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Today October 2021

Tobishima Kaido. I did it a few days ago
Sweet. Amazing scenery. I need to get back down there again before too much longer.
 
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do you have your route taken on Strava or ridewithgps? @adventurous cyclist this seems what you want to do next year
Day 1 was Yamaguchi City to Hiroshima. I don't know anyone who's cycled in either Yamaguchi or Shimane prefectures, so I was forced to rely on Strava heat maps and Google street view for this one. The former was worse than useless -- it was actually counter-productive because it kept trying to put me on awful, traffic-choked coastal roads, so I ignored it and used Google exclusively. The route I came up with was one of the best I've done in Japan. Fantastically smooth roads, lots of climbing in quiet mountains, very little traffic, plenty of great scenery, etc. The only drawback was that there was almost nowhere to eat, and also because I was on my own in very remote locations, I had to be very conservative on the descents, especially as a few of them were damp and pretty technical.


Day 2 was Tobishima Kaido. This route is very similar to one that @jonmanjiro kindly shared. I only made a few small changes.


Day 3 was a ride from Imabari up to a tiny town nestled in the mountains of Kochi Prefecture, where we spent the night sleeping in a school-cum-hotel after a fairly boozy session at a new craft beer brewery opened by American expat Ken Mukai and his wife. Amazing place. Amazing experience.


Day 4 was supposed to be a big loop ride up to the karst and then down to Kochi, but after the session at the brewpub, I was feeling, uh, less than fresh, so I just rolled down the hill to Kochi instead.

Only one of the group made it up to the karst. This is the route he took:


The rest of us weaklings did this route to Kochi, where we gorged on the obligatory feast of katsuo tataki.


Don't know if that's any help to @adventurous cyclist, but I hope so.
 
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Local marathon day here, maybe 10k runners, likely lots of costumes. And while the course comes right by us (maybe 50m away), and I could certainly go the other direction, I think I'll just take the day off, maybe go out and watch a little.

October's been good--out four times this last week. Garmin says that makes 15 for the month. These aren't big/long, or training for anything, I do my habitual riverside course with only minor variations, 80-90min and usually less than 30km, only a couple that were longer (just a repeat of the good part of that course). I could go farther, at least now and then, but I like to do other stuff thru the days and not spend all my 'oomph' on riding.
 
No, I was supposed to go with them but had a meeting at the kids' HS.
The bear was looking at them for quite a while. The cameraman didn't even see it until another mate pointed it out to him.
 
No bike ride this weekend as I went to Atami by car with the family to walk around the Atami Ginza district and then watch the fireworks at night which had been postponed in the summer due to Covid. It was spectacular, the best fireworks show I had ever seen in Japan.

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Next weekend I'm planning to head to Chichibu on Friday night, stay overnight and do a clockwise Mitsumine shrine loop (climb via the quiet back road, descend via the main road) before riding back to Tokyo via Yamabushi toge and Ome.
 
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