took, but throwing a few darts at my Lightroom catalog brought up a few I can share right away.

They started their vacation as a celebration of five years together, but Nghia had loftier plans...

Continued here...

I had an enjoyable bike ride of exploration around the nooks and crannies of Ohara the other day, so I thought I'd share some photos. Here's the ride at Strava:

The impetus for this ride was to check out some of the minor roads I'd seen on 路面と勾 配 (literally "road surface and slope"), a blog full of reports on exceedingly-minor mountain roads, each replete with detailed photos and commentary. He's got well over 1,000 such reports so far.

I spend a fair amount of my time updating OpenStreetMaps based on his articles. These are the maps used by Strava, [...]