The first time I rode a bicycle from Kyoto to Osaka, a year and a half ago (“Cycling Along the River from Kyoto To Osaka Castle”), the 55-kilometer (34-mile) route we were lead on followed roads and paths that traced the eastern bank of the Katsura River and then the southern bank of the Yodo River. For the most part it's a fine route, on nice paths closed to motor vehicles.

The initial paths out of Kyoto are the least developed part of the trip, so I came up with a less muddy, less bumpy exit from Kyoto, but otherwise I'd take the same route every time I went to or from Osaka (including rides blogged about here, here, here, and here).

I got to wondering why we always used only the one side of the river and not the other, and so while I was stuck at home sick over the New Year break, I spent days inspecting data (satellite photos, Strava ride data, etc.) to figure out what roads and paths were on the other side of the river, and updated OpenStreetMaps accordingly. It looked very promising.

Finally, on Jan 7th, I put it to use and gave it a try, resulting in a 101-mile ride down one side of the river and up the other (view at Strava), with various excursions in Osaka, including an all-out assault of the notorious Tenpozan (Mt. Tenpo) climb.

I started out at about 8:40am. I took my standard route south out of Kyoto, but then made my way over to the Katsura River, and at the 11km mark of the ride, crossed the bridge to start exploring areas I'd never ridden in.

Initially there's only a road (not a cycle path) hugging the river, but it has little traffic, and it gives way to a cycle path after a mile or so:

This entrance has the first of what turns out to be many of these infuriating gates. Ostensibly they are designed to keep scooters and motorcycles out, but practically speaking, they bang your bike and ankles and cause blood pressure to rise.

The “(sort of)” caption relates to the little sign to the right of the entrance, which says "this is not exclusive to bicycles; if you ride, share the road with pedestrians and mind your manners". Common sense that must be sufficiently uncommon to have prompted the sign. 🙁

Over the next 42km (26 miles) until the ocean, the route jumps on and off paths and roads in a simple, easy-to-follow way, except for at two locations where another river joins, and the way to connect across the wide mouth of the joining river is not straightforward.

It wasn't always apparent in my research just how reliable a path was. The first such iffy spot crossed the mouth of a joining river on a path that looked to be gravel, and indeed it was:

This short span (770m / half a mile) of dirt isn't too bad on a road bike, and cuts off a somewhat complex (but paved) route that's 2½ times longer. I'd take the latter if it were rainy.

The dirt path ends at a wide, beautifully-paved cycling path, but with a fully-closed gate that you have to lift the bike over...

I didn't think anything would make me appreciate the ankle-biter gates, but here we are. I suppose I should just skip the shortcut dirt road and avoid the gate altogether.

There are parks along much of the river on both sides, collectively known as the Yodogawa Riverside Park. Among the 30-ish miles of park are, as best I can figure from their online reservation system: 28 baseball fields, 7 additional tot-sized baseball fields, 49 tennis courts, 9 soccer fields, 2 mini-soccer fields, 7 gateball fields, 2 track-and-field areas, and numerous park-like places for kids to play and people to walk their dogs.

But even all that doesn't fill up the space much, and much of it is lovely nature:

My geographical knowledge is apparently quite compartmentalized, because even though I had ridden nearby (on the path on the other side of the river) many times, I had no real sense for where I was until I noticed the unique water-level-observation tower across the river, which is a landmark about halfway between my house and Osaka Castle.

I had to exit the big nice cycling path at one point due to construction slated to last for a few more months, so I returned to the road on the embankment above. There was a less-traveled road down below on the other side (to the right in the photo above), so once the construction is done, this area will have three roads to choose from.

I caught this asshole chucking a can into the weeds, and made him go back to pick it up. He was all nice and apologetic when I first framed it as “you dropped something”, but when I asked whether he thought this country was a trash can, he got all pissy at me.

I just can't comprehend what goes through some people's minds. Sigh. I'm sure he chucked it again the moment I was gone.

What we have above looks to be “IR16.0”, but it's really a line pained across the path, followed by “R 16.0”, and it means “16 kilometers until the river ends, right bank”. in Japanese, banks of a river are labeled “left” and “right” based on what side they are on when standing in the river and facing in the same direction as the flow of the water, so in this case, the north side I was riding on is the “right bank”, and occasionally these distance markers are painted large on the path.

For a while I was riding up on the embankment cycling road. Down on the left is another cycling/service road, and on the right is a normal road. Depending on the wind and your whim, one can mix and match as they like.

