With a late start this morning and a longer ride planned for tomorrow, I was in the mood for a shorter ride today. Between my two typical short courses — Haneda and the Tokyo Landmarks — I chose the latter.
The skies were grey when I departed, with the forecast for more of the same all day. It may not be the most cheery weather, but it makes it less likely I’ll get a sunburn. For most of the day, my shades remained in my bag.
I hadn’t given Nana a clear answer yesterday on whether I’d be biking today, so she didn’t make any onigiri.
I’m not able to eff why I decided to ride Dionysus today. Kuroko should be fine to ride following the shifter cable replacement, and I’m planning on riding her tomorrow. But I made the right choice today. My pace was easygoing — not to say lackadaisical — and we had fun.
At Tokyo Big Sight I stopped to get lunch from a convenience store. Unfortunately it was 12:15 on a weekday, and the shop was packed with people. I had to wait for people to move to get what I was after, and then waited in quite a long queue to get to the register. Fortunately, the workers were fast and efficient, and I didn’t wait very long.
Hungry as I was, my eyes may have been bigger than my stomach. When I set out again after eating, I was feeling a bit leaden. Within a handful of kilometers the feeling passed. I still don’t feel as strong as normal, and I don’t know if that’s a lingering effect of pneumonia, or just the effect of having missed nearly a month of cycling. At any rate, I continued on at a comfortable pace.
Dionysus didn’t give any trouble. I raised the seat slightly at the beginning of the ride and that seems to have been a good choice. The main water bottle bracket — the one on the down tube — was a bit loose, but that was quickly remedied with the minitool. After about 50km my left wrist got tired. I was riding in traffic all day so I didn’t want to ride on the horns, which takes my hands away from the brake levers. So I just rested the wrist at every opportunity (such as the multitude of traffic lights).
Although the skies looked like rain all day, we didn’t have any — true to the forecast. When I got to Budokan I messaged Nana that I’d be home in about an hour. In the end I made it in half that.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.