there is no "I" in cyclyng

After the rained-out weekend I met with Ludwig yesterday at Hashimoto to do a short but climbing-intensive trip over some new roads in the Route 20 / Doshi area under heavy police surveillance.We started on time at 7:30hr in front of Hashimoto station and tried a new shortcut that eventually brought us to the North Tsukui lake road. I wanted to show Ludwig my new discovery, the NORTH TSUKUI LAKE TRUNK EXTENSION which is very silent but in rather bad shape as you can see in the photos. But it has all the ingredients of a wonderful road: Three huge barriers which are shouting at you „Climb over me, please!„, complete lack of any human activities, landslides, and great views. And all of this very close to Tokyo.
From there on we road to road 20 (the origin plan included to ride up Bijotani but I thought that wouldn’t be a good idea in winter, given the conditions of the road).

Ludwig thought about a nice shortcut from road 20 to Akiyama, but we were stopped by some construction works. We tried to convince the guys there that it would be OK to let us pass, but we couldn’t. In the end they were helpful to show us an alternative road which brought as to Akiyama as well.

We then started to climb Kando-Toge (not Ganda-Toge, it seems) which Ludwig has done already once from the Doshi-Michi side and Tom has reported out first in his heartwarming-story about the honey farmers of Doshi who in the 18th century cut this path into the rock with their bare hands in an effort to get access to the free market economy in the villages at road 20. Only to get raided by corporate M&A lawyers on the pass who forced them to integrate their operations into huge Doshi Honey conglomerates, lease the assets to dubious investment backs and sell the not performing bees as sub-prime collateralized debt obligations to the local pension funds. Oh sorry, I come back to cycling now.

The climb up covers about 500 meter elevation difference and the pass is about elevation 800 meters plus. On the top we were greeted by snow, a very much different scenery to the first signs of springs at Tsukui lake.

I wanted to pee, but because of the honey thieves the whole area is still very much under remote police surveillance. I found the only possible place to pee only after some serious thinking (please enlarge for maximum effect).Mount Fuji was now clearly visible between the mountains and after riding down on the other side, we continued to Doshi Michi, and then to road 76 and Makino Toge which I also had climbed only once last year.

After that we continued to Miyagase lake and started to climb up Yabitsu as the cul de sac of the day. When I started the clock, Ludwig said „We don’t do a time trial, do we?“ And I answered: „No, but I don’t want to slog up as well“ So we started pretty fast, kept steady and after we saw another cyclist in front of us we went even faster. After 20 minutes I lost Ludwig who was speeding ahead and I went up my own pace. I wasn’t that good but also not too shabby when I reached the top where Ludwig has waited already for 4 minutes, probably setting a new Togebaka record (which needs to be entered on this blog).

The descent was rather fast, although I was careful on the site of my crash some weeks ago. But I reached more than 69 km/hr on the stretch after the donuts slope which was good enough to reach Hadeno station on time and take a train home.

Incredibly, the whole ride was only 111 km long, but with almost 1.800m of climbing it was pretty intensive and a good start into the week.
Off to Germany now any minute.

Yesterday I made a mid-range, run of the mill ride from my house to Onekan, Tank Road and further on to the North Tsukui lake road. So far nothing special.

But on the map I had discovered, that the road around Tsukui lake is actually continuing from the point where we normally make a left turn and fly downwards towards the suspension bridge over the Tuskui lake. So I continued to stay on the small road and after crossing two barriers I found myself completely alone on the abandoned road which is much the same as the beautiful North road itself. I fail to understand why this road was given up a long time ago, as this seems to be an extremely important trunk road connecting the suburbs of Tsukui with those of the villages in the shadows of Otarumi. Road conditions were very poor, some landslides, a lot of debris on the surface and most of the time I had to walk. But after a while I came to a second barrier and I continued on the normal road up to the point where we are normally, coming from Otarumi, take a right turn and cross the bridge first, followed by the tunnel on the way to Tsukui.

A very nice distraction but perhaps better suited for MTBs or cyclo cross bikes.

It was a beautiful,warm, almost-spring day and on the top of Otarumi I thought it would be nice if we would have had lists for downhills as well as for the uphill time trials we are doing. As Otarumi from the Takao side was the first uphill TT we posted on the blog, the opposite downhill would be the appropriate start for the downhill TT which I called for ease of reference the Down-Jones Index (DJI); an expression commonly known to riders from the PE team.

To achieve a good downhill time can also we a nice consolation if your uphill time isn’t that good.

So, I went down in 7:05 min which is probably not very good, but at least a time to start with. See the list on the right.

This corresponds to about 45 km/hr average speed. Please feel free to beat this. But be careful, Otarumi was not the first time I thought about the DJI. The first time was on Yabitsu two weeks ago and then I crashed pretty badly.