去年の成人の日、「三十三間堂大的全国大会」の撮影。14ヶ月遅いですが、この記事の続きです。

As I seem to do more often than not, I never did follow up on an early-2015 blog post that I intended to be just an introduction. In January 2015 I posted “The 2015 Young-Adult Archery Event at the Sanjusangendo Temple” with a few pictures and a “To be continued...” ending. So here we are, 16 months later, I've come across the event in my photo archives.The event for recently-come-of-age adults is introduced and descried on the earlier post, so I'll just get into the photos.

As I've mentioned in other posts about this annual event, the crowds are utterly ridiculous. Having made the effort to get close in previous years, the above photo shows the closest I bothered with this time.

At one point I did have a view of the board used to indicate to the archers whether they connected on either of the two arrows they were allowed to shoot. Six archers shoot at once, so the board shows the results for twelve arrows:

Rather than try to muscle my way through the crowds to see the actual event, I spent more time in the less-crowded areas, using my big lens to reach across the crowds to zoom in on scenes of interest...

With crowds like we had, and my not being 10 feet tall, I often got unlucky with people caught out of focus in the frame, such as the big orb at the bottom of the shot above, which I assume is some person's head.

I also had my 70-200 zoom for more-traditional shots.

When the kids posed, they usually did so without the heavy leather glove worn on the pulling hand while shooting, and never posed with an actual arrow...

With all this color and posing and youthful spirit, there also congregated a lot of cameras...

Damien Douxchamps stopped by as well, and uncharacteristically smiled (sort of) for my camera.

I tried not to contribute to too much “mob scene” feeling, so would retreat to a quiet distance with my long lens. So while the crowd above continued, I opted for a different approach to the same subjects...

Another thing I could do was just wander and focus on patterns or small details...

In looking at that last photo I realized how much work many of the ladies put into their hair.

English follows this short Japanese version of the post...

京都から大阪へのサイクリングコースはほとんど良いですが、京都市内では嫌な部分も有ります。 泥、水、砂、凸凹。この範囲は楽しくないので、別のルートを作りました。 ルートは難しくないが、説明はちょっと複雑ですので、上の地図を見て下さい。 それとルートのGPXファイルを準備しました。 帰り道は行く道とちょっと違うし、来年の４月までの工事の為に迂回もあり、４つのダウンロードを作りました。

2017年3月31日まで		2017年4月1日から
京都から大阪へ		京都から大阪へ
大阪からの帰り道		大阪からの帰り道

In my first blog post about cycling to Osaka from Kyoto, one can see photos of the lovely bicycle route that spans much of the 40~50 kilometers (~30 miles). My other posts that include the trip also show scenes of the lovely, flat, smooth, bicycle path.

What I haven't shown much, besides the photo above that appeared last week, is a horrible ~4km (~2.5mi) section of the path that exits eastern Kyoto. It's full of teeth-rattling bone-jarring bumps, in addition to sections of mud, water, sand, and gravel. I deeply dislike riding it.

So, I sought to find a replacement “standard route” that avoided what made that route so nasty, without introducing anything worse, and I think I've found one.

I'll go full-on geektard for this post to help me get back into blogging after the recent break, but for those interested in just the route, here it is in the form of a downloadable GPX file:

• route leaving Kyoto
• route returning to Kyoto

For completeness I've shown the route from the common starting point of the Sanjo Street bridge, but my route doesn't differ from the “standard” route until about Kyujo Street.

Let's follow along....

Still part of the “standard route”, after about two kilometers, we'll need to cross over to the other side of the river. We'll come up to a long slope coming down on our left... we'll do a U-Turn and head back up that slope to street level, do another U-Turn and continue south along the sidewalk for a bit until we get to a bridge, cross the bridge, go down a slope and do one more U-Turn....

The route normally continues for three kilometers on this side of the river, but due to some construction not scheduled to be finished until March 31 next year, we have to take an ugly little detour...

The construction is done, so you can just continue straight here...

