A couple of weeks ago I had a nice 130km (80 mi) ride with Manseki and Gorm, in an area to the south-east of Kyoto I'd never been. Here's the trip as seen at Strava:

Our exit from Kyoto was on the riverside path toward Osaka. We used my new egress route to avoid the bone-jarring mud and bumps of the riverside route in the southern part of the city, then continued on the riverside path that I first posted about here.

After crossing some big rivers, instead of heading southwest toward Osaka, though, we headed southeast toward Uji. It was my first time on this route.

We were suddenly in tea country...

In the background of the photo above you can see the Kidzu River Nagarebashi (木津川流れ橋), a simple wooden bridge known for being swept away by rushing water fairly often. It just reopened this year after having been closed all of last year after it had been swept away the year before.

I'm not quite sure what the wire rope is for. The bridge gets swept away fairly often.... of late, it was swept away in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. After 2014 there was apparently some resistance to spending money to replace it yet again, so it took until this spring for it to be replaced. I was told that this time they used thicker wire ropes, but in looking how they're lightly attached, I'm not sure what they're for. I'd think they'd want them parallel to the force of the water, not perpendicular.

This is normally the kind of situation where I'd think “well, someone must know what they're doing.”, but considering the bridge's recent track record, perhaps not.

We eventually made our way back to civilization and stopped by a convenience store. They had a bike stand for road bikes, where you hook the seat over a bar. One doesn't see this at convenience stores often, so it's an indication of how many frequent this particular location.

Finally, 35km (22mi) in, we get to the start of the real ride, a 360m climb (1,170') though what seemed to be a jungle...

Most mountain roads in this part of Japan pass through forests of farmed ceder trees. They seem rough and wild, but the trees are all ceder and are well spaced and exceedingly straight. They don't “feel” farmed in that it might be 20 or 40 years of human non-interaction between harvests, but once pointed out, the wildness and variety of an area like the one seen above is stark in comparison.

As I went past, I slowed a bit to chat. Never having ridden a recumbent bicycle, I'm left with the impression that it looks awkward and scary. He said it does take some getting used to, but one immediate benefit, he said, is that your butt doesn't hurt.

On that tangent, I usually don't wear “real” cycling pants because I don't like the “bun pads” they have. I think they look ridiculous but would use them if I felt they were needed, but I guess my rear is whatever-enough to not require them. I've done multiple 200+km rides without them and I'm fine. But you wouldn't believe the crap other cyclists give me because I don't conform to the diaper-pants norm.

Anyway, Gorm, Manseki, and I eventually made it to the top, where other cyclists were already resting.

Continuing down the other side, we soon came to our first nice view of the day...

The view spot was at the top of a mountainside tea field, and at the edge was a little monorail used to bring equipment up and down. I would have loved to ride in it. 🙂

The descent down the other side seemed ridiculously steep, and I was glad at the moment to have done it the longer, less steep way.

Our route then took us up another climb to a “plateau” (sort of) where for the next 30km the road undulated up and down with many short (50-100m) climbs.

The highest point for us was a little viewing area near where three prefectures come together (Kyoto, Shiga, and Mie).

There was some drama in getting here, involving a bit of mis-communication and a wrong turn, and Manseki had mistakenly gone down the other side of the mountain past this point. He'd descended 100m of elevation before realizing his mistake when I asked him where he was (thank goodness we both had cell reception), and paid for the mistake by having to reclimb that 100m.

So we were all ready for a little break.

Other than to cartographer geeks, I'd think that the point where three states meet would be fairly uninteresting, but the name of the area (三国, meaning “three countries”, or perhaps more properly in this case, “three kingdoms”) implies that it has a long history dating back to before Japan was a single unified country.

Considering the work it took us to get here on nicely-paved roads, I can't imagine what it must have been like 1,000 years ago, and why they wouldn't pick a more congenial location for inter-kingdom diplomacy.

