Archiv der Kategorie: 2010

von | 8. Februar 2010 · 03:18

The Dawn of the Davids

Imagine you wake up one morning and the world around you has changed completely. All your neighbors have become brainless zombies and you can only defend yourself by throwing Dire Straits LPs at them. Or suddenly, everyone you know goes by the name Dave.


From left to right: David, David, David, David, David, David, David, David and Phil.


„Oh, David, good that you made it. May I introduce you to David? David, this is David, David this is David.“
„Hi David, Nice to meet you.“
„Hi, nice to meet you too, David.“

With David J. being back in England, David L. injured and David C. taking part only in short trips morning rides, one would assume that the amount of Davids that could be assembled for a ride in Bozo peninsular would be somewhat limited. Nevertheless, when Phil of TCC called for a joint winter ride in Chiba, all remaining cycling Davids and very few other guys turned up, eleven riders in total. We were quite a group: David Dachin (younger brother of James), David Denderson aka as Dominic Denderson and me, the D.O.B. were attending the tour on behalf of Dositivo Depresso.

Phil has warned us that this would become a leisurely ride, adding that we must make 30 km/hr average along the first third in order to be home on time, so we started rather fast and within no time we have also lost some riders of our group. But we always stopped and let the slower riders catch up so that we might have had a good speed average, however the overall progress was rather slow.

It is always interesting to ride in the countryside of Chiba, I believe that I can say that as an expert who has ridden there with Phil already two times. Every time and without him, I would be lost and probably still would ride clueless in Chiba looking for the exit between the vast stretches of land belonging to golf clubs. Nine years ago a Dutchman by the name of Kees Van der Werff got so much lost that he found Chibas‘ exit only after weeks (exhibit 1, at the bottom of this post).

It is also interesting to note that Chiba is not flat at all and consists of many hills, not a single one higher than 400 meters, but some of them quite steep and all in all we were able to do much more than 1.000 meter of climbing before we broke into two groups.

The riding is much different than on the West side. On the West side one picks a series of climbs with impressive elevations and connects them by dotted lines, trying to get us much of them in as possible. One knows the climbs, they are continuous and one is motivated to make an effort, go up fast and reach the top, followed by some leisure time riding downhill. It is like working as a public official in the accounting department and having a wild weekend affair. Riding in Chiba is more like the average marriage: The hills are not that high any more, but the sheer number of ups and downs adds up as well (or perhaps „adds down“ in this comparative case) and leaves its mark on the spiritual and physical condition of the participants.

One climb was particular long and nasty and Phil took photos of all of us coming in one by one except for Tim and his fixie. As there was a road branching off to the right which went down and looked much more inviting, TruffleEater constructed a nice cryptic message out of some bamboo branches which should have indicated the proper road (up) to follow. All you needed to understand it would have been basic operative training in the CIA or MI-5 and an enigma machine to decode the message. The alternatives would have been (a) to block the wrong roads with some logs that were lying on the side of the road or (b) to write a message with chalk on the (wrong) road surface at the bottom of the hill some 200 meters down:

„U-Turn here, Fixie and up the other road!“

But being nice guys we decided something simple. We never saw Tim again that day.

Then we made another stop at a nice country shop (now PE approved) somewhere in the middle of Bozo. My guess what be that our group made not only 50% of the total turnover in that shop on this day, but also 100% of the not-alcohol related turnover. I saw some locals dropping in with their typical agricultural mini cars and every single one of them left with a crate of beers. And nothing else. That should give you some idea what people in Chiba do on their weekends during winter time.

It was nice and toasty (PE rule: The word „toasty“ should be used in every post at least once between December and March.) in the shop that has provided us with a seating arrangement at least as nice as a snack bar and the only equipment missing was a Karaoke machine and some 60 year plus old bar hostesses feeding as with mizuwari from our drinking bottles, peanuts and gently touching from time to time our shaved knees.

We also took a group photo there in front of some old slot machines at the scrape yard next to the country shop.

A few kilometres later our group split, Phil leading the TCC guys back to Honda station and David, David and me riding along road 465 towards the coast to the town of Kanayamahma where we would take the ferry to Miura Hanto. Phil also suggested a smaller detour over a hill on a road (Ken 93) parallel to road 465. He suggested this climb in particular because he never did it before and wanted to know how it is.