The Google Earth view of this path shows a quagmire of construction mud, but the path is not complete. It's not quite as smooth as the photo might make it appear, but it's plenty fine and one can go quite fast on it.

This little section of the route crosses a JR track. If you're in a rush and don't want to take the chance of getting stopped at the signal, you can cut down this path to a small street that goes under the tracks.

After having turned left just after the short tunnel, you have come up an exit from a main road. When you get to the main road, continue on the sidewalk (because you're against traffic) for a short 60m to the first right. That'll put you on a road that wraps around the ugly concrete plant...

A few moments later you'll need to go under the expressway through a small tunnel. Take care, as traffic comes flying out of the tunnel without regard to little safety-related things like maintaining one's lane...

After about half a kilometer, the nice road ends near a huge intersection that we need to get to the complete other side of using crosswalks. This'll get us facing west, waiting to cross National Route 1...

This is the one area that has a different route during the return. On the return, instead of retracing your steps back up this short branch road, cross under the main road and take the branch on the other side, joining the main road just in time to cross Route 1. Then you're back on the same route as before.

Another option at the end, instead of cutting down the little alley, is to continue south on Senbon for another 1.2km. For much of the way it parallels the cycling path...

If you read this far, it almost certainly took you longer to get here than it would to actually ride the path. It probably took me longer to write this post up than it took the city to pave the whole thing. It probably wasn't worth it, but this is how I get my geek on, I guess.

At least I know that for me, having a route like this available makes heading to Osaka much more appealing. I just can't stand the bone-jarring bumps of the standard route; the lack of mud and water on this route is just icing on the top.

Having been back in Kyoto for two weeks after having been away for three months, I finally started to ease back into real cycling with my first challenging ride since January (probably since doing Sugino Pass three times in a row on Jan 11).

I'd built up slowly with some simple rides, but nothing with a lot of climbing. I was surprised to find during those simple rides that I was doing much better on short/intense climbs than I did before the three-month break, and I wondered whether this unexplained fitness would transition to longer climbs.

The answer turned out to be “no”.

For yesterday's route, I more or less retraced the loop seen in last October's “The New Bike Is Fast; I’m Just Going Along For The Ride”, but with a different tactic.

First, here's yesterday's ride:

Still too wimpy to try to give full effort on a long climb, I decided to try a steady pace between Ichihara (the last built-up area before diving into the northern mountains) and Onyu Pass way up north 20km short of the ocean. The route starts at an elevation of about 150m and goes over two passes (Hanase at 760m and Nomi at 657m) before ending up at Onyu Pass's 839m. In between the passes is lots of downhill and/or gently-sloping rises.

It's not a route that folks generally try to do in one shot — there are a lot of inviting places to stop and relax along the way — so I knew that if I stopped only occasionally to get drinks, I'd rank near the top on the long 58km segment. I was slow and lethargic up the climbs, but quite fast down the descents, adopting a super aero position on the downhills (my top speed of the day was 75kph / 46mph). But overall, simply choosing not to dally gave me the top spot by a wide margin.

Even losing 16 minutes to a puncture near the end (and to having to scramble down a ravine to fetch the water bottle that rolled away while fixing the flat), I made the top spot by half an hour (3h17m vs. 3h49m).

I sort of hope some of my friends see this as a challenge and show me what a real effort might produce. I expect some of them could easily beat 2h45m.

Anyway, the puncture on the way up Onyu took the wind out of my sails, but I was already tired to begin with. I took a half-hour nap at the summit, and ate a lot of carbs. To avoid “The Bonk” (running out of energy) I tried using energy gels every hour. I think they worked, because my fatigue was more basic than just an empty gas tank... I was just at the edge of my fitness level.

But at $2+ each, and one per hour, those energy gels become pricey! Between those and the carbo cookies and all the drinks I bought, I probably spent a good $25 on keeping myself going. That's a lot for each ride!

The scenery of Kyoto's mountains was, as usual, just stunning. I didn't bring the camera, but snapped a few photos with my iPhone, but they just don't do anything justice, even after trying to bring out some oomph in Lightroom.