Picking my way the 62km (39mi) here took a leisurely three hours.

After a short break, I thought I'd try ascending Tenpozan, Mt. Tenpo, which would require a 12km trip through the city, including through an underground tunnel under a river....

Having arrived at the base, I steeled myself for the brutal climb to the top of the mountain.

Two minutes later, I had put the whole mountain's 4.5m (almost 15 whole feet) of vertical climb behind me, and summited!

The surveyed summit is actually a small marker on the ground seen near my bike in the photo above...

As you may have guessed, it's not really a mountain, but it's officially designated one by the Japanese Government. You can read about it, as I did, on its Wikipedia entry.

As a joke, I made a Strava segment for the “full climb”, though it's sort of meaningless even beyond the meaninglessness of the 4.5m “climb.” It suffers from “Undesirable Segment Trait #7”, and all the top matches to the segment are mistakes. Still fun.

The mood at the little park was decidedly eerie because there were swarms of people walking around silently, aimlessly, in moving together in small groups but individually just looking at their phones. It was my first encounter with mass “Pokemon Go”.

As I flew by the scene, I took in that the truck had obviously taken the corner (just out of frame to the right) too quickly and dumped a bunch of its load, and thought perhaps I should stop and help, but there seemed to be plenty of people there. But moments later it sunk in that I had seen only one elderly man and some little kids, so I went back, took a photo, and got sticky.

The first order of business was to get the young kids, who had just stopped by to help while playing, off the busy road and onto the sidewalk side of things. As seen above, I was vibrantly fluorescent, so I worked on the road side of things, and together with others who stopped by to help, we got everything cleaned up and loaded back onto the truck. I asked the guy what would happen to the oranges... maybe donated to a zoo? He reacted like it was a good idea he hadn't thought of.

When we were done, I asked whether I could have a good orange to eat, which of course was given with thanks. My hands were bathed in dirty orange juice, so like the kids before me, I went off to find a place to wash them. Unlike the kids, I found a place close by, and when I returned to get my bike, found the man had put the kids' toys into a pile, along with a few good oranges, for them to enjoy when they returned.

Continuing on my exploration, I passed by Universal Studios Japan, which I'd heard about often (Anthony has gone with his friends), but had never been to....

This ramp spirals up to get to a big bridge...

As the bridge approached the other side, the most heinous-looking building I have ever seen came into view:

I didn't know what it was, but I assumed it must be a Love Hotel with a name along the lines of “The Veined Penis”, or something like that. It is truly hideous. It turns out that it's a trash-incinerator plant, so I suppose it's destined for self-immolation.

I passed by as quickly as I could.

I suppose I should explain at this point what I was doing. After Mt. Tenpo, I wanted to try to head out to the ocean as far as possible, which meant hopping two man-made islands. I'd made it to the first, but was denied access to the only bridge to the second:

The island that I was on was getting built around the time I first came to Japan (1989). I tooled around it a bit. It has a lot of nature areas devoid of anything but a path going through, and occasionally a toilet:

The sign to the left of the entrance says “Location Shooting Prohibited Without Permit!!” and “If Discovered, Police Will Be Contacted!!”, each sentence replete with dual exclamation points.

Geez. It really difficult to imagine what events would have had to transpire to result in the need for a sign like this.

The picture above is looking up the river toward Osaka and Kyoto, but it turns out that it's not the Yodo River, but the confluence of it and two other rivers. Perhaps officially it's considered open sea? In any case, I had to ride almost a mile along the bank until I got to the river:

I had 10km (6.2mi) to get to the turnoff to Osaka Castle, where I'd then join the cycling road that I've taken many times.

When riding from Kyoto to Osaka, we'd never come through the gate here, so I somehow thought it was not possible. OpenStreetMap also showed it was not possible, but it was most assuredly possible, via the same ankle-biter gates seen everywhere else along this river. (After returning home, I updated this in OpenStreetMap, as well as many hours' worth of other updates based upon my actual experiences on the ride.)

While enjoying my coffee and crepes, I noticed that I would almost have a 100-mile ride by the time I returned home, so I took a longer path home, so I got my 12th “century ride” (100+ mile ride).

