After so many cycling-related posts lately, it's time I get back to my basics with some pretty photos.

最近僕のブログはサイクリング関係ばかりみたいので、やっぱりたまに美しい京都の写真にも戻らなければいけない。

I've been meaning to write about the Otagi Nenbutsuji Temple (愛宕念仏寺) temple for years, and indeed all the photos on this post are from 2012 (from visits to the temple in April and December of that year). A few of the photos appeared a year ago in “A Few Desktop Backgrounds from the Delightfully Whimsical Otaginenbutsuji Temple”, and one appears as the subject of my Photo-Development Challenge #2.

It's at the far north end of the Arashiyama area that is already filled with more temples and shrines than someone could see in a week, and it's sort of a hidden treasure, so it's not particularly crowded. Tourists who walk what they think is the full length of Arashiyama probably stop here because it simply looks like there's nothing beyond. But only a short distance farther is an amazing place.

The temple is most noted for its 1,200 often-whimsical statues carved from stone.

Sometimes they're scattered about haphazardly like those on Easter Island...

Sometimes they're packed in tightly like sardines in a can...

Each has its individual charm (and I believe each was carved by a different person), so there are always more fun things to notice each time you visit, or even each time you look at their photos. I just noticed that the subject of the aforementioned photo challenge can be found in the shot above.

The visit in December 2012 with Damien was at the end of a photographically-productive day that yielded a lovely rainbow, some stunning fall colors, autumn views of the Jojuji Temple, and assorted other beauty.

At the top of the entrance path are three bells that have the most lovely sound...

You can ring them freely. The deep, rich sound is sublime.

There's so much more there... most of the statues didn't appear here at all. Perhaps I'll have to return again...

I went on a bicycle ride yesterday that involved 13 people, the largest group I'd been on to date. It was fun, but I also learned some important lessons.

It was quite the international gathering, with folks from Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Japan, Norway, Philippines, and The States.

The first lesson I learned was to pay attention to what weather forecast I looked at. Yesterday in Kyoto city proper the actual weather (spritzy rain in the morning; otherwise sunny all day) sort of matched the forecast (10% chance of rain all day), but our ride into the mountains was in the mountains, and it rained almost the entire time.

Nigel does an amazing amount of cycling, including commute-to-work rides exceeding 100km. So far this year, including during the winter, he's averaged 1500km (890 miles) per month.

The pair in orange are father/son, with the boy being in sixth grade. He had not the slightest problem keeping with the group. They joined us only for the beginning, and split off before the steep climbs, but I suspect both could have handled it easily.

I always like riding through this part of northern Arashiyama. Here we're going by the Hokyo-in Temple (宝筐院), which is just stunning in autumn.

We soon dove into the forest-covered mountains, and a light spritzy/misty rain started that didn't let up. After the first short (but intense) climb, we took the group photo that leads this post.

Being both wet and steep, we took the descents quite slowly...

There's a tiny village halfway up the first major climb, and normally one would not stop here, but with a large group of varying abilities, it's nice to stop from time to time to keep people more or less together.

The fastest folks arrived at the top long before me and the other slowpokes, and went partially down the other side and returned back up to the pass not long after I arrived...

With various family obligations, they returned home the way we came, while the rest of us continued away from the city.

This descent, like the rest of the planned route, follows the same path that Gorm and I did two weeks ago. Like last time, I couldn't get good shots down this super-nice descent. The rain didn't help.

The rain also didn't help one rider, Dario, who for unknown reasons lost control on a slow straightaway and met the ground. 🙁

I was really impressed with how Antti (from Finland) took control of the situation, tending to the road rash in a no-nonsense way, then tending to the bicycle (making sure it was safe to ride), all the while tending to everyone's emotions. He brought calm and direction where it was needed.

Many good lessons here for everyone.

We didn't have much in the way of first-aid supplies with us (which is to say we had nothing; I had a few Band-Aids, but they were of no use here), so Antti made do with what we had. My little towel became a protective wrap.

Dario was certainly in discomfort for a while, but a day later he's already saying he's ready to ride again with us soon.

Back to yesterday, in going over the bicycle to make sure it was safe to ride, Antti adjusted a few bolts with a small multi-tool thing he had. I don't think anyone else had anything like that, and this was another lesson for me. Mechanical issues can pop up any time, so I should have some basic tools with me. If I was going to spend the weight to have some tools, I wanted to get something that would actually be useful, so I ordered this Crank Brothers tool. It's a little heavy and has mixed reviews, so here's keeping my fingers crossed.