As well as the highest point of the trip, it was the furthest, and we headed back north. We stopped in one of the small villages for drinks, which had a small traditional market that was the 50-years-ago version of a convenience store.

The day's route was one that Manseki had done by himself recently, but for part of the return home I suggested some roads he wasn't familiar with, and it turned out that they were lovely.

In particular, this descent was one of the most beautiful I've ever done. I've no photos because I was just enjoying it too much. It's a descent that one wants to savor and enjoy, so it's not a segment you want to PR on.

After working our way through Otsu and Yamashina and into Kyoto proper, I parted ways with Gorm and Manseki, to head to my corner of Kyoto. On the way I popped up to Shogunzuka, which I used to go to often to (try to) photograph the sunset....

One of my first posts from the area is “Views of Kyoto From Shougun-zuka”, nine years ago, but the list is long. You can get a sense for the variety of views on my photo-proximity search page.

This day the view didn't have anything special in store, with lots of haze and relatively flat light.

It's just as well, since I didn't have a real camera with me.

I felt great when I got home, but soon fell asleep in my La-Z-Boy, so I guess the ride took more out of me than I first realized.

All and all, a great ride with great people.

When cycling, I use Shimano SPD-SL cleats and pedals. They're great on the bike, but when walking around, if one doesn't use cleat covers, they quickly get torn up and end up looking like this.

So, I use cleat covers whenever a stop involves more than a little walking around...

They're easy to pop on, but once on, to pull them off you have to grab a thin tiny little tab of very hard rubber and pull out and away...

Under the best of circumstances, they come right off. But with the weird angle you have to reach to pull something from the bottom of your shoe, especially when you're tired and using your non-dominant hand (or when it's cold, or you're wearing gloves, or just having a bad day), trying to pull them off can be an exercise in frustration. The little tab is such a stupid design.

But it's easy to fix.

Now it's easy-peasy to pull them off, even when you can't feel your fingers through heavy gloves.... just grab the loop and yank.

There are four possible ways to install the zip tie... inserting from one side of the cover or the other, each combined with facing the opening on the head one way or the other. I've found that the best is the way shown above, because that causes the loop to want to press up into the shoe, flattening itself out of the way. Otherwise, it can drag on the ground as you walk.

Even if you trim the zip tie well, I've found that over time the tie can work its way farther through the head, making the loop increasingly small, and also creating a poky bit sticking out. To stop that, you can just add a bit of tape inside the loop before trimming...

Normal zip ties one might have on hand are not generally very robust, especially in the cold, and I've had them crack and break often. So, I'm now using special outdoor cold-weather ties:

I paid $7.99 for the pack of 100 at Amazon.

Yesterday's cycling was a bit different from what I normally do of late. I was honored to be invited on Vincent Flanagan's annual “Kyoto Rooftop” birthday ride, on an often-gravel forestry road that follows the undulating ridgeline across 65km of mountains north of Kyoto. (You might remember Vincent from my bike fitting at Pedalforth.)

First we ride about 60km (37mi) northwest of Kyoto to get to the far end of the forestry road. Then snake around on the ridgeline road for about 65km (40mi) east. Then return home over Hanase Pass.

I added a little extra at the end, the easier half of a Kyoto Heart Loop, and ended up for the day riding 163km with 3,880m of climb (101mi with 12,700' of climb):

It was by far the most climb I've done in a day.

Because there are sections of heavy, rough gravel, I didn't want to use my road bike, so I dusted off my original Trek bike for the first real ride since this epic adventure last September.

Until looking at the photo above, I'd never noticed the “25% Slope” sign. The location is near the top of Kyoto’s Nasty 21% city-bike hill climb, and at the start of the descent there's an appropriate “21% slope” sign. This one is a bit premature, and a bit incorrect.

After about 2½ hours of riding, we got to the last store before we would enter the forestry road. There are no services whatsoever along the entire 65km-length of the road, so we'd not be able to buy drinks until exiting it toward the end of the day, nor get food until returning to Kyoto. So we stocked up here.

