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Ride Sat 12Dec- Spaceship, Mitsumine, Spaceship

leicaman

Maximum Pace
Sep 20, 2012
2,878
2,698
Rather short notice but we'll be heading out for a ride tomorrow. It's most likely going to be a bit chilly so best to wrap up warm as we'll be hitting almost 1200m above sea level (hopefully there will be no snow).
Meeting place- The spaceship
Meeting time - 7:00am
Distance - 230km back to the Spaceship
Note- a decent front and back light are pretty much essential for this ride as we won't be back home before darkness.
Elevation gain- around 3000-3500m
Pace- Slower than a bolt of lightening, faster than a Swede doing mental arithmetic.

Route here

 
One thing is for sure, this is a ride that will be remembered for a long time.
@Chrisisism and I met up near the spaceship and planned to ride out to Chichibu where we would meet Mr. Idon'tdomornings (aka @saibot ) then continue along route. After only around 35km, Chris was getting some very strange vibrations coming from his front wheel. After investigating, we found that his front tyre was deformed and looked like it would burst. He released some pressure and decided to turn back. Wise decision as he still would have had about 240km to go if he had carried on. We are pretty sure it was a manufacturing defect.
I rode on by myself to meet up with @saibot. On the first climb, my tubular decided it was fed up with holding air and released said air into the atmosphere. I had some caffe latex in there but most of it just poured out onto the road. I tried to pump the tyre back up and seal the hole with the sealant and after numerous attempts it began to hold some air. That was when the area around the valve decided enough was enough and ruptured.
Luckily I had a spare tub. It's an old vittoria rally that I've never used before. It took a while to get the tyre on and then I couldn't pump the damn thing up. I played musical chairs with core valves and finally managed to pump it up somewhat. Oh, I also forgot to mention that five minutes before getting the puncture, I noticed my front tyre was slowly loosing air. I pumped up the front and it seemed OK. I then topped up the rear and went on my way. No sooner had I clipped in, then I noticed I was going over some speed bumps , only there were no speed bumps. Huh? I stopped and realised what was going on. My "new" tubular was bulging near the valve and looked ready to pop. I released a bit of pressure. When I rode, it made the bike jump up and down on every revolution. Anything over 5kph became very annoying. Don't worry though, I only had about 190km to go. Could've been worse, it could have happened even earlier.
So with a rear that looked like it was going to pop given any opportunity, a front that was slowly loosing air, and no spare, I decided to gingerly make my way to Chichibu.
I met up with @saibot but I was almost 1 1/2 hours late. Sorry about that mate. We rolled out of Chichibu and headed for the mountains. Climbing up to 1200m was a little chilly and I was very glad I had my leg warmers on for the first time this year. After decending down to Mitsumine shrine at around 1000m, Tobias coaxed me into stopping for a hot coffee at the vending machines. Unfortunately,Tobias , being a sandwich short of a picnic, managed to press the cold canned coffee button, much to my amusement. Temps were around 0.5c so my hot coffee was very nice ;)

We rode back to Chichibu and stopped at a Conbini to warm up. We were both absolutely frozen so thawing out with a curryman was a very good idea. The dark mountains in the distance looked very unwelcoming but we pushed on. Dropping down the other side of the mountain was a little nippy to say the least. Any slight incline was very welcome as it gave us a chance to warm up a little.
With about 30km to go, both our rear lights gave up the ghost. I was ok as I only had the Arakawa and one well lit back road to negotiate before home, but Tobias had to ride through part of Tokyo. After faffing about with my front light battery pack, we were able to plug his rear light into the USB charging port on the battery pack and charge it while riding along the Arakawa. It worked a treat and lasted him all the way home.
With about 10km to go, I was running on fumes. The cold really zapped my energy. I got home way way after dark but had a great time, even though most of the time was spent riding over invisible speed bumps. Thanks to Tobias for being patient with me on the descents. Too bad you couldn't ride the whole ride Chris.
Memorable times.

And now for some selfies

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