Continued here...

I traveled again yesterday from Japan to Ohio (Kyoto → Osaka → Tokyo → Chicago → Cleveland → Rootstown) to spend some time with my folks, especially since my mom had a stroke earlier in the year. I wanted Anthony to see the property I grew on one more time, so he came along for this trip.

I don't like having to pop up to Tokyo for the transpacific flight, but that hour-long flight from Osaka to Tokyo always holds the promise of a nice Mt. Fuji view, so that's something to look forward to. Mt. Fuji isn't quite so pretty during the summer, as without the cone it's just a big dark cinder cone (This bland shot with snow is not looking so bad now.), but Mt. Fuji is Mt. Fuji.

Our flight from Chicago to Cleveland was on United Airlines, and one of the flight attendants had the most amazing smile permanently affixed to his face. Whether standing back to observe while people boarded, or while helping people board, or while doing the safety presentation, or while passing out drinks and snacks, this smile just radiated at 11 the whole time.

I sat at the back of the plane, so I could watch for a long while as he passed out a packet of snacks and a napkin to each passenger, working his way forward. Each time he passed something out, the smile made you feel that it was the highlight of his day. It was really quite amazing to watch.

The whole time I watched, the smile wavered only twice, each time suddenly blooming into an even more dazzling display, though one touched with a hint of embarrassment; I could tell that he must have just been complimented on his smile.

It really brought a lovely glow to the short flight, one that I appreciated all the more in my jet-lagged zombie state, though it made me wonder why I can't manage that kind of smile for even the 1/60th of a second for a photo. Sigh.

Once we pulled up to the gate, I knew it would take a while before people would clear out enough for me to actually exit, so what the heck, I went to the back galley to ask him for a portrait. I mentioned that he must get complimented on his smile all the time, and he got this “well, actually...” look on his face and said that he didn't, but had been complimented twice on this flight. I smiled to myself and thought “called it!”.

He kindly agreed to a portrait, and I spent a few seconds trying to take it as he stood, but the back galley of a 737 isn't the best place for a portrait and the lighting was really bad. I didn't want to take any more of his time than I already was, so I quickly adjusted his position to one side of the galley where the light was a bit smoother, and a few seconds later I had the photo above.

I took the time to get his employee number so that I could pass along this sentiment to United directly, and his email so that I could send a copy of the photo, and by then the ground crew were coming in the back entrance, so I left him to his work.

Dad picked us up at the airport, and we stopped by to see Mom, who was looking great. Jetlag shooed us home quickly, though, and we both slept through the night pretty well.

In the morning I took Anthony up to where I went to high school to borrow the soccer goals...

Anthony asked whether they had these goals here when I went to school, and I had to answer truthfully that I had no idea... I never paid attention to soccer or any sport when I was in school. He couldn't comprehend the idea, which silently pleased me to no end.

この記事はこの間の月曜日のサイクリングの物語です。友達と一緒に乗鞍を登った、距離165キロのローングライドをしあした。 進んだ峠は乗鞍、美女峠、寺坂峠、野麦峠、白樺峠。獲得高度は3,907m。疲れたけれども、めっちゃ楽しかった。リーダー達吉川さんと栗田さん、参加させてくれた有り難う御座います！

In yesterday's post I outlined a three-day trip where I cycled up Japan's highest paved road three times. The main event was the middle day, with a group of folks from Kyoto that comes every year. The day's ride started with that highest-road climb up Mt. Norikura, then continued on to four other major climbs in a big up-and-down loop covering 165km (103mi) with 3,900m (12,800') of elevation gain.

Here's the ride at Strava, and a surprisingly-interesting 2-minute Relive video version.

It ended up being the fifth longest ride I've ever done, though the most elevation gain in one day.

Some of us started out at about 6:15am, and met up with the others...

I didn't know most of the people in the group, so I'll introduce some of them as we go along.

The two leaders of the group are Mr. Yasukawa (front left) and Mr. Kurita (rear left). They invited Manseki (rear right) whom I ride with often, and so via Manseki I, and some others such as fellow American Yifen (front right), joined in.

We all started together, but the members would split into three groups after the summit, with one group heading right back down to the hotel, one group doing the long ride I'll be showing in this post, and finally another group of intermediate riders doing a shorter loop.

It says something about the level of this group of folks, though, that the “intermediate” shorter loop is essentially the 100km ride I'd done the previous day that had so wiped me out.