Just before entering the forestry road, we stopped by a little temple for a photo op...

And then finally we started the day's ride proper.

The road is closed to unofficial motor vehicles, but it's fine for bicycles and hikers.

Coincidentally, this road appeared on my previous post because the road I took that day crossed this one, though quite far from this morning's entrance point: it would be 4½ hours of rough riding before we'd get even that far.

Most folks walked their bikes around the gate, but some rode around...

And so at 10am, we were off on the ride proper.

It starts out fairly steep, but I've given up trying to show steepness in photos... I just can't do it.

At least the pavement at the start is wonderful. Later, both the steepness and the road surface become worse. Much, much worse.

Here the road is rough gravel, and probably by this point has alternated numerous times among pavement, rough gravel, and compact gravel. The areas of rough gravel were quite tough for me when steep, either steeply descending or ascending. I'd ridden on parts of this road two other times, but something about today was much worse than I remember. The rough gravel seemed to be laid over a bed of quicksand that just grabbed the tires.

I've never walked through a pool of oatmeal up to my hips, but that's the mental image that came to me while riding some sections of this road.

Returning for a moment to my inability to capture steepness in a photo...

I just snapped these as I rode by. I suppose I should be able to learn something from this sequence about perspective and a sense of slope.

It's not uncommon to have beautiful vistas like the one above spoiled by power lines, but in these cases it's the presence of the power lines themselves that create the vistas. The only reason the view so steeply down wasn't obscured by vegetation is because it's kept clear for the power lines. You see the same effect here.

There was some discussion about the bridge we could see from that spot, with folks offering different ideas about what area we were looking at. I though it was hilarious when Christoph muttered “That's Sanjo Bridge, you fools” to no one in particular. (Sanjo Bridge is a location in Kyoto City where we often meet up for rides).

In reality, the bridge is the Nagase Bridge (長瀬大橋). Here's the view from the bridge up to where we took the photo, via Google Streetview:

Of the nine folks on the ride, four got punctures, though the two lucky folks above (Ryuta and Neil) got three punctures each.

Not long after I took this photo, the three of us were racing to catch up to the main group, who were likely 15~20 minutes ahead by the time we got moving. After a long set of wonderful downhills, I paused when I came across Vincent fixing a grate in the road, and waited for Neil and Ryuta. Neil arrived momentarily, but Ryuta never showed, even though he had just been right behind us. He must have gotten another flat, so I turned around to head back, and Vincent tossed me a spare innertube of an appropriate size for Ryuta's tire. 70m of vertical climb later, I came across him, and he appreciated Vincent's tube (and the new pump I'd bought after my day of many flats).

He didn't have another flat for the rest of the day, but he was certainly nervous about it for the rest of the day.

There was some correlation between type of bike (and hence type of tire) and the number of punctures. Particularly after my day of many flats, I didn't want to try this kind of gravel with a road bike, which is why I brought my Trek and its relatively new 32mm wide Scwalbe Marathon Plus tires.

But there's some matter of luck (or the lack thereof) as well. One experienced rider with 40mm-wide tires got a flat for no apparent reason.

This was three hours into the forestry road, and the first of the few places where the forestry road crosses a public road. This particular location is close to the photogenic scene that's appeared on my blog a couple of times.

An hour and a half of ups and downs later, we were finally at the place I mentioned before, where Gorm and I had crossed the forestry road in my previous post. This time we had no Gorm, but we did have antlers...

Some of the ugliest sections of road awaited us, with 11~12% gradients both up and down, with loose sandy rubble as the road surface. It's been a long while since I had any worry about falling over while riding clipped in, but on some of these steep uphill gravely sections I grew quite worried about losing traction, seeing my forward motion suddenly stop, and falling over before I could unclip my foot. I felt immature as a cyclist to have this worry, until I found out that two very experienced riders in the group had actually fallen over for exactly that reason. It brought to mind the Japanese proverb “Even Monkeys Fall from Trees”.