We were cruising then at good speeds along 465 and enjoyed the tailwind as we had quite some headwind going South all day before. Unfortunately the reason why we had this nice tailwind was, that we managed to miss road 465 somewhere and we were now heading North on road 410 towards the very ugly part of Chiba, bringing as far, far away from the ferry port.

Luckily I had brought my Garmin Version (1.0, aka as a Chiba map) and we headed up to the village of Kururi where we took a turn on Ken 93 (where well hidden) and rode back to road 465. I started to bonk (no, not that) but luckily Dominic and James gave me a banana and a power bar so I felt much better than. It was the first time I ever ate a powerbar and I was surprised at the resistance it offers against being eaten. The consistency is similar to semi-liquid asphalt or dried squid and the energy required to eat it is more than the energy your body absorbs by eating it. Strange. But I felt better than.

And finally we reached the coast and some minutes later the ferry port. I have checked the departure times of the ferries between 12 and 2 PM, however we were so late because of the many stops we made and the pointless ride we included (living up to this great PE tradition) that we only managed to catch the 4 PM ferry.

This is a great ferry, designed in the Seventies and in service since then with plushy sofas, fancy chandeliers, toasty aircon and a strip show on the upper deck starting at 4.30 PM. Or we could have selected to see Tom Jones singing in the parking deck protected by a series of bulkheads.

Recently some of the ferries had sunken because the loads were not probably secured on deck. During the heavy seas which occur during the winter seasons in the bay of Tokyo, some of the vehicles have gotten loose, moved to either the starboard or backboard side and resulted in perpendicular inclination of the ferry.
As one can see on the photo my Heavy Cervelo Soloist (8.9 kg) required therefore much tighter fixing than the relatively light Pinarellos standing next to it.

In the middle of Tokyo Bay we saw the „Tokyo Express“ container carrier by Hapag-Lloyd moving in which made my immensely proud of all the useless stuff from Germany and other European countries that is carried year by year to Japan and actually sold here. I must be the equivalent to trade beads of the 19th century and in return our ships come home loaded with Toyota Hybrids which will be immediately forwarded to Toyota dealers for recall.

In this context I would like to add that my son asked me yesterday evening if it isn’t dangerous for Toyota dealerships to intercept Toyota cars on recall as they couldn’t brake when entering the premises.

And when we arrived in Kuriyama after having enjoyed a good meal on board (thanks to the Smutje), the strip show and seeing Dean Martin after Tom Jones, it was almost dark. David choose the train home from Kuriyama while David and me took the straight road towards Kamakura. On the trip I have shared many stories about the legendary Helga, her two brothers (not named David) and the German Seacastle restaurant that they operate at Kamakura but we did not had the time to drop in despite being very fast on the last stretch. But it was already dark and we just made it to Ofuna, packed our bikes and took the train home to Yokohama.

142 km of riding and more than 1.500 meters of elevation. And, oh yes, we also met some very nice cycling Davids. Thanks to all of them for the nice trip.Exhibit One

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Eingeordnet unter 2010, James, Mob, tcc

von | 7. Februar 2010 · 15:04

A different ride

I joined a group of TCC cyclists to ride up and down the Arakawa.

It was a beautiful day – very crisp air, with extremely good visibility.

However, an initially modest headwind which we were able to take in pace line at around 32km/h turned into gale force winds which slowed us down sometimes to a creeping 20km/h, blowing us nearly off the path and at one point almost into the traffic.
I would have never been able to motivate myself to go through this permanent wall of wind without the pressure to cycle with a group, and a fast one it was.

The return ride was great fun – skippering our bikes in the wind. On a longer stretch free of any lurking dangers I accelerated easily up to 60km/h. With a better ratio than 50:12, I could have done even more.
It was also fun to be with such a strong group. Constant motivation to put in a lot of power – accelerating, sprinting, facing the wind. I find it hard to do this by myself in the flat.


The result has been my first ever muscle ache after cycling. I didn’t feel particularly exhausted after 133km of riding, but the frequent sprinting must have added an extra degree of exercise that I normally don’t get.
I hope there will be more soon.

P.S. for ardent believers in the accuracy of cycling computers that measure altitude gain: I did 470m in this very flat terrain! I’m so proud of myself…

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von | 4. Februar 2010 · 04:46

There is no shirt for the fastest sprinter

I must say I am very impressed by the series of videos about the 2009 season of the Cervelo Test Team as sponsored on bartape.net and/or as video podcast on itunes. Dominic and James have pointed this out.

