Once last push to complete the second half of the Shimanami Kaido, and then a bit further to Fukuyama. It was foggy this morning, so you couldn’t really see the bridge to Ikuchi island. A quick stop to load up on Pocari Sweat. The larger bottle fills about 1 2/3 of my water bottles. I’m going to be heartily sick of this stuff after today. Some kind of monument for cyclists. You can’t see the bridge in the background. On the bridge. Now you can see that it is a cable stay bridge. The beginning of the ramp down off of the bridge. Looking back at the bridge. This looks like a nice little c ..read more

It was going to rain all day today so I elected to take it easy on myself and took the train from Matsuyama to Imabari, which cut my riding in the rain roughly in half. Here I am on the train. Imabari is at one end of the Shimanami Kaido, a series of bridges across several islands in the Seto inland sea that lets you bike from Shikoku to Honshu. The total distance from Imabari to Onomichi is about 70 km. There is one day each year when they close a lane of traffic to motor vehicles so that cyclists can ride straight across. Normally you have to take a series of ramps or switchbacks to get up ..read more

Yesterday was the ride to Beppu, the second day of my tour. There would be two major climbs with the village of Yufuin in between, and then a long descent to Beppu. Just over the next ridge was a valley with my namesake river: the Nogami river. As a result, a number of things had the same name. Here is the Nogami elementary school. Some information about flood stages on the river. Now climbing. I’ve reached the first peak, and I knew there was nothing here because I had previewed it on ridewithGPS. The reason that I picked this particular section of the route was that I had seen this on Go ..read more

Today was the first of a five day credit card tour. I knew that today’s ride would be the most difficult as it had both the longest distance, and the most climbing. As it was, I’m not ashamed to say that I had to walk the bike up a few hills. Here is the bike all loaded up, with most of my gear in the O bag, and a pair of sneakers and some tools in the saddle bag. I’ll probably have more to say about routing software at the end of my trip, but the route was laid out by Komoot, and the software seems to go out of its way to avoid busy streets, and often routes me along small paths that criss c ..read more

For most of this week, I’ve been visiting the Kyushu Synchrotron Light Research Center in Saga, about an hour train ride south of Fukuoka. This sight takes me back to my grad school days in the 1980’s where I did experiments at a similar facilitiy. Of course there have been significant advances in both the light sources and the instrumentation available since that time. The sorts of experimental energy resolution available here are orders of magnitude better than what we could do back then. The electron energy analyzer is pretty amazing as well, providing a 2D angular map of electron intens ..read more

Waste disposal is complicated in Japan, but it is done in such a way that you can tell that they take recycling seriously. The details can vary by jurisdiction. Here in Osaka, here are the rules as posted for visitors where I was staying. You can see that trash is separated into six categories: Burnable waste (which includes food scraps, and most plastics aside from PET bottles) Non-burnable waste (including large items and e-waste, which has to be picked up by special arrangement) PET bottles Glass Cans Paper (and the left hand page goes into the different subcategories of paper) What make ..read more

Just a few more photos from the area around Osaka University (Suita Campus) which is well north of downtown. Cycling on the sidewalk is the usual shitshow. This street near the University is particularly busy. When you are walking on the sidewalk, there doesn’t seem to be any rules about passing on the left or right. The bike lane symbols show a shopping bike. Note the car parked in the bike lane. At least the cars here are not as wide. This street had protected bidirectional bike lanes on both sides (actually an MUP). Note that I’m on the right side, and so the symbols are showing that I sh ..read more

Today was a gloriously sunny day so I took the opportunity to take a bike ride from Osaka to Kyoto. I’m staying at Osaka University which is well north of the centre of town, so the distance to Kyoto was less than 50 km. Additionally, I was advised that if I went east to the Yodo River, then there is a riverbank trail that goes all the way to Arashiyama which is west of Kyoto. A quick glance at the map showed me that I could probably go to the eastern part of town by riding along the Kamo River as well. Here I am skirting the Expo 70 fairgrounds. The monorail above really adds to the 70s era v ..read more

Vlad Zotov, a member of the Morning Glory Cycling Club, was killed on Monday, April 8 while he was riding on Bayview Ave. He was remembered as “a sensational human being“. Today was the ghost bike ride in his memory. There was a huge turnout. Alas, I was not able to attend as I was out of country at the time. However, the pictures are rolling in, and Rob Zaichowski will be reporting on his blog. Rob estimates that there were over 400 cyclists present. Here is a thread, starting with his video of the cyclists coming down Rosedale Valley Rd. Thanks to the over 400 people who rode with us toni ..read more

Someone on Pinterest posted this bingo card, encouraging people to mark off the cities that they have visited. Here is my card. Too easy, so to make it more of a challenge, I only crossed off cities where I have biked. Here are some associated blog posts: San Diego: in town for a one day meeting. San Jose: checking out some bike infra downtown, and then taking Caltrain back up the peninsula to the Palo Alto area. Seattle: I’ve been there many times, including two rides from Seattle to Portland, but here is an early report, along with a post about my favourite bike shop there (now sadly clo ..read more