In any case, these sections were not fun at all. I'd done them twice before without such a strongly-negative feeling, so maybe it was the condition of the road this day, or of me.

I brought 3½ liters of drink with me (almost a full gallon!) for the forestry-road section of the ride, but it was running low, so when I came across a mini road-side waterfall created by recent rains, I took the opportunity to fill up my bottle....

I also had an empty 2L bottle that I filled up, for the less-prepared folks waiting at the summit of the ride.

The road undulates wildly up and down, but this particular “up” is the highest of the entire 65km length of road. There's a little marker indicating so:

This is another photo from a year ago, one of the rare places you could see clearly down into a valley (without power lines, that is). This village is on the road leading to Sasari Pass, which I'd taken with Gorm the other day.

I finally exited the forestry road at about 4:15pm, more than six hours after entering. A few folks had exited much earlier, and others would still take a while due to flats, but once we were all out and had restocked our drinks at a vending machine, we headed home over Hanase Pass. The non-gravel road surface gave me renewed energy, and I gave the 30-minute climb some effort, but I missed my PR by 23 seconds. Drat.

I really did not like the heavy gravel sections — it's just not my cup of tea — but otherwise it was a great day with great folks.

It's the rainy season in Japan, which means that when it's not hot and humid, it's hot and humid and wet. Earlier in the week Gorm and I had a wet ride in the mountains north of Kyoto that turned into a bit of an adventure.

We started off by cycling up to Hanase Pass, which is a litmus test of a climb that always strikes fear into my heart. It was my 21st time up, the first having been my crazy first ride a year ago February.

For Gorm, who is just visiting from Norway, it was his 5th.

I was happy to make a PR on the benchmark segment by almost a minute and a half, down to 30:40. I've still got a ways to go to break 30 minutes, or to beat Gorm's PR (30:19) for that matter.

Due to the light rain and feeling quite chilly, I was fairly miserable on the descent down the other side, but it was really beautiful. You'll have to take my word for it because I only had a crappy waterproof camera with me.

The descent saw the sun come out occasionally, which along with my drying off did wonders for my mood. After a hot-coffee stop, I was feeling good.

We weren't in any particular rush, so we took the time to try a little road I've wanted to check out for some while, which leads to The Bujoji Temple (峰定寺). The short two-kilometer road is lovely, but the apparently-pretty temple is not visible from the paved road, and we weren't dedicated enough to make the hike from the road.

We then rode over Sasari Pass (佐々里峠). The climb is shorter than Hanase Pass, but it does have its steep sections. I'd done it only two other times, and not for a long while. Especially since this was my first time to climb it since getting a real road bike, I expected to make a PR, and I did by over two minutes, down to 23:39.

It was Gorm's first time, and he clocked in thirty seconds faster than I.

After the lovely descent down the other side, we took a gamble on a route we hadn't taken before. I'd heard that it was fully paved, so it was worth a shot, but we'd have to backtrack if the road condition was too bad.

The photo above isn't the road we were considering... just a side road we took a peek at. Yet still....

I don't know what caused the flat, but I don't think it was a rock. The hole was very small.

In the photo I'm wearing ThinOPTICS tiny clip-on reading glasses that I keep in the seat bag. They're very tiny and light, and also very useful so that I can actually see what I'm doing. I'd think that any cyclist of a certain age would find them quite handy when needed.

I've ridden on this forestry road a couple of times with my Trek cross bike, which is more appropriate for gravel than my Rose road bike. The forestry road alternates between gravel and pristine pavement, but the gravel makes it off limits for today's bikes. The road up was pretty spotty, but I knew that the road down the other side had some areas that were much worse.

Last year the entrance to the road had signs saying “Road Closed” and “due to landslide All Lanes Closed”. By the time I'd gotten to this place along the long forestry road with absolutely no services, I was tired and thirsty, so I took my chance going down the closed road in the hopes of reaching civilization, or at least something to drink. After all, it's often easy for bicycles to get by obstacles that cars can't, like this or this.