I include below some screenshots from the videos I have made on my PC with Quick Screen Capture, a very handy tool which works exactly as „print screen“ should work: It takes a precise „photo“ of your PC screen in the moment you press the button, so you can for example also take pictures out of movies which you cannot with print screen. Or from Allsports.

Aesthetically, Cervelo has come a long way from their first bike shown above to the bikes they make today. I am in no position to judge, but looking at the way they design their bikes, their clothes and also now their videos, I believe that aesthetics play a big part in their brand image – and it’s a different kind of aesthetics as compared to other makers and teams. Not as loud and „sportive“, focusing more on melancholy, suffering, pain. The only other cycling-related maker than comes to my mind with a similar image is Rapha.

What I like about the videos in particular is, what is missing: They are almost bare of any direct promotion for Cervelo products (actually the first ones are, but this becomes less and less until the final Tour de France videos). And in addition they are also almost bare of any information about the results of the race the team entered. It is just about cycling and riders speaking about cycling. And combined with the Koyaanisqatsi like soundtrack, again bare of any traces of Euro-techno-beats, it appeals very much to the romantic rider in me. I would love to have seen „Road to Roubaix“ in a similar matter.

Another thing that I learned from the videos is that a cycling team consists of riders, mangers and support staff of many nationalities, Italians, Spanisch, Germans, Australians, Swiss, Norwegians …. and they communicate in English. Naturally perhaps most of them don’t enjoyed (?) higher education and at least my classmates who were brilliant in the gym were not equally gifted in learning foreign languages.

Now, in international business topics as „intercultural management“ and „crosscultural communication“ are big topics and often cited as major factors for success or failure of international business ventures. Now hearing some of them speaking English, I wonder how can they communicate effectively during the races: Some of the Germans speak with accents of German offices in US WW2 movies while the Australians/NZlanders are hard to understand even for me.

As someone who, sitting in a restaurant with his teammates, wasn’t even able to bring across the difference between „fencing“ and „fanzine“ to his English mother tongue teammates, I wonder how they manage to decide strategy on the (poor quality) team radio during a race when every second counts.

All in all it is a very motivating video, I find some traces of my own addiction to cycling included in the footage and after watching it I had the urge to ride out on my bike immediately.

Which I did.

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von | 3. Februar 2010 · 06:14

Saturday Ride [6.2.10] : BOSO AND MIURA HANTOS

I am planning to join the TCC ride organized by Phil on Satursday. With snow in the mountains and Phil knowing every corner of Boso peninsular, I think this is a good opportunity to check out this rather unknown area.

The ride starts at 9.30 AM in front of Honda station on the Sotobo Line. With the Narita Airport Express it is possible to ride from Yokohama (7.39 AM) or Shinagawa (8.01 AM) to Chiba, the switch trains there, so the travelling time is reasonable.

My plan is to ride about 50 – 60 km with TCC, then ride along road 465 to the West coast and catch the ferry to Kurihama on Miura Hanto. I have done this last year as well, it is a nice combination of riding and cruising.

On Miura I would then go South to Jogashima and back up North on the West coast to Kamakura where I might stop at the Seacastle to have an early dinner, provided I have a) company and b) feel fearless enough to enter that joint.

Back by train then from Ofuna with a few beers already in the belly (but not 0 alcohol ones). Train also connects directly to Shinagawa within 3５ minutes, so thgis is much better than taking the train home from Chiba in the evening again.

Anybody going to join me?

More TCC Info here

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von | 1. Februar 2010 · 10:15

Last Frontiers


Instead of riding out on the Cervelo road bike on Sunday, I decided that it would be time to test the Bad Boy with all terrain tires out on some serious gravel trails.

I notified Tom and Ludwig about my riding plans at 11.30 PM the day before and naturally they didn’t made it to the meeting point. Perhaps this wasn’t unintentionally as I perhaps preferred to be alone on my first Bad Boy Cyclo Cross Test ride.