The building at left in the photo above is a small lodge that sort of marks the halfway point from the ski area, though it's actually closer to 60% of the way up. The photo just prior to that was taken from near the lodge.

The observatory seen in the photo above is actually a 150m (500') climb above the road pass, and the peak of the mountain (not visible in this photo) is that much farther up yet again. Access to either is only by foot, so I didn't visit.

When you get this view you might feel you're almost there, but it's actually still another 2km (1.2mi) of twisty, steep road to go.

Just to give you a sense of scale that the photo above totally lacks, notice the little section of snow in the middle, just above where it looks like the road ends. Here's a photo of that same “little” section of snow that I took yesterday, from closer in:

Spanish friend Iago, whom I first rode with on my first Kyoto Heart Loop, had finished the climb well before me, and returned back to help me finish it.

(Yes, he's not wearing a helmet. Yes, we all think he's an idiot for it. Yes, he's an adult who can make choices for himself.)

The highest point in the road is not special except, well, for being the highest point in the road, and I guess also being on the border between Gifu and Nagano prefectures. There's no elevation marker, but it's about 2,715m (8,908'). The only photo I have of it is the meager one seen above that I took the previous day; you can get a better sense of the bleakness with the Google Streetview view.

Just over the pass is an area called Tatamidaira (畳平), where there's a visitor's center from which hiking paths lead to various points on the mountain. There's also a pretty little lake.

There were also some very long beautiful straightaways that at first seemed to be born to break speed records, but considering that they invariably ended with very sharp hairpins that allowed no margin for error, I kept my speed under 80kph (50mph) the whole way. I like going fast, but I'm not into taking stupid risks.

In this next shot you can see where we're heading next....

Toward the background frame left are little blotches of civilization among the rolling forest. That's where we're going, but to get there we have to ride 40km (25mi) and drop 2,000m (6,550') of elevation.

The roads up and down Mt. Norikura are closed to private motor vehicles, so they're empty except for the occasional bus, taxi, or official vehicle (and of course cyclists and hikers). A car or bus in front of you on the descent would destroy the fun of it, and you can see one approaching in the shot above, so I put the camera away and joined the group.

There can be a lot of cyclists, though this day there weren't so many. When I entered the closed-to-traffic part the previous day, a Sunday, the guard said that I was the 94th cyclist of the day. This day I entered much earlier, and was the 9th. (The next day I entered at about the same time as the first, and was the 30th).

The “long ride” group consisted of, left to right in the photo above, Mr. Kurita (Japan), Iago (Spain), Yoshiyuki (Japan), Antti (Finland), Yifen (USA), Mr. Yasukawa (Japan), Manseki (Japan), and me (USA).

We don't see Antti much in this post because he's “Antti Gravity” and rides so fast that he outruns photons. We did see him a bit in last month's “Grueling Rooftop-of-Kyoto Ridge Road Gravel Grind”, last year's “Obama Hosts My First Bicycle Visit to the Sea”, and many in between.

Sometimes my chain pops off when hitting a rough patch of road at high speed, but often I can restore it quickly, at times without stopping or even slowing down, but it happened along the way today in such a way that the chain got fouled in the derailleur, so it took a minute to fix.

Normally in a social group ride we make sure that the last rider is never alone, but I'd waved the others on thinking it'd be just a few seconds to fix. Even though I averaged 40kph (25mph) for the next 40 minutes (40 minutes), I wasn't able to catch up until they stopped for a break.

After a few minor ups and downs, it was time for ascent #2 of 5, though the smallest of the bunch (just 250m/820', which is about what some of us climbed from the hotel to the starting place).

For the last few hours we'd been traveling down away from the mountain then looped to the south, and now turned back toward the mountain to finally see it from the other side. It was actually a bit dejecting to realize that we still had to ride all the way over to and beyond the mountain, over three major climbs, to get home.

In looking at the trip data now, I realize that this photo was taken at the halfway point of the trip, distance wise, almost down to the foot. (Time wise, we still had a while to go before hitting halfway.)

The next two hours after the lunch stop would be spent plodding up at a steady pace, just looking to get to the start of the next major climb.

As we were about to leave, Manseki's rear shift cable broke at the control lever. This left the rear derailleur at its most difficult gear, which unless fixed would make the rest of the ride impossible.