Here's the Relive video of the ride:

今回の写真は二年前の大雪の時の写真です。

Kyoto recently had a fairly big snow, but I didn't get out for photos, so I thought I'd post some additional photos from a pair of big-snow days that Kyoto had two years ago. First there was “Kyoto’s Biggest Snow in 58 Years” and its followup, about the big snow that started on New Year's day (2015). Then, two days later, there was an even bigger snow that garnered “Kyoto At Night During a Heavy Snow” posted in three parts (parts one, two, and three).

Rob Cole used to be one of the more prolific engineers creating plugins for Adobe Lightroom, until two years ago when he seemed to have fallen off the face of the Internet. His web site vanished, taking with it his valuable trove of solutions for photographers, and at the same time, his active participation in online forums stopped.

For the past two years no one in this facet of his life knew what had happened, but I've finally learned today that Rob passed away unexpectedly in January 2015.

This situation brings to mind “On the Permanence of One’s Online (and Offline) Presence” from seven years ago, but in this case the online presence disappeared at the same time he did. Judging by the various messages from his users that I've received since Rob disappeared, I know his work had helped a lot of people. For what it's worth, I've reached out to his family to see whether they'd like to find a way to make it available again, if they even have access to it.

Anyway, since his disappearance was so unsettling, I'm posting this to provide some closure to those that knew him online. Rest in peace, Rob, and condolences to your family.

I had a long and interesting bicycle ride down to Osaka last weekend that I've been wanting to write about, and I thought I might finally get around to it yesterday, but I went on a ride instead. Today, I'll just share some pictures from yesterday's shorter (76km/48mi) ride (view at Strava).

First I visited a bump of a hill covered in bamboo and bamboo farming, with quaint roads running here and there through it.

I didn't know what to expect when I got to the bamboo-grove hill (“mountain” is too much for this), but the road I happen to have entered on started off with quite the little climb, 300m (330yd) at 15%. The two photos above are from that road. I guess it's not well known, because I made a Strava segment for it and only seven people had ridden it prior. A shame.

Once you're up top, you can see bamboo put to use with various fence designs...

Each design is explained a bit with little signboards. The one below describes the photo above, along the lines of “infinitely rolling waves”...

This was my first visit by bicycle, but I'd actually visited part of this grove some years ago by scooter, a few of the photos from that trip later appearing on “Photos of Farming in Japan for Captain Bill” three years ago.

This time by bicycle I made sure to do all the roads. It was nice.

The picture above, which I took while exiting the hill, happens to show just how flat the area is; it's near the bottom of the hill, but the view is sweeping. I didn't take the photo for the view, though, but as a memo to myself that the road jigs to avoid a barrier and some steps. As I mentioned the other day in “Updating Maps for Cycling, Including Japan’s Pseudo One-Way Roads”, I spend considerable energy updating OpenStreetMap, so I take photos like the one above to remind myself to ensure that the map is correct.

I meandered around to try different roads through the groves...

While wandering around I came across this little side alley diving down the mountain, bathed in rich light filtering through the bamboo. The beautiful scene makes me happy, as well as the small sign on the right pointing down the road to a “kids' (play) area”, but the sign on the left makes me sad, saying “beware of perverts”. I shudder to think what prompts the need for such a sign, but they're not all that uncommon. Here's another one.

The alley doesn't go very far, but halfway down is the turnoff for the kids play area, which I thought had a lovely mood despite the previous sign...

It had the kind of ambiance I'd expect to see a movie scene shot in.

Unfortunately, the whole alley was just 100m long, but at 18%, a bit steep. It probably wasn't worth it, but I made a segment for it.

From there I made my way to the next destination, the mountain road on which the Yoshimine-dera Temple sits, a temple on a large picturesque site that I've been to a number of times, most recently “The Whole Gamut of My Blog In One Spectacular Visit to the Yoshiminedera Temple”.

The first half of the climb, up to the temple's parking-lot entrance, is 2.6km (1.6mi) at an average grade of 10.4%, though the last half a kilometer averages 17%. Passing the parking-lot entrance, you then start what seems to be an even steeper set of more than a dozen switchbacks up the mountain, above and behind the temple, though in reality this second half of the climb averages only 9.5% for its 1.4km (0.9mi).

These distances and slopes are just guesses, because it's difficult to figure out just how long the road is. For some reason, all the maps I've seen of the second half of the climb are wrong, each disagreeing wildly from the others and from reality (the latter I can check via the meager satellite-photo views that are available, and by trying to follow the maps while viewing video from my bike's front camera of my climbs).

GPS tracks are worthless as references because of the bad signal one gets in these steep mountains. Even the government road-outline data I use (described here) is patently wrong.