After having prepared the bike on the evening of the day before I left home at 7 AM only to realize that having only 700x23C spare tubes for 700x30C tires plus no patching kit with me would be probably not a good idea. Never mind. Did Napoleon leave Moscow despite the Russian winter? Did Hannibal cross the alps on elephants? Did they have spare French or spare elephants with them? No, of course not and how splendid they did nevertheless afterwards!

It took me only 48 minutes to reach the meeting point at Tamagawa which was fairly fast, given the fact that I was basically riding something more similar to a MTB than a road racer. Luckily James, Dominic, Michael and Yair kept waiting despite me being late for more than 20 seconds over the allowed PE approved waiting deadline. I was seriously reprimanded by James before we left along the Tamagawa. James had the Shimano Di-2 groupset on his Cervelo so he is the first PE rider who did upgrade. Together with the Garmin and the powerbub on the rear wheel he carried more electronic components per kilo of machine weight than a USAF stealth fighter jet.

It was really hard to keep up with Bad Boy in the flats, it almost felt like learning to cycle all over again. I had to put in at least 10 – 15% more power along the Tamagawa only to draft behind James and later in direction Takao I had to stop to get rid of my gloves. Actually I bought this padded Gore gloves for the winter season, but yesterday it was simply too hot so I continued riding without them.
This also gave me a good excuse to take it easy as I was already worn out from riding at 160+ HRM all the time. And conversation wasn’t so much fun either. I spoke with James and even when I wasn’t in agreement with what he said I could barely stammer „ah, yeah, right“, as I was trying simultaneously to get some amount of air into my lungs.

On the positive side I had to note, that the new Selle Italia saddle with 150 mm width with quite comfortable. I probably have to realize that my behind is not made for 130 mm wide saddle due to its sheer horizontal dimensions, swallow that pill and go for something wider also on my road bike. Stephen has already let the way in this respect with his huge over sized saddle that accounts for half of the weight of his Scott bike and make it look like a chaise longue.

Our group made a stop (I rather don’t add „quick“ here) at the 7-Eleven at Takao station before we started to conquer Otarumi. Everybody was going up pretty fast and consistent, however with Bad Boy it was even worse going up than in the flat. It took me 19:30 min for the standard Toge-baka distance and perhaps I could have done it a little bit faster but not much. Pretty disappointing, and I swore that the next time I will take out Bad Boy by train and start to ride only in very close vicinity of a gravel trail. On the top I said good-bye to the group that was going back via Tsukui lake while I was continuing along route 20 to the crossing with route 76 at Fujino.

Well the nice thing with Bad Boy is, that he is really fast, stable and steady on the downhills. I overtook everybody already at the first curve and I didn’t saw anybody behind me when I reached the bottom of the hill. Braking is also very comfortable and easy to manage with two disc brakes and it was really a pleasure to ride down. It would be nice to do this again with David and check if I would be able to keep up with him as he is the actual holder of the Positivo Espresso Reverse Polka-Dot jersey, i.e. the king of the hills(down).

Road 76 was nice and empty. And before I know I arrived at Aone at the local supermarket where I purchased last supplies for the trail up to 大越 Tunnel. This is a PE-approved supermarket, however as this is the only supply point in Aone, please don’t expect too much from it. It caters to people who actually cook their meals and not to those who expect to have indication of Amino-desoxy-nuclein-ribulose-natrium-viagra-glycolyd content on their jelly packs. I asked the lady how the weather would be up at the tunnel and as usual she answers „You cannot go up there“ and as usual I said „Well, you keep telling me that, but some of my friends did before, don’t worry I can do as well.“ We did this dialog already two or three times. By now it is more like a ritual, with all words in it having lost meaning.

Outside her dog was barking as usual. He dislikes me. Or my bike.

I got lost in Aone-city trying to find the entry to road 76 leading first to 神之川 camp site. Yes, Aone is a village with perhaps 500 inhabitants but nevertheless it is not so easy to find the right road. Ludwig and me tried to find it once but once we did we had to turn back as it took too much time. TCC has gone up there one, two times but this is already two, three years ago. Lauren told me he was there a long time ago and also Tom conquered the road with his new Cyclo-cross bike recently.

So it was time for me to give it a try, as this is also one of the few roads I know about and never did before. And a good initial test for the Bad Boy as I always had this road in mind when I made my plans to upgrade the bike.