Case in point: this scene, from a bridge near the start of this lovely secret 8% climb, was in real life just wonderful...

Although the photos shows none of it, the trees near the center of the frame ware just bursting with joyous pink blossoms. It's what the photographer at the bottom of the frame was pointing at. (Didn't notice the photographer? That's okay; he didn't notice me, either 😉 )

By the time I got to any kind of major road, I was pretty tired and ready for home, but to get there I still had another 43km of distance and 500m of elevation to take care of.

In the end, just as I re-enter Kyoto, is a short downhill sprint I like to try, but alas was again thwarted near the end by a bus lumbering in the way. Even then I averaged 55kph for the whole 600m distance, but the bus ensured that no PR would be set. My PR (51s) is just three seconds shy of the record (48s), and I think I've got it in me to actually beat it. I'll have to give it a shot sometime when my legs are fresh, and there's no traffic.

But not today. I'm still pretty sore and tired from yesterday.

After three months away, I'm now back in Japan.

I'd left suddenly at the start of February because my mom had a stroke, but she'd recovered enough by the start of May that I could return.

My return was on United Airlines, which over the decades I've flown more than any other. They used to be a good airline, but have gone stunningly downhill in the last decade (yielding occasional rants from me, such as this and this), so it was with trepidation that I tried again. The saving grace was paying the extra $250 to bump myself up to the “Economy Plus” seats, which are the same as normal cattle class except for an extra four inches of leg room.

I appreciated the leg room for the Cleveland → San Francisco leg, though I perhaps would have appreciated it more if the chubby guy next to me didn't act as if he owned the shared armrest. But the short flight was made an hour shorter due to good winds, so it ended up being less than five hours.

Better still was the flight to Osaka, Japan, for which I had a row of three seats to myself.

The non-“Economy Plus” economy section looked to be pretty full, but the “Economy Plus” section had rows of empty seats. What a difference it makes.

The windows have no traditional pull-down shades... you press buttons to increase or decrease opacity. I assume they have some kind of liquid-crystal layer. There are definitely pluses and minuses to these things. On the minus side, it takes minutes for a change to fully take effect. No more quick peeks outside, or slamming the shade shut when a turn puts the sun directly into your eye. On the plus side, one supposes that the flight crew can press one button to have all shades go dark, such as when settling in after the meal service for a night flight that will move into daylight while folks are sleeping. At their darkest they're not blackout, but dark enough to keep a nice subdued mood in the cabin. Yet, you can see enough to judge the view, so the need for a “quick peek” (e.g. “is Mt. Fuji visible?”) is less.

The delay aside, cool.

My father-in-law kindly picked me up at the airport and brought me home. It was nice to see Fumie and Anthony again. This was Wednesday night last week.

Thursday was spent in a level stupor from jetlag. Normally jetlag comes and goes in crushing waves, but I was worthless all day on Thursday. And that, most surprisingly and thankfully, was the full extent of my jetlag this time... it was the least I think it's ever been, ever.

Friday I felt just great, though wasted most of the day renewing my driver's license, which otherwise would have soon expired. It was another reason that I had to get back to Japan sooner than later.

Saturday saw nice weather, so I took the opportunity to try cycling again. I hadn't been on a bicycle since the end of January, so I was fairly nervous about remembering basic stuff like riding clipped in.

I was also nervous about being in shape, not having done much exercise for three months beyond a “100 Push Up Time Trial” challenge I did several times a week while in The States. (I was happy to see real progress during the three months, watching my time reduce from 7m 25s the first time I tried it, to 3m 13s the last time. Of course, several years ago, I wouldn't have even been able to do 10 pushups, until this humbling event spurred me to get in shape.)

The plan was for a fairly light ride at a slow pace, so it sounded good for a first ride. We ended up doing about 105km (65mi) of mostly-flat lakeside road.

I quickly got the hang of things and felt good. I knew my body was tired from the trip so I didn't want to push, so I was happy to with the slow group pace.

