rhm

Continuing that story...
On the South Fork there's this golf course:


The natural look of this area is fairly open oak and pine forest, so it's always pretty bright. No big hills, but the whole thing is hilly:

Then a ferry to Shelter Island, where we saw a family of turkeys (three hens, three chicks):

and a lot of ospreys, mostly in their nests. We took a detour to the eastern extremity of Shelter Island, which is called Ram's Island:


Another ferry to the North Fork:

Later on we climbed over the moraine again, more open oak and pine forest with blueberry bushes underneath:



Here's the bike I rode, an early 1970's Lambert frame now set up as a fixed gear:

joewein

For my 47th consecutive month of "A Century-A-Month" I revisited the Greenline ridge road in the mountains of Saitama west of Tokyo. The area is very popular with trail runners, cyclists and hikers and provides a welcome escape from the humid heat of the Kanto plain around Tokyo as it's always a couple of degrees cooler up there.

Well, we still sweated plenty, but at least the Greenline, true to its name, keeps you mostly under tree cover. In addition, we visited several water falls at Kuroyamasantaki ("black mountain, three waterfalls").



I got up at 05:00, left home a little before 06:00 and cycled to a train station 48 km from my home, close the foothills of the mountains west of Tokyo.

I had invited three friends to the ride, but one of them woke up with back troubles that morning and decided on a shorter alternative for him and his buddy, so ultimately it was just me and a female friend. This Chinese lady wants to learn German, so while climbing Japanese mountain roads on our Dutch and American bikes we were discussing German grammar and vocabulary

We stopped for lunch at a noodle restaurant with a great view and later for coffee at the highest pass of the course, served freshly brewed from a van parked there every weekend.

My friend's biggest ride so far had been a 90 km completely flat course and this was her first mountain ride. Her bike could have done with lower gearing and every now and then we walked some stretches, but she finished with a smile after 80 km (50 mi) with 1500 m (5000 ft) of elevation gain.

After a fun descent descent down a scenic rural mountain valley to Hanno station where my friend caught the train I cycled home for the last 40 km, for 168 km total. One more month and I will have completed four years of "A Century-A-Month"!

Drew Eckhardt 

Sunday, June 26th: 104 miles, 10,000 feet, 9:55 moving out of 11:41, 392 TSS, .57 IF, 3639 kj

https://www.strava.com/activities/622571337

Small redwoods and big redwood. Salt water in the Pacific and fresh water in Lexington Reservoir.







I realized I've been riding too much and tried to be more disciplined about recovery with just 610 miles total in June. I also hadn't done Bonny Doon yet this year, so I decided on a 100 mile ride to the coast and back coming back that way and hitting some other climbs I haven't done.

Jamison Creek Road was brutal with the final two miles averaging 11.2%. I felt that and the 90 degree heat coming back over the mountains, with more time riding 40 miles / 4000 feet than the 60 / 6000 before that.

Overall it was a great ride.

rhm

Saturday, July 2, Long Island NY....



117.7 miles, 3600 feet of climbing, just under 8 hours of riding (avg sp 14.8 mph).

Yeah, pretty much exactly the same ride as I did last Saturday, but a different friend joined me and we rode a different stretch of road between miles 44 and 53. Less traffic, more hills. A couple hills that were hard to get over on the fixed gear. Good times!

joewein

On Saturday I visited the Nippara limestone caves near Lake Okutama in the mountains west of Tokyo. A distance of over 200 km and temperatures as high as 33 C (91 F) in the high humidity of Tokyo summers didn't make for an easy ride, but I left home soon after 5 to get up into the mountains as early as possible. The first 80 km took me from near sea level to around 1100 m (3700 ft) at the Kazahari Toge pass overlooking the lake.

On the way I met up with two friends in front of Musashiitsukaichi train station who were heading to a different destination. We chatted for half an hour and then rode 10 km together until where are ways parted. On the climb to the pass I came across three English cyclists. We met again at the Tomin no Mori trail head at 900 m, where I stopped for a break with coffee, ice cream and sansai (mountain vegetable) pizza. We talked about favourite routes and other bike related stuff. It turned out that one of them had done RAAM in a team twice!