The first part up to the right-wing radical camp site isn’t particular difficult. There are some beautiful spots along the Kaminokawa river and even now there were a lot of people fishing there. Then one comes to a closed gate which is plastered with sign boards. One doesn’t need to be able to read Japanese to understand that the basic message must be:

„Come on. This is a nice road leading into beautiful mountains, devoid of any dangers and just made for cyclists like you. Fun and adventure are awaiting behind these close gates. Welcome to cycling-pleasure wonderland. Don’t hesitate to climb over the gate. By the way, these signboards are only made to look like „DO NOT ENTER“ SIGNS so that normal human beings are refraining from coming here.“

The gate is about elevation 550m and up to elevation 630m the road is in fairly good, asphalted shape. Of course there are many stones coming down from the slopes on the road. Then it starts to become a gravel road but again there are intermittent asphalted stretches. Then there is only gravel again. It is so hard and so to slow to climb this road that I had to make a break at elevation 720m to shoot some photos. The steepness of the road plus the surface made me creep up at 6 – 7 km/hr. Luckily I had my trekking shoes with the MTB-SL cleats on as otherwise I would have ruined my shoes and cleats for sure. Definitely not a road for road bikes.

Over 800m there was some ice and snow but generally it wasn’t too cold. And after a while the road became flatter and finally the last stretch up to the tunnel was asphalted again before about 30 m in front of the tunnel was a last gate.

Interesting enough some of the slopes seemed to be shotcreted recently and were in good shape while the road next to it was not. But why is there a road (and a prefectural one) in this lonely place anyway? And why is there a tunnel on the top when basically one has to climb an additional 50 to 100 meter to make it over the mountain anyway?

I was too exhausted to answer these questions and continued through the tunnel which was dark but not as scary as I thought it would be (I brought a lamp from home especially for that purpose). No comparison to the horrors that ones await at Sasago tunnel.
I stripped down on the other side and took sunbath to add some complexion to my stealth body. And then I made the downhill to Tansawa lake which was fully on asphalted road and a breeze with the disc-braking Bad Boy.

We should ride more often to Tansawa, the lake looked beautiful and there are many roads around it. After some more km I found myself on road 246 again. As I never thought I would make it that far, I didn’t think before about how to return from there and naturally I didn’t bring any maps with me.　I thought about riding along 246 to the next Combini, take a look at a map and decide further. But then 246 was really ugly out there and there was no Combini at all. By the way, the landscape 246 runs through is nice indeed and also the Tomei highway over it is pretty impressing to look at. One can see parts of the old road and some older tunnels here and there but otherwise road 246 really made a cycling misery out of the place.

So when I saw a sign to Yamakita station I took that hint and stopped at the station there. There was a long shopping arcade with many shops in front of it so I thought I might find some noodle shop or supermarket to buy some food. Unfortunately most of the shops went out of business in the Eighties and what is left catered to the needs of old country folk (seeds, aprons, adult diapers), so I was rather happy when I could leave the place 10 minutes later on a train. I was also happy that a train stopped at all, as it does so only once an hour.
And within no time I was in Odawara and back on the Shinkansen to Shin-Yokohama and finally home where I completely exhausted lost a game of monopoly to my 8 year old daughter and a game of Playstation2 Winning Eleven soccer with my Spanish team against Uruguay managed by my 13 year old son.

Hey, but they will never beat me up road 76.

PROLOGUE

I didn’t join any of the Saturday rides as I was out in town Friday night with my wife. Few years ago I bought a rather larger piece of art (about 3 meters long) from a promising young artist called Yamaguchi Akira. Since then we get invitations from the gallery of him to all kind of exhibitions which are mostly in Kagoshima or Akita and with artists the world has never heard about and never will. But he has become more famous by now and we were asked by the 17th Bienale in Sydney to rent out our work.

As this time our cooperation was required we got some of the better invitation cards for the G Tokyo 2010 art exhibition at Roppongi Hills plus VIP invitations for the reception hold at Maison Hermes in the Ginza. For the exhibition I can report that there was not one work related to cycling and that most of art is decorative today. Also they ran out of champagne after I drank my third glass there.

I always had some relation to Hermes-Ginza for several reasons, one being that the elevators in the building were made by my previous company and the second one being that my wife always threatens me to buy some of this stuff.

It was very pleasant and as we arrived on time we had a good time at the Sushi Bar. As we ate a lot the bar was shut-down half an hour later when we were already at the buffet and the dessert bar. It is really pretty kind of Hermes to hand out food to the unemployed, I must say.