The ostensible “goal” of the ride was to visit a particular middle-of-nowhere cafe...

I'm wearing a cycling jersey that Eric and Gigi had sent out of the blue while I was away. It looks and fits great... thanks E&G!

On the way back we did a fun little climb — 1.3km at 11% — though the stats at Strava are not very useful because Strava doesn't deal well with super tight switchbacks near the start/end of a segment. In these situations it often thinks you finish well before you actually do. I understand why their activity-matching algorithm doesn't work well here, and frankly would be hard pressed to come up with a general suggestion to fix it. It's a tough problem.

I felt just great for the first three or so hours of the ride, but ran out of gas for the last hour. Just dead tired. I don't think it was the dreaded didn't-get-enough-to-eat “bonk”, but just that I didn't have the physical capacity yet for that long a ride. My final climbs on the way home were very slow.

On Monday I collected and submitted most of the paperwork needed to renew my visa to live in Japan, which also expires soon. I needed one paper from the town where Fumie grew up, so on the first non-rainy day this week (Wednesday), I cycled down to Hirakata to pick it up.

Much of the distance between Kyoto and Osaka can be ridden on a wonderful bicycle path seen in “Cycling Along the River from Kyoto To Osaka Castle”, but the first several kilometers of egress from Kyoto are horrid sections alternating between mud/puddles, and incessant teeth-jarring bumps. I really dislike it, so I spent some time finding an alternate route (written about here).

It took a few minutes to lock up the bike and make myself presentable enough to go in, and another few minutes to fill out the proper form, but once that was done it took but just a few seconds to actually get the paper. There was no line, and the guy quickly checked my ID to make sure I was allowed to have what I was asking. He then pressed a button, it printed, I paid a few bucks, and I was done.

(To keep my paperwork clean and dry during the ride, I carried it all in a Loksak, which I learned about in this comment on my blog five years ago, in a rear-jersey pocket.)

I was in a good mood, having made it down there without trouble, and more than that, having filled out the complex (to me) government requisition form properly and completely the first time.

On the way back I added a little 100m climb to make things interesting. Prior to making the trip, I checked out the route on Google Maps, and was surprised to find one house was completely blurred from every angle. Of course, since I was riding by, I had to check it out to see what the big deal was.

If there was anything interesting about the house, I couldn't spot it, but it's a great example of The Streisand Effect, without which I could have ridden by a thousand times without ever noticing the utterly-unremarkable house existed.

Anyway, the short route up a short mountain eventually plunged into bamboo groves, which were much more pretty...

The road ended at a shrine...

With that final piece of paperwork in hand, later that afternoon I completed the application for my visa extension.

The next day I finally got my US taxes done.

These big items (driver's license, visa, taxes) were weighing on me, so having gotten them done, on Thursday afternoon I treated myself to a ride for no other reason but to just see whether I could give it some oomph and not kill myself.

The first little segment that I challenged myself on is a short up-and-back road climb that I like, and the result totally shocked me. Out of the six time I'd done it previously, I'd beat two minutes only once (1:47), but this time, trying somewhat but certainly not giving it my all, I did it in 1:24, totally shattering my previous best. I have no way to explain how this could happen.

I also did a counter-clockwise Heart Loop (the 37km opposite-direction version of this ride) in half an hour better than my previous best (1h34m vs. 2h05m), though this didn't surprise me as much because it's the first time I'd ever done it alone. Normally I've done it in a social stop-and-chat-often setting. But what does surprise me is that even though I wasn't really trying, I ended up within 12 minutes of the best time recorded on Strava. Most of my friends are much, much faster, so maybe their efforts are not getting matched properly to the complex route.

Anyway, it's good to be back. While I was away I didn't have time to write much for my blog, and having fallen out of that habit, I don't know whether I'll be able to get back into it. I hope I can. We'll see.

I've so many things that I want to write about lately, but just no time as I help my mom recover from a stroke. But I ran into something so frustrating that I just have to rant a bit....