From the pass it was a great descent for about 12 km down to the lake. The water level is extremely low this year as the winter snow had been weak and the rainy season in June/July, though it lasted much longer than usual, did very little to top up the reservoirs. Droughts are very unusual for Japan, but unless the typhoon season brings more rain than usual we may be heading for one.

I followed the road around the lake shore towards Okutama station. It's a route I normally avoid, in fact I normally climb back up again to Kazahari Toge to catch some evening views from high up. But this time I was interested in the Nippara caves that I had seen on the map when I checked out the area for hiking to the shrine on Mt Mitake with my wife a week ago. According to the signs the caves were 12 km from the station, up a remote valley. Okutama station is the end of its railway line. It hosts the last convenience store for many km as you head out this way from Tokyo.

When I came out from a public restroom at the station where I had refilled both my bidons from the tap, a local was admiring my Elephant NFE leaning against the wall. He commented how unusual it was to see a Randonneur bike with disk brakes and asked if he could take a picture. I explained that I was doing a lot of long distance riding and the weather was not always predictable, so being able to brake reliably in the rain was important to me. I asked what the road to Nippara was like. He said it was very narrow and I should be careful, there was not much space for cars to pass and there might be dump trucks too, but at least it was mostly flat. I thanked him, got some food and drinks at that last convenience store and headed up the road.

Flat the route wasn't, but 275 m of elevation gain over 12 km wasn't too steep. There was one long tunnel (1100 m), but with a wide side walk for pedestrians and cyclists. The sides of the valley were extremely steep, with the boulder strewn river often far below the road. It was very picturesque. In the last village with its bus stop I saw many hikers returning from the cave. There was a big queue of cars waiting for space in the limited size car park, which I could pass on my bicycle.

I put on my wind breaker against the chill inside the cave. Admission was 700 yen (about US$7). It was 11 C (52 F) inside and what I first mistook for steam on the river in front of the entrance (was there a volcanic hot spring nearby?) turned out to be fog from the mix of cold cave air with the outside moist summer air.

Though the stalagmites and stalactites were not as impressive as in some of caves in the Bavarian Jura region where I come from or in the "Franconian Switzerland" region near Nuremberg, the cave has also been venerated as a Shinto shrine since the early Edo period (~1600-1868), with various religious statues visited by pilgrims from afar deep inside the cave. I explored the corridors, rooms and tall stairs for about half an hour before I re-emerged into the daylight.

I was glad the return back to Okutama was mostly downhill, same about the road from there to Oume station. From there it was another 3 hours or so of mostly flat urban roads back to my home in Tokyo.

My total came to over 200 km (125 mi) with 1700 m (5600 ft) of climbing. This makes August my 48th month in a row with at least one century ride a month.

rhm

I spent most of my weekends of July and August not riding my bike, but with my wife, going out on the bay in a canoe or little sailboat... and that was a lot of fun. I finally got around to riding a century on Sunday. I didn't plan out a route, just pumped up the tires on my oldest bike and rode. It was a couple hours before it was light enough to take a photo....

I rode past the southern edge of Great Adventure safari park:

on this sand road, which was rather difficult in some places. New Jersey sand is sugar soft, and when dry (it's very dry) you can sink into it pretty bad. I survived.

There were blueberries, though not many:



Total, 103 miles in about 8.5 hours. Pretty hot, not very hilly.

joewein

I did a 204 km bike ride on Saturday including a closed road with gravel, many land slides and beautiful waterfalls. It's called Route 76 and I had heard about it from a few people who had ventured out there over the last 8 years.



I met up with a friend at 05:30 in the morning. He had existing plans in the evening for which he had to be back in Tokyo by 16:00 so the goal was to make it back out of the mountains and to Shin-Matsuda station by 14:00 for his train ride home. Everything went as planned. Thanks to a speedy ride out to Takao, the first major climb of our route, we even finished half an hour early.