On that trip last year, the road was in really bad shape...

That road was well and truly impassable, at least without rappelling gear. I had to re-climb more than 200m (660') of vertical ascent just to get back to the main forestry road, and continue another 10km until the next chance to exit.

This year I thought would be better, since I knew others had ridden it recently and told me, I thought, that it was all paved.

It's not all paved.

The sections of bad pavement I'd seen last year were replaced by gravel, so it was all gravel for 15 minutes until we finally got to some pavement, which was then very nice.

On the way home, we stopped by a cafe I first wrote about six years ago, “Yama no Ie Hasegawa”, for sustenance.

Gorm had deep-fried shrimp and fish; I had bacon-wrapped hamburger. Both were tasty, and washed down with Cokes.

The ride ended up being 114km (71mi) with about 2,000m (6,500') of elevation gain.

This was the second ride in a row that I'd ridden in the rain (the first having been a short ride to search, unsuccessfully it turns out, for an old iPhone I'd lost on a ride the day prior) so the bike was full of grime splashed up from the road.

So I spent the next day washing it, and after cleaning the relatively-new tires was horrified to find plenty of bits of gravel and such wedged into the rubber. I dug them out, but don't feel they'll last all that much longer, so I've already ordered another pair of different tires. We'll see.

The sheer amount of grime on every surface of the bike was stunning, and depressing, so even though I don't mind riding in the rain, I've avoided it since. It looks like I'll be able to get out on Sunday... I'm thinking to ride to Himeji, a ride of comparable distance to last week's ride to Nagoya, but one where the route looks much more appealing. We'll see.

I recently did a 260km (160 mile) bike ride from my home in Kyoto over to the city of Nagoya, and back (view at Strava). It took all day.

この間のサイクリングは京都から名古屋までの往復しました、距離は260キロでした。長い一日でした。

A line of mountains separates the two areas, so I had to go over them each way, but other than that bit of mountain riding, the rest of the ride — the majority of the whole ride — was just slogging through city or suburbia that might have provided interesting diversions if I had the time to stop and enjoy them, but as a “point A to point B” ride, it was mostly boring and uninteresting.

I left home at 5:30am, and spent 2½ hours getting to the other side of Lake Biwa where the climb up to the mountains started.

(I brought only my iPhone with me, so the photos are certainly lacking, sorry.)

The unused behind-the-dam road eventually connected with the main road and snaked up, in my case slowly, toward a very long (2+ mile) tunnel.

Rather than enter the long narrow tunnel, I did what any sane cyclist would do and went over instead. The pleasant road up to the pass over the tunnel had convenient markers every 200m giving the length to the prefectural line, which in this case was also the high point of the mountain pass.

The tunnel-bypass road started up steeply at first, but then seemed to level out for most of the way. I enjoyed the flat respite with some trepidation, as I kept wondering when the climb would come, and how steep it would be when it did. But it never did. It was errie. The segment has over 200m of elevation gain, but I didn't seem to notice most of it. I'd like to think it's just because I'm strong, but who knows.

The road on the Mie Prefecture side of the pass was horrible for a while, and the descent took longer than it would have taken to ascend. But eventually it connected with the main road where the tunnel ends, and that descent was heavenly. Even riding safely and conservatively as I do, I reached 82kph (51mph), a new record for me. I like my descents.

One benefit of letting the computer create your route is that it can make use of minor roads more effectively than manual routing. For a while I was snaking through little streets like the one seen above.

Soon, though, I entered the Nagoya floodplane. For more than the next hour, I was riding toward downtown at essentially sea level.

What must have been one huge 40km-wide river eons ago is now fertile ground punctuated by many rivers.

The occasional river crossing was pretty, but for many kilometers it was just boring flat suburbia morphing into boring flat urban drudgery. But 6¼ hours and 127km (79 miles) after setting out, I arrived at Nagoya Station.