We were shown around the building and in the sixth floor busy craftsmen were repairing handbags and leather belts at 10 PM under inhumane conditions (i.e. in full view of drunken VIP guests).

I am happy to report that I found a brand that is even more expensive than Assos or Rapha. I could convince my wife not to buy anything but to eat and drink as much as possible. Which we did and explains the headache and general unlust the next morning. Sorry. We cannot be all VIPs.

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Eingeordnet unter 2010, Mob

von | 1. Februar 2010 · 04:57

Boystalk

Rather easy to imagine that this conversation would have happened in the same manner with a new Cervelo bike equipped with a Shimano Di-2 groupset parked in the room instead of a Plasma TV mounted to the wall.

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von | 30. Januar 2010 · 15:19

Miura Loop

After James had bailed out of riding on Saturday because of his entire family catching the Noro virus on Friday and MOB because his adult family caught too much alcohol that same evening, and Tom indicated he was keen to join his VLAAMS team sortie rather than doing another Miura loop with me, I was left to explore the peninsula all by myself.
I left home to ride to Machida where I wanted to get onto the cycling path along the Sakaigawa river leading all the way to Fujisawa. After a small unintended detour in Machida which took me through endless social housing areas, I found the river. I quickly understood why Tom had described it as „not that nice and certainly not fast but best alternative“. It starts like one of these small rivers running through western Tokyo (e.g. Sengawa): deep river bed with only a creek flowing inside, small paved path on both sides, houses of various beauty on either side. But the landscape kept varying the further I went, and it never got boring. Eventually, Sakaigawa becomes a bigger river running through fields, and one feels like cycling through the countryside. After crossing route 246, it becomes an official cycling road, and becomes altogether more fast paced. Nonetheless, there are the occasional road crossings, sometimes with quite some traffic. Traffic on the cycling path is rather modest and nothing as bad as along the Tamagawa.
The cycling road ends without much of an indication in Fujisawa, and from there it is another few kilometres until one hits the coast at Enoshima.
I took route 137 towards Misaki, making a small detour through Hayama to avoid the heavier traffic on the main road.
It had become quite warm and I felt I was dressed to warmly for 13 degrees in the sun. Mount Fuji loomed nicely behind Enoshima, though not as clearly visible as otherwise because of the humidity.

In Misaki, I crossed half of the bridge to Jogajima, to enjoy the great views of the harbour below and once again Mount Fuji further afar.

It was still relatively early for lunch (not yet 11am), but I was hoping to drop by Tom’s favourite restaurant just outside Misaki, along the coastal road towards the east. Alas, I missed it and by the time that became apparent, I did not feel like cycling back. Had I actually visited the restaurant, I would have just left it when Tom would have arrived with his VLAAMS team. Too bad we missed each other – but I could not know as Tom had declared he didn’t want to do Miura again…
The views of the radish and cabbage fields as well as the sea and Boso Hanto (Chiba) further afar, distracted me from the head wind I was now facing.
Cycling through every corner of the peninsula, I eventually made it to Kannonzaki, a historical place from where Edo had been protected from potential invaders.
Now I had to head north, on the less interesting side of Miura Hanto. Initially all was well and I was sailing in nice backwind. But then I hit route 45 and things became ugly. The road is double-laned, but rather narrow, and in the frequent short tunnels, the lanes become really narrow. Traffic is heavy and fast, and many drivers took exception to a cyclist blocking their progress at the speed of only 35-40km/h. I was quite angry being honked at frequently, and didn’t feel save being harassed by cars getting excessively close.
Beyond Yokosuka, I turned off towards Kamakura – up a short but steep pass and down into the town. I realised I hadn’t been to Kamakura in ages and never seen many of its nice temples. I stopped briefly at Hachimangu where a guide was very keen to speak to me in English and try to help me with the way. Unfortunately I was better off with my map than him explaining to me that I should ask for the way again a few kilometres down the road…
I made it to Ofuna from where things should have been easy. However, my map was outdated as it missed newer roads and there were never any road signs whatsoever! I got somewhat lost, ending up in a residential area up a hill. It was time to pull out my BlackBerry, connect it to my GPS (via Bluetooth) and find out where I was. Actually close to route 1 and not that much off track.
I found route 1, made a U-turn on this monster road, went down into Totsuka, turned onto Chogo Kaido, then Kamakura Michi, which led me eventually to Nakahara Kaido. From there it was another 30km to Kannana, and another 10km home. I got briefly lost very close to MOB’s home – maybe that was some telepathic attempt of his to lure me to his house, which I was keen to avoid as I would have otherwise hit darkness on the way home.
A relatively easy 207km (maymyride says 800m of climbing, but I think it was more as the many smaller hills in urban areas don’t get captured well), but overall quite stressful with so much traffic around me, for all but the 30km along the Sakaigawa cycling road. My face was rather black when I got home.