I've updated OpenStreetMap for the area as best I can, but not yet confidently enough to make one of my “surveyed” segment for Strava.

Anyway, about yesterday's ride, I had a lot of apprehension about the climb. I'd done the first half only once before, early on in my cycling life, as reported in “A Day of Vertical-Climb Cycling Torture in Western Kyoto”. When I did that ride, its 2,490m (8,170') of vertical climb was a record for me. Now, a year and a half later, it just slips into my top 25. It wouldn't be a noteworthy ride for me now, but the memory of how tough the climb was is vibrant.

So goal was simple: do the whole thing (both halves) in one go, without stopping. This harks back to when I was just getting started in cycling and my goal for a tough climb improved from “don't quit” to “don't stop”.

In the end, it was easier than I thought, especially since the road was dry and so I didn't have to worry too much about slipping on the steepest parts.

I stopped for a few minutes to eat some energy cookies and chocolate yokan at the place described in “Without Fate: Dumping Ground of Monumental Proportions”.

It was a mistake to take a break at the top of the mountain, as the combination of sweat and cooling down made me quite cold once I got on my way. My route took me deeper into the mountains, so the actual temperature fell as well, down to just a smidge above freezing.

The route went up and down mildly for a while, and then I took a turn I'd not taken before, and the road dropped like a rock. The first kilometer dropped at 13%, and as is my tendency when my first exposure to a road is as a descent, the thought of climbing it sent figurative chills up my spine to match the literal ones from the previous paragraph.

I eventually descended into Kameoka City and rode across it toward Mt. Atago.

The OpenStreetMap data that my routing was based upon wasn't very good in the village just before the climb, and I was routed over some questionable “roads”, including some short unpaved areas. The road above is lovely, but had I been in a car, the bollards would have been quite the surprise.

I've since updated the map.

One serendipitous side effect of the bad routing is that I came across these statues, which of course immediately reminded me of this place. These statues were less whimsical, but still interesting in their unexpectedness. According to a plaque, they are self portraits done by class-of-1989 graduating seniors of the local high school.

I then climbed up Mt. Atago via a little-used road that I'd been on only once before, as a descent, on this ride in October. The road can be a bit rough in spots, but otherwise it's a lovely climb and so I was shocked to find that there wasn't even a Strava segment for it. I made a quick segment from my ride data, and found that only eight others had done before. Very surprising.

After that it was just a straight shot home, though I did divert a bit to do a little 23%-grade climb on the way home.

Overall, it was a satisfying ride.

So 2016 is over, making it my first full year of cycling, having been bitten by the cycling bug in the spring of 2015. Like last year's summary of my 2015 cycling, this post looks back on my 2016 cycling with my geeky-data eyes.

I titled the post with the word “Reflections” so that I can sprinkle these kinds of photos throughout:

So, in 2016 my cycling year was eight months long, and during those eight months, I rode to some extent or another on 102 days, totaling 8,459km (5,256mi). On average that's about 83km (52mi) each time, twice a week.

My longest ride was the 260km (162mi) “Coffee in Nagoya” round trip, followed by the 225km (140mi) loop of this silly ride. Overall, I did four rides of at least 200km, and nine “century” rides... rides of at least 100 miles (161km).

My Eddington Number for 2016 is 50. (My lifetime Eddington Numbrer currently stands at 58.)

Four of the year's twelve months were spent away from cycling, helping out my folks in America after my mom had a stroke. The lessons I learned during that time came in handy on this October ride when, in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, I came across the lady above just outside her house, struggling to move from a walker to a wheelchair. In the momentary glimps I saw as I rode by, I recognized the signs in her movement of someone who had survived a stroke and wouldn't take “no” for an answer from her own body.

I returned and offered assistance, which she accepted. The stroke had robbed her of speech and impaired her movement, so communication was difficult, but she could respond to yes/no questions, and combined with some gestures, I understood that she wanted to get into the wheelchair and head off. Once we were underway, she took over, not wanting further assistance. I watched her head down the road toward rice fields, where I suppose family or friends were working. I was scared to death that she'd lose control on the slight slope of the road and find herself upside down in the ditch, but it seems this was something she had plenty of experience with. I took the photo and continued on my own way.

I had a lot of fun social group rides, including (among many others) this cold January ride in Shiga, October visits to Miyama and Onyu Pass, a large NORU ride, and epic “Rooftop of Kyoto” gravel ride and this even-more-epic Mt. Norikura loop.