Four hours into the ride we arrived in Aone village, the last outpost of civilization, where we bought food and water. A few kilometers up the road, past the last campsite and a fish farm on the river we reached a gate that was easy to get around on foot.

There was evidence of land slides everywhere, with varying amounts of gravel and rocks on the road. Soon the surfaced road gave way to washed out gravel mixed with rocks from rock slides. Climbing here became more and more technical.

We passed many waterfalls. One faced a viewing area constructed for tourists, but the access to the viewing area had disappeared under a huge pile of rocks that had come down the mountain. The local government appeared to have given up maintaining the road and closed it to the public when they realized that they were just going to pour good money after bad money. We passed some fine tunnels and a still immaculate looking steel bridge. The near total absence of humans and the constantly increasing damage from rock slides gave this road a post-apocalyptic feel, as if civilization had ended decades ago and we were visitors from another planet stumbling across the remains.

After 13 km of climbing we reached the tunnel at the top, at about 950 m above sea level. Again this tunnel looked almost new, except for some places where water was gushing out of the wall. But at the other end a huge rock slide had covered the whole width of the road and almost rose as high as the tunnel ceiling on one side.

This whole road was only passable on foot, on a bicycle or on a bulldozer.

Once on the other side, the state of the road was much better. There was still debris on the road but in much smaller quantities and the road was surfaced. We descended down to the lake and back to civilization. Soon we arrived at Shin-Matsuda, where my friend caught the train back to Tokyo. I still had another 80 km to go as I was determined to cycle home.

Following courses from several brevets that I had done in this area before I gradually made my way home and got back at little before 21:00.

I will definitely try this course again. It's a unique experience and despite all the damage from rock slides I probably felt safer than on many busy roads with cars and trucks on them, which were almost totally absent on Route 76.

joewein

Month 50 of my "Century-A-Month" series completed. My friend Toru had asked me if I was going to ride this weekend. I felt like repeating a 180+ km mountain course I had previously done as my annual "Bike Friday Anniversary Ride" (I had received my Bike Friday on Oct 8, 2011) in 2012. I did do today's ride on my NFE though.



Toru had never done more than 160 km in a day, but was interested in trying to do the whole course.



So this morning we met up at 06:00, with him having already cycled for 25 minutes to get to my place. Because he lives closer to the center of Tokyo, he would end up doing 14 km more than I did. We are well matched in speed. We ended up doing the ride more or less at brevet speeds. It was raining when we started, but stopped after less than an hour and was overcast and cool the rest of the day, which made it very pleasant to ride.

We headed out via one mountain valley and returned via another, over two passes (about 700 m and 1000 m) that Toru had never climbed before. Near the first pass we stopped at the Maglev test track, which is going to be part of the Chuo Shinkansen maglev line from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka. We even heard the noise from a test ride.



After the descent from the highest pass we stopped for food at a Micho no Eki (Road Station). It made the final 80+ km much easier. We also had lots of bananas throughout the day.

Even though the route had two bailout points where Toru could have taken a train home, he finished the ride with me, for a grand total of 202 km in 12 1/2 hours as his first distance beyond a century.

baron von trail 

700 miles in for the month so far. 1000K goal met.

Now the real challenge begins, reaching 1000K in Nov and Dec.

scarleton

Great job man!!!! Strava has this monthly challenge of 1250K that has always pushed me! Are ya on Strava? I can be found here: https://www.strava.com/athletes/5580300

rhm

Looks like I forgot to post my September rides.

September 10 I rode from Brookline to Provincetown MA with three friends:



It was hot! But a nice day for a ride, all told. I rode my 1959 Allegro.

September 25 I did the NJ Randonneurs NYC 200k brevet.


That was an especially nice day for a ride! A very hilly ride. I rode my new custom made Squarebuilt 'enduro allroad' bike (26" wheels) and felt slow. It being a new bike I don't want to say the bike was slow, of course, but I was dragging.