We continued as a group until we got to a turnoff that lead back to Kyoto. I had intended to return at this point anyway, since I had family things to do myself. Four of us headed back via a small mountain road.

Then I got my first flat as a cyclist.

The others were in a rush just to get home in the cold rain, and there was nothing they could do while I changed the flat, so I told them to continue on.

I'd never changed a flat, nor even seen it done except in a couple of YouTube videos that I watched some months ago. But it turned out to be straightforward to change the tube, and aside from the most dirty I think my hands have ever gotten, there were no problems.

The new tube was in and filled, and I was about ready to put the wheel back onto the bike when I had the bright idea to actually check the tread to see whether I could find what caused the flat. If there was a nail or something in there, it'd just pop the new tube right away.

I wasn't quite prepared for what I found:

This is not a tire that's just gone bad... this tire has apparently been beyond bad for a long time. This wear extends around much of one half of the tire, and it's unfathomable how neither I nor the mechanics who have worked on my bike over the last months have not noticed it. This is worse than first noticing you're pregnant because the baby just fell out.

I knew immediately that I was in trouble, because with a huge hole worn through the tire, there was nothing to protect the tube. I actually got a few very-careful kilometers on it, enough to get to a convenience store and wash my hands, but it soon was flat again.

I was 50km (30 miles) from home, in the middle of nowhere, with a bike I couldn't ride.

Thankfully, my father-in-law could come and pick me up. I pushed the bike to a michi no eki (道の駅) that was conveniently close and waited.

今回のサイクリングは京都→大阪→妙見山(豊能郡)→京都でした。この記事は大阪城までの分を含めている。

For our Wednesday ride this week, the plan was to cycle down to Osaka and see the city a bit, then slog up through the dense suburbia to the mountains, then up and over them back to Kyoto.

This post is about 49-km (31-mile) ride from Kyoto to Osaka, primarily on bike paths along the rivers that cut through the concrete jungle filling the flatlands between mountains (the concrete jungle seen in this long shot of the Osaka skyline from Kyoto).

This time I've based the time (“+9 min” above) and distance (“2.8 km” above) under each photo on the start of the group ride, rather than (as in previous cycling posts) from when I left my house.

Within Kyoto City proper, the “path” along the river is really a bunch of path segments haphazardly connected by trips across bridges, around people's homes, and sometimes on the street. The track of the ride at Strava can show you the way if you'd like to make the trip yourself sometime. In our case, we were led by veteran rider Manseki Kanemitsu (who appeared on my blog yesterday in a shot from this outing).

Here we cross from riding along the Kamo River, over both the Uji River and the Kitsu River, just above the point they all merge to become the mighty Yodo River. Even though it had been eight years since I'd been there, I recognized it right away as the location of “Cherry Blossoms in the Middle of Three Rivers”, about the mile-long island where these rivers come together, completely covered by cherry trees.

I'd definitely like to come back here next spring.

Once we get alongside the Yodo River, the path opens up to a wide, pristinely-smooth blacktop.

I've still got to get the hang of my new camera for cycling. For the kind of side-shot above, I wanted a slow enough shutter to blur the background and the wheels, but I didn't do it nearly enough.

I would have liked to experiment more, but there's only so much Jeffrey I can subject these guys to.

So speaking of subjecting them to me, with the path so wonderfully wide, I thought a lined-up-abreast shot might be nice, so I had them line up...

... then I asked them to pretend to attack, but they all instinctively put on the afterburners and even though I tried to accelerate with them, they left me in the dust. A mere eight seconds after the shot above, they were red-shifting away from me...

The name in Japanese of these moronic gates is バイク止め (“anti-motorcycle gate”), but in practice they are “anti-ankle, anti-derailleur, anti-progress” gates. There are about a dozen of them on the route we took.

Above, Michael is passing through incorrectly. Manseki had shown Gorm and me a month earlier, so Gorm knew the correct (though visually-comical) way...

Manseki used to be a professional athlete (skiing), so he's used to putting on his “game face” for the camera.

Unlike yesterday's “Manseki Attack!” photo that resulted from a camera mistake on my part, this one was exposed properly, but I like yesterday's result so sort of went in the same direction for this one.

I wanted to do similar treatments for Michael and Gorm, but I didn't have an appropriate base photo to start with. 🙁

This shot by Manseki illustrates why I need to pay attention to the shutter speed... at 1/_1,000^th of a second, the lack of blur in the wheels makes it look like I'm standing still. I'm not that well balanced.

Just as we got to the city proper, we departed the Yodo River to head south, which involved climbing up the berm protecting the city from a flooding river...