Those last two rides deserve the “epic” label in my world. Both were about 164km (102mi), each with just under 4,000m (13,000') of elevation gain. Each was the most climbing I've ever done in a single day.

Overall in 2016, I climbed 140,965m (462,484') of vertical ascent. (These values are real, and not Strava's voodoo elevation gain.)

But most of my rides were solo exploration rides. I like exploring new areas, going at my own (usually slow) pace, usually straying too far for too long. (Then I have to rush back at a breakneck pace to make it home in time, which is not so fun.).

All my rides start/end at home, except for visits to Mt. Norikura and Mt. Rokko.

The visit to Mt. Rokko in Kobe was a lovely ride with Manseki, though it's close enough to Kyoto that I should be able to make the round trip in a day. A goal for 2017.

Mt. Norikura, which hosts Japan's highest paved road at over 2,700m (8,900') elevation, is a five-hour drive from Kyoto, but was quite worth it for three days of spectacular cycling.

I got plenty of flat tires early in the year...

But things got much better when I switched to Continental Gatorskins...

Since switching in July, I've gotten only one flat in the 5,341km (3,300mi) ridden with them. I did swap one tire out after 3,000km as a preventative measure, since I had apparently done too much sliding on a locked-up rear wheel, burning off a layer of rubber...

The protective mesh under that “hole” is perfectly fine, so the tire is probably fine, but I swapped it out just in case, moving the front tire to the rear to replace this one, then putting on a fresh tire on the front.

Okay, these “reflecting” photos get old quickly. I'll stop.

On this ride in December I was happy to make some significant PRs (personal records) for myself, but what was most noteworthy was this stag, which I first saw when it bolted from the forest above me onto the road just in front of me, skittering with two vaulting steps across the road, then launched itself down into the boulder-strewn river below.

It definitely got my attention.

As I watched it leap to the boulders far below, I thought he was a goner, but this is what wild deer do. He was fine. He climbed up the other side and stopped, looking back at me. Or so I thought. It turns out that he was looking for the dog that was stalking him, which I noticed a few minutes later wandering in the very small village (half a dozen houses) I was checking out.

Eventually the dog found the stag, which had gotten himself into an enclosed area he couldn't figure out how to get out of, and the dog (two dogs by now) kept harassing the poor thing. I tried talking to the dog in English and Japanese (and by barking at it), but it never gave any indication that it even sensed my existence, so I went back to try to track down its owner.

It turns out that the owner was a hunter, and the dogs were trained to track prey. As someone who enjoys a good steak, I felt an obligation to watch as the hunter felled the stag, but he would wait for his partner before doing it, and I didn't have the time. I continued on my ride with an appreciation of life and death and the part it plays in my diet.

I had planned on riding early in the morning of Jan 1, 2017, to a mountain about an hour away, to see the first sunrise of the new year. It's a Japanese thing. But I came down with a cold just before that, derailing my plans for both New Year's day and New Year's eve.

Apparently I have very “sensitive” tonsils, which seem to pick up bacteria easily. Even just too much cold air on them can give me mild cold-like symptoms the next day, which is why during the winter I can't really put in heavy cycling efforts... I can't risk heavy breathing when the air's cold.

If it's really cold, I can wear a mask that keeps some warm air around...

Despite the ill-timed illness, 2016 did end on a very high cycling note for me. While sick at home on Dec 31, the post office dropped off a package from Mike Bennett, the guy who hired me into Yahoo! almost 20 years ago.

Those who weren't around at the time might not know how huge a force Yahoo! was... it was the Internet for many folks. It was relevant and innovative. As a software engineer, it was the place to be; it was an amazing eight years of my personal and professional life. Among employees from that time, I'd guess all feel as I do... we still bleed purple and yellow (Yahoo!'s colors).

Anyway, Mike had Yahoo! cycling jerseys made up for an annual charity bike ride he and others took part in. Back then I had no interest in cycling whatsoever ("What kind of idiot rides a bike when they can drive? Or, even better, just stay at work and get stuff done!"), but now that I have interest, I asked whether he might have an extra one lying around. He did, and that's what arrived.

I was really looking forward to it, but wasn't prepared for the emotions as I opened it to see the Yahoo! logo and colors. I was swept back to those heady years of exhilarating innovation and camaraderie, and tears welled up in my eyes.

It's a summer jersey, so I won't wear it until I can wear it without a jacket covering it up. I can't wait.