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Ride VeloViewer tiling in Japan

I'm out of shape. This was all rather hard work. But I've stopped smoking, so unlike the last three years I can actually breathe and don't have to stop once an hour for a suffocation break.

Even with your smoke breaks, you were still much faster than me. Glad to see you've managed to quit though. Good for you!
 
Good for you!
Thanks, @Chuck.

Question for you. Noticed this while I was purloining your route. I can't see any activities in these three tiles of yours. There must be something there, or they wouldn't be coloured-in. Weird. Do you see the same...? I'm sure there's a perfectly plausible explanation.

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That's weird. Quick research and didn't find any activities there. Off to work. Will do more research later.
 
Did a long ride back in 2016. For some reason the file on Strava disappeared and some bogus file of about .4km near Machida was in its place. Fortunately the file for the ride was on RWGPS. When I tried to upload it to Strava, Strava said that ride already existed. So, deleted the BS file from Strava and reloaded the proper one from RWGPS. Mystery solved.


Veloviewer updated and now shows the route going through those tiles.

Think I am going to have to download all my files so if Strava glitches, I'll have a backup.
 
My excursion on Sunday left a smaller but still significant hole of uncollected tiles east and north of Gotemba. Took Wednesday off because the weather forecast screamed: "Much better for cycling than for working in office."

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From Gotemba station, head SE and up the hill towards Hakone...

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The first rindō, coming NE out of the back end of Gotemba, was good fun. Lots of variety, from dirt to pavement to potato-sized stones and everything else. It seemed to go on forever, but was never too steep and had some downhill sections to keep things interesting. I wouldn't mind riding this one again, one day. I heard chainsaws and saw some logging industry vehicles, but no actual people.

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This rindō emerges close to Ashigara-tōge, which is quite nice.

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I had to head down the hill in one direction, 15%-ish for 1.5 km, to grab a tile, and then haul my sorry Assos back up the way I'd come. That was nasty.

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Map advertised a Fujisan Viewpoint not too far from my route. OK, I'll take a look...

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不法投棄、日本の趣味。

A fun descent into the valley, and a little jiggling for more tiles. Stumbled across a temple.

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The second major rindō section was less fun. Steep, with lots of soft or loose gravel. This is the other side of the mountains heading west from Lake Tanzawa. The road in there was also a sorry state. Nice view, though.

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And for my last tile, I found that I could ride right up to this waterfall. It being midweek, it was deserted. Nice!

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Route ended nearest to Yamakita station, but I elected to ride a little extra to Shin-Matsuda, allowing me to get home without changing trains. A grand day out, although my backside is now officially sore.

 
wow, I'm surprised there's still tiles left in this country untouched by you! can we have a little gif of your whole cluster please, or I should simply google "honshu"? ;)
 
bloody hell, it's like a kids color book! you're gonna run outta red crayon soon...
 
Went to GS Astuto for some more renovation work, with No. 2 son and gravel bike in tow. We only had time and energy for one ride, but it was a fine one.


This is the view from the start/end point. Mt. Myogi is spectacular. We're working on getting the house ready for visitors to stay, eat and ride in comfort.

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A few km north and we were on the first rindō. I had hoped we would be able to use this as a shortcut up to the ridge, with perhaps a little pushing.

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It was not to be. The road became a track became a thicket.

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With no way through, we bounced back down and took the long way 'round to get back on course.

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The long ridge ride to and through and beyond Gunma's Jizōtōge was wonderful, rolling ups and downs, mostly gravel but occasional short stretches of concrete or asphalt for no apparent reason. Utterly peaceful.

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I've called the ride 'Jizōtōge Short Loop' because there's a theoretical longer version that stretches further west. The start of that section is on the left of the photo below. It looks the same, but I suspect it will deteriorate into a track at some point. Will be back to investigate.

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I missed a couple of tiles that required wading across a river and scrambling up the mountainside opposite. Will save them for another day when I'm better prepared. Total 12 new tiles.

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The weather forecast was too good to resist, so I threw Niner in the van and drove a 270 km round-trip to hit some rindō in Tochigi. I had a couple of rides loaded in Garmin, but could only manage the first one - a grand total of 22 km and I was knackered by the end of it.

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This increased my VV MaxSquare from 48*48 to 49*49. I had hoped to reach 50*50 within 2019, but I found a lot of excuses along the way. The tiles will still be there next year. Driving all that way for such a short ride is not sustainable - about ¥9000 in fuel and tolls. I'll have to plan better and do some multi-day camping in the future, to increase my tiling-to-transit ratio and reduce costs.

Quite foggy on the expenseway. It was starting to burn off by the time I got rolling, and was gone when I reached the foot of the mountains. the rindō were in poor condition - variously swampy, rocky, slippery, or non-existent. That block of four tiles on the map was hard-won.

Spinning around, unlocking the suspension, and letting Niner do her stuff on the downhills made it all worth it. Wheeee...

Only one casualty: Eric the Reflective Reindeer was a present from a friend. I hung him from the drawstring on my saddlebag, and even took a photo of how much filthy fun he was having. Didn't think much more about him until I realized he was gone. My guess is that with the suspension activated the rear wheel travelled enough to knock him off :(. I can only hope that he's happy now, living free in the forest. (If anyone wants to go look for him...)

Looking forward to more new adventures in Twenty-Twenty

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I hope to get up that way this summer. If I find Eric and he indicates an interest in returning from the wild, I'll let you know.
 
Finally a weekend with a couple days of rain not in the forecast, making it cost effective to head up to Tochigi for a two day tiling excursion.

Day 1 was mostly rice fields, interesting farm houses and Mt. Tsukuba. I'm soooo out of shape.
Day 2 was just a tiling/toiling day in the relentless sun, stiff wind and no trees...I'm rice fielded out for a while.

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For inquiring minds this is day one.
 
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