Manseki happened to have a zip tie — the bicycle equivalent of duct tape? — in his supplies, so after a few other repair avenues failed to pan out, I suggested that they try to use it to hold the derailleur at the easiest gear. Mr. Yoshikawa was able to fix it that way, so we were able to continue.

Some folks had set off on the next climb before the problem was discovered, but those of us who remained kept together with Manseki, lest the fix break and need fixing again.

The next climb includes a section of straight road that goes up at more than 8% for more than a mile. The straightness of it makes it much more tough for me than the equivalent grade with turns, because you can see the whole thing splayed out in front of you and until you actually get near the end you don't feel you're making any progress.

When this road did start to curve the grade only got steeper, but thankfully at that point there was also a mini roadside waterfall that we could fill our water bottles in...

We eventually got to one pass and rode down the other side, then on the climb to the next big pass came across Iago and Yifen, who had stopped for a break. Antti, we were sure, was taking a nap somewhere ahead.

One of my biggest concerns for the trip was hydration. I have two 750ml bottles, and even then sometimes put an extra drink bottle in my rear jersey pocket, and was still worried about running out of drink in the remote areas we were riding through.

Iago, on the other hand, brought only a small little refillable packet he could put in a pocket (the blue thing in his hand above... maybe 200ml, the amount of about 2/3rd of a can of Coke). Normally he brings nothing (no bottle at all). I would die if I tried it, but it seems to work for him. He's much faster than I am.

In a post last year we saw Andy do something similar, though apart from the lack of a helmet, Iago's attempt looks more effective.

The final climb was 610m (2,000') over 11km (6½mi) for an average of 5.7%, which is not that bad but after 12 hours of riding (and what I did yesterday), it wears on you. The American contingent took it slow at the back.

Somewhere along the line I got a message from Antti saying that he was already back at the hotel because he had seen a bear and didn't feel like waiting around at the pass to be eaten. One doesn't want to startle a bear, so as we saw the other day, if you're traveling through bear country, the recommendation is to have something that makes noise as move. Unfortunately our chains were well oiled, so we made do by calling out “Beaaaaaaars, don't eaaaaaaaat uuuuuuus” at times.

It seems to have worked.

At one point we caught a wonderful view through a break in the trees of the deep valley and the little village in which we'd started the climb. It was sufficiently breathtaking that I turned around to return to take a picture.

The moment I actually tried to take the photo, I realized that it was a waste of time. I knew that the photo (seen above) would be totally uninteresting, but I couldn't explain why. And I can't explain why I can't explain why, except to guess that I have enough experiential knowledge to feel my way without actually understanding. Or something like that.

Anyway, I suppose it all has to do with how the brain can focus on something very specific in the scene, while the camera in this case treats everything more or less the same. Perhaps if I had very wide glass such that I could throw the foreground into bokeh I would have had better luck. As it is, I have to tell you that if you look carefully at the center, you can see a little village down there.

Descending the final pass down toward the hotel, we came through a flat area that offered a wonderful view of Mt. Norikura amid vegetation that seemed totally out of place. It somehow felt vary Savanna-esque. I wanted to come back the next day to see it in daylight, and to bring my nice camera, but the next few photos give a hint as to why that didn't happen.

After a shower and a soak in the hotel's natural-hot-spring bath, it was time for dinner...

We all stayed at Pension Norikura, a bed-and-breakfast-(and-dinner) place run by a couple where the husband is an accomplished cyclist, so the place is very bicycle friendly. If you visit the area, it's highly recommended, though take care to understand that “pension” in Japanese means fairly budget accommodations. It's well above “hostel”, but below what most folks would imagine with “hotel”. Here the value is not in having 12 fluffy pillows and a chocolate square, but in the warmth with which you're received. And the food. The food was very good.

All in all I felt much better after this ride than after the previous day's ride, which turned out to be my downfall. Instead of going to bed at 9pm as I did the previous night, I stayed up until midnight chatting and drinking.

The others were out for another climb of Mt. Norikura the next morning, but I didn't get out until 11:30, where I did a slow painful ride to the top and back, in a cold rain. The “painful” part came more from the previous two days' rides than the previous night's drink, but the latter didn't help.

By the time I got back the rain had stopped and I felt good. After another bath in the hot spring, I packed up and made the 4½-hour drive back home in four hours.