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von | 30. Januar 2010 · 14:16

A fateful day out

Last Sunday was quite a fateful day, for many, as it would turn out. And not only because we sighted an UFO in front of a shop after descending from Wada Toge…
James, MOB and I met at Tamagawahara bridge for a late start at 8:00am to help MOB overcome his jet lag. As we were chatting, a group of Positivo Catteni riders passed, so we hurried to catch them and show them who the A team – excuse me, the B team (according to our new rules) – was. I had them in no time, James soon after, and MOB eventually after he had recovered from his jet lag. I don’t know how Catteni recovered from this fateful shock – we never saw them again.
From Kunitachi we were sure we were invincible and slowed down to a leisurely pace to make sure the social side of our ride wouldn’t get a short thrift. Once off the Tamagawa and on the way up to Itsukaichi, I pulled up the pace – I just find it hard to take hills or mountains slowly.

We took our first pit stop at the convenience store (see PE rules for definition in case this is not yet clear to everyone) just beyond Itsukaichi. Steve from TCC was doing the same thing, and after some chatting which James found hard to end, we invited him to join us for a slightly more demanding ride than he had had in mind for himself. This had the added advantage of having a guide to the entry to Daigo Rindo – though it was really not hard to find.
Daigo Rindo was a first for the three of us. Hard to understand why we had not „discovered“ it before. I only learnt about it recently from Tom’s blog. It is a very nice rindo following a low river valley. No traffic except for the occasional hunter car. There is a stretch where the road is unpaved, but quite manageable to cross with normal racing tyres.
Unable to go slowly as usual, James and I put quite some distance between MOB and us, Steve being closer to us than MOB. As we waited somewhere for MOB, he arrived showing us proudly the below photo of a forlorn toilet in the middle of the forest, which we had missed noticing, but which served as a decent excuse for falling behind.

The rindo becomes increasingly steep, and James and I raced up the last few kilometers to the top, keen to get in some exercise.

The descent was very nice, and soon we found ourselves on the rindo approaching Wada Toge from the north. No hints of snow or ice, and all the autumn leaves gone. James and I went for our second training race. I didn’t have to wait long for him at Wada Toge, but this time Steve and MOB took quite a bit longer than the first time. The witch and her husband gave us some distraction as we were waiting.