I didn't stay long; I sent a “hi there!” note to my brother in law who lives in Nagoya, and headed back toward Kyoto.

This whole trip was a challenge that I'd set for myself, and I wasn't sure that I could do it. I chose a route that gave me an out if I wanted it.... if I decided to take the train home from Nagoya, I'd still have an impressive (for me) ride logged for the day. I prepared two separate routes, and took the easier one for the “to” direction. If I decided to make the return trip by bike, I could retrace my steps on the easier of the two, or take on the additional challenge of the harder route.

I felt pretty good, so I chose the harder route for the return. At least it was harder on paper (quite a bit more climbing), but mentally it was easier because I didn't really know what to expect. If I had retraced my steps, I'd know exactly what was waiting and that somehow made it worse.

Anyway, like before, the hour or so in Nagoya's flood plane was not fun.

Somewhere along the line I had decided that “Cycling to Nagoya for Coffee” would make an understatedly cool title for the trip, so I thought I had better actually stop for coffee. I didn't want to take the time for a real sit-down cafe, so I just stopped by a convenience store to stock up on food, and grabbed a pre-packaged Starbucks coffee just for the photo op.

I was feeling good but worried about the time. I thought I'd be able to return home by 5:30pm, making it a 12-hour round trip, but that was proving to be an optimistic view of my abilities. I had to be home for something at 7pm, and that deadline was looking iffy, so I tried to reduce how much I stopped.

The route from the city toward the mountains undulated much more than the route I took into the city, so I was never sure when the “real” climb up the mountains would start, but when I saw the steepness of this road, I knew something major was starting...

The top item on the signs points the way to the “Suzuka Skyline”, a road that goes up and over the mountains. The fact that the road has a name like this tells me both that it's likely to be well maintained, and that it'll be steep.

The road leading away in that photo is not actually part of the Suzuka Skyline. I didn't really know what to expect, but this lead-in introduction had me bracing for the worst. I suppose one can't sense from the photo, but that road is steep... this lead-up to the Suzuka Skyline, I realize now, is more than 2km averaging almost 9%, with a maximum grade of 15%.

I hadn't researched the road grades, but I did research where I could fill up on drinks, so I stopped by the last vending machine until far on the other side of the mountain. They apparently knew that they were the last, as they price gouged by 50%:

The Suzuka Skyline itself is almost 6km at an average of 8.5%. It's pretty consistent... it just keeps going up and up and up. As I expected, the road surface was excellent.

I took it slow and easy, leaving myself enough energy for the 100km that remained after it.

The construction in the foreground is at a resort that lies on a road that eventually joins up with the road I was on. That it was so far below me, yet would join up with me, told me that it was really steep, and indeed that's what I found out later. That road is almost 2km long with an average of 11%, but it's much steeper in some areas.

I'll have to try it next time I'm in the area, though I can't imagine when that might ever be.

The descent down the other side was lovely, but offered no views, and had quite of bit of undulation. I suspect it would be the easier of the two climbs.

I could have taken a more scenic route home, but at this point “fast” was more important. Fumie had already taken over what I needed to be back by 7pm for, so I didn't have to worry about jumping on a train to make it in time. But I still just wanted to be home, so I put on the gas and rode with traffic (often faster than traffic in the evening rush hour).

I was happy to make a PR by a wide margin on the little climb on Route 1 that separates Otsu from Kyoto. Just as I did on my previously-longest ride, I was happy to PR some segments at the end, to punctuate the long distance with some speed.

In the end I made it home at 7:05pm, 13½ hours after I departed.

I would strongly recommend this round trip to Nagoya for anyone really wanting to say “I've done a round trip to Nagoya”, but otherwise it has little to recommend it. Parts here and there were wonderful, but would be better visited on rides with better filling in between. I don't think I'll do this ride again.

(About the same distance the other way is Himeji, and the routes to and fro look much more pleasant, so I guess that's on my list next. Himeji Cappuccino awaits!)