The last of these ridiculous gates...

What's really insidious about these gates is that the height and shape of the two sets of ankle-biting parallel bars is different for each gate in a comically-random fashion, meaning that you can never “get the hang” of them. It wouldn't surprise me if someone from the Municipal Department of Annoyances changes them each night, just to garner more ankles and derailleurs from the unsuspecting.

We followed the creatively-named Oogawa (“Big River”) south for a bit, along a long pleasant riverside park...

Our destination for the first stop was Osaka Castle, which last appeared on my blog almost eight years ago.

At the vending-machine stop before leaving the park, I noticed this helpful city service:

Continued (sort of) here...

昨日サイクリングをして大阪へ行きました。途中で金光万石さんの写真を撮ったけれども、カメラの設定のミスのせいでかなり露出過度にしまった。 写真は良くなかったが、ソフトで調整してから上の結果を出せました。結果は本人と同じ位格好良いだと思います。

Out on a cycle ride to Osaka yesterday, I snapped a photo of cycling buddy Manseki Kanemitsu as we rode. The photo was wildly overexposed due to a camera-settings mistake on my part, but with some futzing in Lightroom I made something of it that I like.

I was using the new Panasonic LX100 that I wrote about the other day, but trying it in a different mode where I control both the shutter speed and aperture, and let the camera adjust the image-sensor sensitivity to suit the specific brightness of the moment. In this case I wanted a slower shutter so that movement in the frame (the wheels and the background) were blurred, but I neglected to realize that the scene was simply too bright for the settings I'd chosen, and so even though the camera lowered the image-sensor sensitivity to its lowest, it was still overwhelmed by the flurry of photons.

It's just as well, because the result above is probably more cool than what I would have gotten with proper settings. I'll take it.

On Wednesday Gorm and I did a 140km (88 mile) cycling ride to Miyama. It had 2,350m (7,800') of vertical climb, and though just a few days prior I had done a much tougher ride, this is the one that wiped me out.

The “7:31 AM (+1h 8m) - 13 km (8 miles)” note under the photo above means that it was taken at 7:31am, an hour and 8 minutes of rest and travel (and 13km of travel) after I'd left my house; this kind of note is under each photo to help give a sense of travel.

Our route took us over a road that I'd not been on since this trip six years ago. It was my first time by bike, and though the climb was long, it wasn't particularly steep. Going down afterwards is always nice...

Sadly, some time soon after taking the photo above, I somehow bumped my camera from its normal raw-format mode to low-quality JPEG mode, and I didn't notice for the rest of the trip. )-:

But this segment of road was just gorgeous, and I probably couldn't capture it well reagardless of camera settings.

We made a brief stop at the pretty farmstead I'd flown by on a ride two weeks prior. I really like the look.

We finally arrived in Miyama, the small picturesque village at the midpoint of our trip. A trio of other cyclists had arrived at the same time.

At Gorm's suggestion, I rode up it so that I could create a segment on Strava for it, which I dubbed Miyama Mini “Nasty” in reference to the “Nasty” 21% slope shown here.

This segment is steeper, but much shorter.... way too short to be a practically-usable segment, but if someone's got an accurate 1Hz GPS unit, they can have some fun trying to register a fast time.

The road surface of the slope is white concrete, which stands out against the black asphalt of the road leading to and from the slope, so I made the white concrete section the limits of the segment boundaries. This extends the length of the segment to include a flat area at the top, so the overall average slope goes down to 20% (10.8m rise over 55m length), but the main part of the slope is much steeper.

I did it twice (once in 19 seconds, then again in 23 seconds), but Strava noticed only one attempt and credited me with 17 seconds for some reason. Anyway, that was a bit of fun.

The most difficult parts of the ride remained, and I was mentally not looking forward to them because I'd done them in reverse before (here) and if I've seen a mountain road only as a downhill slope, then I find it really rough to think about doing it uphill. It feels counter-intuitive, but these roads “feel” much longer to me going down than going up.

Once I've done it uphill then I have a different kind of apprehension as I approach it next time, but for today I'd have to do for the first time Sasari Pass from the west, and Hanase Pass from the north, and I was dreading it.

So I put the camera away and just did them, slowly.

At least the last bit of the last climb was a repeat of the return from Cowbell, and I made a new PR on that segment by a few seconds, so that was nice.

I was really wiped out. After the 230km ride around Lake Biwa last week I felt great, and last weekend I felt just fine after a 115km ride with a personal-best 2,660m (8,750') of climb, but this ride today wiped me out.

I probably need mental training more than physical.