Monatsarchiv: Februar 2009

… is actually a parody on a book title by Karl May, the author which is beloved by Germans for his Wild West stories and almost completely unknown to the rest of the world. Military intelligence indicated clearance of the Chichibu area so Ludwig and me took off on Wednesday for a longer ride.

We met at 8 AM at Tamagawara bridge and proceed under cloudy skies along the Tamagawa to Ome, where we had the traditional breaks at (1) Aurore bakery and (2) 7-Eleven on the other side of the road. I filled my bags with food as we had quite some ambitious plans in front of us.

From Ome we crossed into Chichibu and paid our first homage to a temple on the long pilgrimage still in front of us. Monshuin boasts a beautiful garden that has always caught our attention while pacing by the road in front of it at 45km/h – but this time we actually stopped for it.

 

Having left the temple, we followed road #53 leading towards Shomaru Toge. However before we reached the pass, we took a right turn to road #395 and made a shortcut to road #299. This was the first charter into unknown territory this day. It was much harder than expected, the road was nice and in good shape but partly a little bit steep and in the end leading us to elevation 465 meters. 

The descent was equally fast and before long we found ourselves on road #299 and climbing again – relatively steeply and immersed in rather too much fast traffic. Before the long tunnel we turned right and started attacking Karibazaka Toge. As I was slowly coming into shape, that went much better than I expected.

I made a silly joke about whale penis in relation with Japanese food, hardly hammering down my point while trying to suck enough air in to keep me going. Ludwig insisted that I should write about on the blog.

On the top we took a break ate our rations and finally blue sky was filling the gap between god and us above us. But is was bloody cold, only three degrees so we went on. Luckily no ice or snow in sight. So far we have always turned to the left in direction of Ono Toge, Shomaru Toge and Sadamine Toge, but this time we went to the right in direction Iimori Toge.

 

But we didn’t continue for too long and took another small forest road on the left which led us down, down and down. Within no time we have lost substantial elevation and we felt pretty cold. There was also one stretch of the road that was not paved, but this continued only for a kilometer or so. Unfortunately it was enough for both or us to warrant a new round of bike cleaning.

We visited another temple along the roadside (Tatsugaya) and then came to a small village (Ogose) where a cafe called „Die Sonne“ („the sun“, but not a newspaper) was closed except for Saturdays and Sundays. And probably also for all month which include the

 letter „R“. The local

 supermarket offered nothing to eat but Shoju, rice and flour but luckily we were able to find a nice Soba shop shortly before the entrance to the prefectures natural forest reserve. Ludwig was running out of steam but after he had his power-soba lunch he was winded up like an old tin toy racing car tuned with a titanium spring. From elevation 150 m 

we had to make our way up to 650 m again on road #61.

Our final goal was to reach the legendary temple called Takayama Fudoson. (This is NOT a real estate temple, because then it would be called Fudosan). Well to be honest, I don’t know if the temple is legendary or not, but it looked very tempting to ride there on a map.

Finally we made it, the last 300 meters or so really steep going down on a „concrete circle surface“ type of road, easily reaching 20% inclination. The temple was OK, not great, so we started to crawl up this crazy slope again – which is really crazy without compact crank.
It was already close to 4 PM so instead of going back to Ome, we decided that we continue on road #299 to Hano and take a train back home. Due to all the climbing (2.320 meter in total) we have covered only 115 km in 8 hours – unbelievable. So once we were finally on a slightly downhill road we speeded ahead at 30 Km/hr plus average more or less continuously.

And then after 140 km and 9 and a half hours our ride was over. We really did a lot of new roads, some serious climbing and saw a lot of interesting things. I guess a lot of these roads have been already covered by Tom in the summer of 2008 though.

http://www.mapmyride.com/route/jp/setagaya%20daita/174224540973

Now only a short train ride home was waiting for us.

But what was that? We had to wait almost 30 minutes before a train arrived – and finally it took me even after this 30 minutes two hours to arrive at home. OK, better than riding in the dark and cold on busy four lane roads home, but this was not after my taste.

Anyway a good ride and training. for Tsukuba. Anyone in?

Photos, map etc. will follow in different blog entry.

Jon Sparks and Craig Saphin from Wall Street Associates are organizing a longer bicycle tour with support vehicles in Kyushu between May 23rd and May 29th. Five days – 750 km. They are currently in the processing of assembling a group of riders, so far they have 20 riders committed and 15 tentatively registered. If I remember correctly, James send some e-mail about the same tour around some weeks ago.

I signed up tentatively as I am not exactly sure how my life will be in May. If you are interested to get more infos, please let me know, I will establish the contact for you.

小春日和 – a balmy day in autumn may not exactly describe the weather today, but is the only beautiful Japanese word I know which comes close to describe a feeling of spring. This normally will be followed by 三寒四温: three cold days, followed by four beautiful warm days.

I wanted to stay in bed rather long, so I opted for a 8.30 AM Tamagawa rendezvouz with Ludwig instead of the earlier alternatives with David, Jerome and James. Outside the wind was very strong. When I crossed the Tamagawa it was extremely strong – and Ludwig was not at the meeting point. Perhaps blown away on his superlight Canyon bike and with 3% body fat? No he was in bed, so I decided to take an easy spin alone.

Painful slow progress along the Tamagawa due to the strong headwind, it was difficult to ride faster than 20 km/hr. I decided to go to Takao, anyway away from the Tamagawa. I skipped the break at the 7/11 and attacked Otarumi immediately but was terribly slow again. But the weather was nice, very warm, so I decided to take on Yabitsu. Apart from Route 20 between Hakone and Jukoku Toge this is my favourite road/climb in Japan.

Before I started I had soba with duck meat at a restaurant at the Miyagase lake, the first longer stop of the ride. The soba was good, but the duck must have been very, very old.

With a tailwind the climb was surprisingly fast, only 1.26 min slower than my best time from last year. On the top the view was beautiful, the best ever: Not only the coastline, but also the sea was clearly visible with Oshima, Nijima and Kotsujima lingering in the background.
I still felt good when I arrived in Hadano and I briefly thought about climbing up Hakone, continue on route 20 and take the Shinkansen home from Atami [the Ekiden route]. But when I reached national road #1 I recognized that I was still 14 km away from Odawara and reason and logic took charge again. So I continued in the opposite direction along the coast in direction Enoshima and then further on to Kamakura.

I had coffee & cakes at Seacastle, the old German restaurant at Kamakura, my second longer stop in 8 hours of riding . The rest was an uneventful ride through Kamakura, then back by train from Ofuna, all in all 160 km.
The weather was really fantastic today and I was glad that I went out riding. Other riders must have thought the same way; rarely I have seen that many on the road. As if the official riding season has started on February 1st.