We descended Wada and stopped at a store where we saw this UFO. Actually, many of them. So many that Steve couldn’t finish them all by himself and we had to all help. How much we were longing for a convenience store!
We continued climbing through the golf courses and then up to Kobo Tunnel. Down the other side, we waived goodbye to MOB who was clearly not yet back in form and decided to head for Itsukaichi, and after fixing a flat tyre by replacing it with another leaking tyre, for Hachioji.
The three of us attacked Kazahari Toge. I had promised Steve we would ride together on such a long climb, but found myself unable to keep my promise, longing for a heart rate of at least 155. The faster pace afforded me with a nice view on top.
The descent to Okutamako was incredibly cold. It was barely above zero and the 600m descent felt incredibly long. James claims he clocked 79.9km/h somewhere, but I find this hard to believe since no stretch is steep and long enough to reach such a speed without pedalling, on a standard crank (which he does not have).
More likely that this guy was speeding at that speed when he hit the railings of a bridge.
This was the sight that presented itself to us as we were only a kilometre away from the end of the road. The driver was sitting on the bridge a few meters away from the car, wiping off blood from his head. He was surrounded by lots of friends who had parked their cars not far from the site. Being a trained paramedic, I examined him briefly, and he seemed quite OK. An ambulance had already been called. Later we saw him walking around, examining his wrecked car while smoking a cigarette. It seemed no other vehicle was involved, and he must have lost control over his car on one of these crazy racing excursions up Kazahari.
They’ve banned motorcycles from the road (and indeed it was a lot more peaceful than before). Now it is time to ban cars too!
After the first police car arrived, we left the accident. It was 3:30pm, and the natural choice would have been to cycle to Okutama, maybe Ome, and return home by train from either place.
However, I thought I knew a faster route home. Only the other day, two women in a hamlet approaching Kosuge had confirmed the newly built tunnel below Matsuhime was open. Earlier signs near the entrance of the road had said the construction works would finish in November. So rather than climbing up all the way to Matsuhime Toge at 1,250m, we could just cycle to the tunnel entrance – just about 150m higher than Okutamako – sail through it and then descend to Otsuki, from where we could catch a fast train back. I convinced Steve this was the easiest way for him to get home. James was up for anything.
When we got to the entrance of the tunnel road, however, the road was still closed. We still went onto it, but after the first small tunnel, the road simply ended, with no signs of any construction to connect it to the longer tunnel (which we know exists because it can be seen from the other side).
It was 16:20 by now – making it impossible to get to any train station in day-light. Steve opted for Okutama – more or less all the way downhill, but also with many flat stretches and at least 30km to go. He was prepared with lights for the last bit in the dark.
I opted to climb up Matsuhime Toge with James. A rare chance to do Matsuhime in winter, and knowing we would not arrive at Otsuki much later than Steve at Okutama.
The ascent was very quiet. It was zero degrees and the air was very crisp, affording great views of the surrounding mountains in the sunset. We both still had sufficient energy for the climb, but were nonetheless nervous to make it up, knowing that any minute would count against the impending arrival of darkness.
It was 17:05 when we reached the top. The view was stunning – much nicer than usual when humidity or even clouds obscure the view. Even Mount Fuji was peaking out nicely behind a mountain range.
We put on everything we had and took the plunge of 950 vertical metres down to Sarubashi. The initial part was again freezing cold. I soon caught up with a noisy sports car making its way down. All my tailgating with flashing lights was to no avail – he would not let me pass. Beyond the tunnels where the road loses its steepness, I could no longer follow and waited for James instead.
Now already deep into the valley, it was getting really dark. I was equipped with a small flash light for the front – strong enough to be seen, but not strong enough to see anything. James didn’t even have a front light. The stretches between hamlets became guess work. Fortunately, having descended the road a couple of times, I knew quite well what to expect – even remembered where the bigger bumps were in the road. James appeared to be less confident and didn’t want to stay close to my rear light for too long, so I had to wait for him every now and then.
Eventually we made it to Sarubashi where we took a rest at the convenience store (since Otsuki has only a shop on the way to the station, no convenience store). When we got back onto our bikes, we were both shivering like mad – even the pedalling in the lower parts had not warmed us up that much and downing lots of cold drinks did not help to warm us from the inside.
We felt much better after the short climb to Otsuki, and were lucky to be able to jump onto a well warmed train quickly.
170km with almost 3,000m of climbing – not bad for a cold winter day. Fate had served James and me well. I just feel sorry for everyone else we encountered that day.

6 Kommentare

Eingeordnet unter 2010, James, Mob, tcc

von | 25. Januar 2010 · 02:09

Positivo Espresso Rulebook

Good point by Ludwig. And further elaborated during our club ride yesterday in the mountains of …somewhere. We definitely are in need of a Positivo Espresso Rulebook so that we know what we are talking about when we say „Convinience Store “ [defined as approved 7-Elevens, Lawsons and Family Mart] as opposed to shops [Daily Yamazaki et al.]. I suggest that we all come prepared with some good proposals to the club meeting on Thursday and combine them into a thick volume.

9 Kommentare

Eingeordnet unter 2010, Mob

von | 23. Januar 2010 · 13:00

Tsukino Ride Report

Just thought I would let you know Tsukino has posted a ride report on the blog here.

Normally on the weekend we ride about 20km along the river that runs through Tsurugamine but recently I have discovered a closed road that is less than a year old and totally devoid of traffic, also at the end of it is a huge car park again totally abandoned and perfect for Tsukino to train without the worry of traffic.

Anyway head over to the blog to get the full ride report and more photos.

7 Kommentare

Eingeordnet unter 2010, James