この間、三日間の楽しい旅をしました。自転車で乗鞍を三回登った。 この記事は英語だけですが、自慢話ばかりので内容は想像できます🙂. 撮った写真はまだ全部を見ってないので、今日の記事は旅の概要だけです。

I just had a little trip to the border of Gifu and Nagano prefectures, to the highest paved road in Japan, which goes up and over Mt. Norikura. The paved public road reaches an elevation of about 2,715m (8,900').

It'll be a while before I go through the photos and write up a proper post, but having just gotten back yesterday, I wanted to post a little overview of the trip right away.

The three rides over the three days all included an ascent of Mt. Norikura's eastern approach, a path that rises 1,461m (4,793') from where I stayed (the cycling-friendly Pension Norikura).

Day 1

The first day I rode by myself, and though the ride wasn't the toughest of the three on paper (it was “only” 105km/65mi with 2,923m/9,590' of elevation gain), it took the most out of me.

At the start of the ride, I descended from the hotel down to where the road begins, then turned around and did the entire road up, which gave me 1,717m (5,633') of ascent in a single shot of unbroken climb, a statistic that tickles a certain something in the cycling/data geek in me.

I brought my Nikon D4 and a couple of lenses (Nikkor 24-70/2.8 and the big 70-200/2.8), which together weigh more than half as much as my bike. But I took it slow and paused often for photos, so frankly the initial big climb wasn't all that difficult. What was tough was the accumulation of what came after in the ride, I guess.

Day 2

The second day I rode with a group that included friends old and new. This ride was the toughest on paper (165km/103mi long, with the most elevation gain I've ever done in a ride, 3,937m/12,917'), but it was a social group ride and we took it slow, so in the end I was beat, but not as much as the previous day.

The weather on the second day was absolutely perfect. It was a long day... we left at about 6am, and returned at about sundown at 7pm. I was tickled to reach a sustained speed of over 80kph (50mph) on the final little descent back to the hotel. It's not the fastest I'd ever gone (that was here), but it was unexpected because even though I'd ridden up it twice, I hadn't realized just how steep it was, and just how nice a downhill it would be.

The two-minute “Relive.cc” movie for this ride is actually quite interesting, I think. Check it out.

The day ended with a big meal and lots of drinking (and in my case, too much drinking), so things were a bit rough for me the next day.

Day 3

Day three (yesterday) was the last day and I had to allow for the 4.5-hour drive back home, so the ride was just a simple jaunt from the hotel to the top and back, a 49km (30mi) round trip.

This time I didn't bring any camera or other things I didn't need, and knew it would be a short ride, so I wanted to try for a PR, but after the previous two days my legs were toast. In the end, I was happy to just not give up.

Unlike the previous two days, this third day was raining and cold, so I was very happy that I bought a Santic cycling windbreaker for the trip, but my fingers froze during the descent, and at one point I had to stop just to restore feeling in my fingers so that I could work the controls of the bike.

Continued here...

Gorm and I had a little adventure on Sunday, cycling up to Obama. I'd cycled there once before a year ago, to take the train back. This time we cycled back as well. It ended up being 213km (133mi) with 3,430m (11,250') of vertical climb.

Here's the ride on Strava:

Our route north to Obama would bring us over three major climbs, starting with my benchmark climb to Hanase Pass. I intended to pick a pace that I could handle for 200km, but ended up (I found out after getting home) setting a PR on every part of the climb and the long descent that followed. I had no idea.

But while waiting for Gorm, who stopped at the top to eat something, I just felt drained. At the time I thought it was from lack of sleep after having woken up at 4am after having gone to bed too late, but it turns out that it was lack of calories. After the next big climb (to Sasari Pass) I ate something (this stuff, a sports version of yokan) and started to feel better right away. I guess the bowl of granola I had before leaving didn't provide the energy carbs I thought it would.

I made another PR on the descent from Sasari; the day ended up being a day of gloriously wonderful descents.

Just as I did on the previous trip, we stopped at this cafe for coffee. They're not really open at that time, instead serving their overnight customers (they host kayaking and hiking trips), but as before, they kindly let us have coffee.

We chatted with some of their kayaking customers about cycling...

Finally feeling whole again, we climbed to Gonami Pass on a lovely road that's literally not even on Google Maps.