I worked for Yahoo! from 1997 to 2004, and as such it has a special place in my heart despite how it's deteriorated over the years. Knowing how it's deteriorated, though, didn't prepare me for what I ran into recently when trying to create a Yahoo! account for my mom.

I recently set my folks up with a new TV, a TCL smart TV with Roku streaming service. The latter allows you to install apps on the TV, including ones that allow you to access photo-sharing sites like Yahoo's Flikr. I thought I'd set it up so that their kids (me and my siblings) can add photos of their grandkids to the Flickr account, and my folks would then automatically see them when they put the TV into “Flickr Slideshow” mode.

So, I went to create a Yahoo! account for my mom to use as the Flickr repository for these photos, but I couldn't. Yahoo! requires a mobile phone to create an account. If you don't have a phone that can receive a text message, you can't create an account. It's apparently been this way for some time.

Now, before you say “that's absolutely asinine!”, let me make a few observations. One is that it's a free service; beggars can't be choosers. Another is that though we can only speculate on the reason, they must certainly have a specific reason for having implemented such a draconian hurdle to participation.

What could the reason be? Well, it could be a way to choose their demographic. Maybe they simply don't want users like my mom; maybe they're looking to skew their audience to the young and technologically hip, or to exclude folks to don't have the discretionary income to afford a mobile phone (because inability to afford it is the only possible reason one wouldn't have a mobile phone, you know).

It could also be a way to avoid account-creation abuse; if you want to create multiple accounts, you need multiple phones, and that's a hurdle that spam-bots, for example, can't easily overcome. If you don't have specific experience in the industry, you simply can not imagine the depths that some people go through to abuse online systems. Really, you're simply not evil enough to even imagine it. So take my word that abuse curtailment is a very big deal.

Or it could be something else. Who knows? Someone at Yahoo!, probably, but not me.

So, given all that it's not reasonable to complain, but as a former Yahoo! I'm compelled to exclaim:

This is absolutely asinine!

Many folks with mobile phones have no problem with this, obviously, as Yahoo! (at the moment) still seems to exist. But a lot of folks don't have mobile phones, and a lot of folks who do don't want to reveal that private information to big corporations like Yahoo!. Yahoo! is proactively excluding these folks, which is perhaps their exact intent, but I don't see how this can bode well in the long term.

I spent considerable time trying to find a way around it, not initially believing that Yahoo! could be so stupid. I eventually abandoned the idea.

I moved on to try my idea with SmugMug, a non-free photo-sharing site that I've worked with for many years because I made a plugin for Adobe Lightroom for it. SmugMug has always kindly provided me with a free account for plugin development, so I used that to test with. Normal users would have to pay a nominal fee each year, but at least they don't require something that may well not exist.

In Lightroom, I created a Publish Service using my plugin to upload photos to a SmugMug gallery, adding to the pipeline my Crop for iPad plugin to crop photos on the fly to best fit the 1,920×1,080-pixel screen of the TV. (I should probably rename the plugin to remove “iPad” from the title, since there's nothing iPad specific about it and I actually use it for more other devices than iPads.)

I then installed the SmugMug Roku app onto the TV, and soon had a gorgeous slideshow of my test photos. It was wonderful.

As wonderful as it was, the free SmugMug Roku app didn't work quite the way I wanted... my folks would have to drill down a few menu items each time they wanted to see a slideshow, and I wanted an even easier solution, so I bit the bullet and returned to try Yahoo! again. I had two US phone numbers available on my own cell phone via my attempts to get a reasonable American number for my Japanese cell phone, so I thought to use one of them to create my mom's Yahoo! account.

No go: it simply wouldn't accept them, telling me “that's not a valid phone number”.

So I give up on trying to create a Yahoo! account for my mom, and on Yahoo! in general. I divested myself of what little YHOO stock I still had. It's been a long, slow decline into mediocrity and irrelevance, Yahoo!, but I've been with you every step of the way, but from now you'll have to continue down to the end without me. Bye.