My February Century is done (consecutive month
#90 ), with a ride of 175 km (
on Strava). I didn't leave until almost 9 in the morning and consequently only got back at midnight.
It was mostly a VeloViewer tiling ride, visiting places west / north-west of Tokyo that I had never passed through. It's an interesting challenge because it encourages you to discover new places and see things you have never seen before. I entered two huge cemeteries, one of them on a hill with a view of Tokyo, not far from where the Japanese Imperial family have their cemetery and where the previous emperor and his wife will most likely be buried (he retired last year). I also visited a cement plant that was the easiest access point to one of the map tiles, despite some signs in Japanese that prohibited entry (there was no closed gate and nobody seemed around on a Sunday).
It was chilly in the morning (5 deg C / 41F) but warmed up towards mid-day so I could strip down to my long sleeve jersey (with base layer). Plum trees are already bloom, as is typical for Tokyo from around late January.
I had no definite plan when I left the house, beside not coming back with less than 100 miles for the day. I had a few different ideas and only settled on of them a couple km into the ride. Even then there was no preconceived route, I checked were the remaining untouched map tiles were and what roads there were in the area and picked a course from there.
I made it to Ome after having finished all the tiles in the foothills west of Tokyo and stopped for dinner at the local Nepalese restaurant that I like there. It had been two months since my last visit, as the mountain routes that normally take me there have become too risky with ice and snow on the road.
After that I rode another four hours, clearing tiles in the suburbs of Tokyo. It was so late by then that traffic everywhere was pretty light.
I did the entire 175 km ride with a broken left shifter, which I'll need to replace soon. There's something wrong with its ratchet, probably because I fell over with the bike in early January and the shifter was then pushed out of place by the impact. When on the small ring the FD now won't move when I push the lever (which offers little resistance), but once I put the chain on the big ring, for example by using the limiter screw, the ratchet mechanism works and it will pull the cable to tighten it again. So I figured out a front upshift technique where I push the exposed part of the shift cable sideways with my fingers to make the FD move enough to force an upshift. Once the chain is firmly engaged on the teeth of the big ring I then coast and let go of the wire. With the crank not moving the chain won't drop back onto the small ring. Two clicks on the left shift lever and it will retension the cable. After that I can resume pedaling, as the the FD can't move back and I have my high gear range again. Admittedly it was a bit cumbersome and I didn't want to do it while I was being passed by vehicles, but it worked.
Now I need to decide what hydraulic shifter to replace my broken Shimano ST-RS685 with, which I think is already out of production. There's a 105 and Ultegra version (ST-R7020-L, ST-R8020-L) and two GRX versions (ST-RX600-L, ST-RX810-L) that should work.