Month: October 2024

  • Mixed blessings

    Mixed blessings

    I’ve been watching today’s forecast for nearly two weeks, with a couple of weather sites (Yahoo and tenki.jp) going back and forth over whether it would rain. About four days ago the two sites seemed to agree on rain, and then two days ago it was cloudy but no rain. This morning the forecast was…

  • Through with Brooks*

    Through with Brooks*

    I mentioned at the end of the Koedo Matsuri post that there was a mechanical I wasn’t ready to talk about. I’ve just sorted that out in anticipation that tomorrow’s weather might allow a ride. My Brooks saddle had been squeaking ever since it came back from the repair, when I had the broken shackle…

  • Koedo Matsuri

    Koedo Matsuri

    I’d told Nana yesterday that I would be riding to Kawagoe today, and then I woke in the middle of the night to a gale wind howling through our open windows. Things had settled down a bit by the time I got up at 5 (having shut the windows and gone back to sleep), but…

  • Foreboding Skies

    Foreboding Skies

    Yesterday I had grandiose plans of riding 130+ kilometers today, getting a nice long ride in before the rain forecast for tomorrow. Instead I slept poorly, set out a couple of hours later than expected, and then cut the ride short when the dark skies dampened my enthusiasm (oh, and I was sore and tired).…

  • Anticlimactic

    Anticlimactic

    My jaunt up Takaosan earlier this week confirmed that Kuroko’s spiffy dynamo lights are working, so it’s time to bring the Forking Dynamite project to a close. I’ve had a couple of finishing touches waiting in the wings — for more than a year in at least one case — and today was the perfect…

  • Date with a Mountain

    Date with a Mountain

    Today is Sports Day, a national holiday, and anyway I have the entire week off. I told Nana I’d be leaving at 7 a.m., but I let her sleep in until nearly 7, and then departed just after 8. It was a beautiful day with blue skies and mild weather. The only clouds were those…

  • Fighting water with … water

    Fighting water with … water

    Following last weekend’s very wet but ultimately enjoyable Tour de Chiba, Kuroko was overdue for a washing. And I needed to deal with the mildew on the saddle, which I’ve left languishing in the bike parking garage for a week now. The first order of business was simply to give the entire bike a good…

  • Tour de Chiba: Wet ‘n’ Wild

    Tour de Chiba: Wet ‘n’ Wild

    Despite the forecast clearly pointing towards rain on the day of the event, we left Friday afternoon for Chiba. My one concession to the weather was to add a windbreaker to my kit. Saturday morning I encountered some rain on the drive from the hotel to the starting point, but it lifted when I arrived.…

  • I’m not made of sugar

    I’m not made of sugar

    I’ve been keeping my eye on the weather for Kisarazu since I was accepted for the Tour de Chiba, and it’s been a roller coaster. Detailed forecasts are at most 10 days out, and for the past 10 days Yahoo has been saying cloudy, no rain, and tenki.jp has been predicting a deluge of biblical…