The road does show up on Strava because they use OpenStreetMaps, and as I do with many of the minor mountain roads in the Kyoto area, I edited the version on OpenStreetMaps to be accurate using road-edge data from the Japanese government. Those updates appear right away on sites like Strava, and in a month or so on phone apps that cook the map data for fully-offline use, like Galileo Offline Maps (Name changed Feb 2019 to Guru Maps) and Maps.me, both of which I use while cycling.

I'm wearing long sleeves and long leggings (both Under Armour, which I'm partial to) because I expected the day to be really hot and sunny, and I wanted to avoid sunburn. The previous day had been brutally hot and humid, and just a short ride had left me drained. So my biggest worry for today's trip was heatstroke.

It turns out the worry was unfounded... the day was cloudy with occasional rain, sometimes heavy. It was wonderful.

The northern descent from Gonomi Pass is at first littered with rocks and branches, so one must take it slowly, but it's quite pretty...

Eventually you leave the heavy forest and the twisty road becomes straight, and you can safely floor it for a fast fun descent....

The “fun part” segment mentioned in the caption above drops 133m over 2.9km for an average slope of -4.8%. That's a great slope for taking it easy if you just want to coast down, or hitting it hard if you want some fun.

As we made our way north through flatter farming valleys, it started to rain intermittently, so mostly the camera was tucked away in a plastic bag.

Finally, at about 10:40am after about six hours of riding, we arrived at Mermaid Beach in the city of Obama.

Rather than return the way we came, we cut west along the coast for 17km, to where we intended then to turn south and return to Kyoto.

Before heading south I wanted to treat Gorm to the cute little 1¾km climb that Antti and I had done last time. It starts out innocently enough until you round a curve and are hit with a 15.8% slope.

There are some flatter sections, so the overall average is a mild 9.2%, but there's 300m worth of 11% toward the end, just for fun.

Gorm took the KOM (“King of the Mountain”) for having been the fastest (from among the five folks 🙂 ) to have registered a ride on it.

We returned back to sea level and rode along the beach. What had been ridiculously packed during our ride last year was empty this year:

The path back to Kyoto this time went through an area that I passed by last year, with a circular highway towering above the road we were on. Here's a photo from last year:

This time we'd actually ride up onto that curvy highway.

If you look at the area in Google Earth, it's a mishmash of roads both old and new, and the closer you look, the more difficult it is to figure out how they connect.

It seems that there was a small twisty road that wound its way up the mountain like so many of the roads we love to climb, and according to the historical imagery in Google Earth, about 10 years ago a replacement road was begun, one which wound up at a softer angle due to the long floating curves. It looks like it might have been completed three or four years ago.

The confusing thing is that the new road sometimes completely replaced the old road, and sometimes the old road was left as is. Parts of the “as is” old road don't connect to anything, and are inaccessible without rappelling gear, but which parts are still in use and which parts are inaccessible is not readily apparent from the satellite photos. So while researching the route, it was confusing for a while.

The rain started again just after that shot, so the camera went away, but eventually we made it to the top of the climb and we were rewarded with the best downhill sections I've ever done. It was mostly long sweeping curves, so you could keep a good pace going while enjoying the beautiful scenery and pristine, clean road surface.

I did have a monkey cross the road 10 seconds in front of me, so one does have to watch out for wildlife.

After another climb and another descent, we stopped by an old style market for ice cream and drinks.

The last 50 or so kilometers home were a bunch of smaller climbs and descents haphazardly arranged.

This is the same road seen at the start of “Miyama Cycling Tour with Joshua and Manseki, Part 2”. I had passed nearby the other day on a forestry-road gravel ride last week, but I'd not been to this spot since I last rode here with Gorm a year ago.

The descent down the other side is considerably cluttered...

Just before the last long fast descent of the trip, the sky positively opened up. No more little sprinkles here and there... this was a full-on “standing under a waterfall” deluge. It made the descent much slower, but it sure was fun and enjoyable to ride in that kind of rain on a hot day.

All in all it was a harder ride than the much longer trip to Nagoya I did last month, but much more enjoyable for the same reason (more and better climbs), and also because the scenery was so much nicer this time.

All of this pales in comparison to what I plan for next week, which starts off with this 1,747m (5,730') climb. Weather permitting, I'll do it twice, once slowly with my Nikon D4 and a few nice lenses, and again the next day with friends and only my small cycling camera. We'll see.