Last Saturday I rode a 200k brevet with the PA Randonneurs:

It was emphatically not a nice day for a ride. It rained, lightly but cold, most of the day. By some strange luck I dressed quite appropriately for the ride (long sleeved wool jersey with a waterproof windbreaker over that; knit gloves; cap under my helmet) and I was pretty comfortable all day, except for my feet. I rode a 1990's Erickson bike with a Softride seat mast, which was interesting. Ugly bike. But I didn't hate the ride as much as I thought I would.

joewein

I had spent the second half of October travelling in Europe with my family - no cycling. Somewhere in Italy I caught a cold.

When I tried to do my annual autumn leaves viewing ride in the mountains near Chichibu (usually a 180 km trip) on the first November weekend, my nose was still running. I had booked a hotel near the start of the group ride for the night before, but when I rode out there in the afternoon my legs felt like jelly and my throat and nose got worse and worse. 40 km from home I did the sensible thing and turned around, giving up the paid hotel room and the ride with friends and recovered at home.



I finished my century of the month on the second Saturday of November then, riding with my friend Toru and two other friends. It was a "sayonara ride" for Toru who was leaving Japan and had a flight the very next day. We agreed to meet up at 09:00 at a convenience store near a mountain valley about 40 km from my home. Toru and I met up at 06:45 near my home and rode out there together.

It was a sunny day and we soon had to take off our winter jackets not to overheat. Along the Tamagawa river we got to enjoy one Mt Fuji view after another. The mountain is now covered in white from all the snow.

We arrived at the meeting point almost on time but our friends were running behind schedule, so we had some coffee and bananas. Once our friends arrived they had coffee too while we all discussed the outcome of the US presidential election (we often talk politics on our bike rides and all happen to be on the same side of the political aisle).

It was already 09:45 when we finally left the convenience store parking lot to start our climb. There were several route options but we left it up to Toru, as it was going to be his last ride in Japan and he had to be back in Tokyo by 15:00 for a prior commitment. We cycled up a forest road (rindo) that is closed to all traffic, continuing our discussion, that we got to the top much sooner than I expected because of the distraction by the conversation.

The steep descent on the other side is where I had crashed and cracked a rib last December, so we were all extra careful about any places with wet leaves or metal grates.

When we arrived at Musashiitsukaichi, Toru led us to his favourite soba and udon restaurant. Luckily we didn't have to wait long to get a table even though it was lunch time on a sunny day on the weekend, when there are lots of hikers about.

After the meal Toru and one of my friends headed back to Tokyo by train. We said our goodbyes, especially to Toru who is about to move to Europe to be reunited with his family there. My other friend, Peter, was going to join me. I had done 62 km before lunch so I needed at least another 98 km to go to make this ride a century. Peter didn't want to ride that far, but he wanted to see more before calling it a day.



We headed up the mountain valley towards Tomin no Mori, a hiking area 26 km from the station near where we had lunch. After 18 km we turned left, onto a climb up the side of the valley and up to a tunnel. It got cold enough that I put on a light windbreaker after we exited from the tunnel. From the other side the road descended on a fast road down to Uenohara, where Peter also caught a train back.

By then it was already the late afternoon. I enjoyed the last of the soft evening light as I climbed yet another pass over to another valley. After sunset I joined a route that is the final portion of the AJ Nishi Tokyo 300 km brevet, which I'll probably ride again next March. During the brevet I still ride it in daylight so I get to enjoy more views. On the other hand I'll have a lot more km in my legs at that point and a strict deadline...

I finally got back to Tokyo after 21:00, with a total of 175 km and over 2000 m of elevation gain. My cold is still there but the legs are OK. I enjoyed my time with friends and the autumn views, after having missed both the weekend before. With November I'm now up to 51 months of "A Century A Month" and already thinking about what route to pick for the December ride.

bikemig 

Good stuff. I'd like to join the club but centuries in IA in Jan and Feb can be a bit tough, .