On December 12 it was time for my December Century ride (consecutive month #112). So many options, but the memory of cold rides in Naguri and to and from Chichibu dulled the appeal of many of them, so in the end the southern tip of Miura peninsula won (
173 km, on Strava).
The start was chilly at 6°C but it soon warmed up. For most of the day and until sunset I wore my warm trousers but only a short sleeve jersey. Those trousers are too warm once it gets above 14°C and it was 17°C for much of the day.
I saw a lot of police stopping motorists (I counted at least three in the morning) and police motorbikes patrolling the roads.
From Verny park in Yokosuka I saw this submarine. Nuclear or diesel electric?
After I turned off the main road towards the Kurihama ferry port to follow the coast to Kannonzaki instead, I passed a cyclist on an older randonneur bike (i.e. light touring bike with front rack and fenders). I gave it a good looking over and he looked at mine.
A bit down the road I stopped for pictures of Tokyo Bay and the cyclist caught up with me. He commented on my bike, that it was so rare to see a randonneur bike. His own bike was a custom one, made about 40 years ago. It used stem mounted shifters. The gearing was touring triple (46-36-26) with a six speed freewheel. He had retired from his work as a local civil servant and rides 10 km of local roads on one of his 4 bicycles every day. I only ride through Miura about every 3 months. In the end I handed him my business card so we could stay in touch.
A couple of km later, after I had already passed a turn off to a small coastal road, I spontaneously turned around to explore the coast around there. I took more pictures of the ocean up on a hill. A little after that my new friends caught up with me again. He then invited me around to his place for coffee. We spent time in his personal library and bike storage room with ocean view talking about bikes, computers and software (turned out he still knew CP/M and Digital Research).
Eventually I had to move on because I knew the sunset comes early in December and I didn't have so much time if I wanted to take more pictures.
Construction cranes are busy at the JERA power station where the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) is doing its part to raise the sea level. In 2021 they are
still building two coal burning units scheduled to come online in 2023/24. I don't know for how many decades Tepco thinks they will be operating. Do we live on the same planet?
The last two hours before sunset were very windy.
The wind turbines on this hill were illuminated with purple light but only one of the two was turning.
I don't think it was because wind speed was too high because its twin right next to it was operating.
These turbines have been there for a very long time and are probably much smaller than what one would use nowadays. Maybe they are only leaving one running to say, "Look, we're doing something for the environment" while Tepco makes life difficult for wind power feed-in so they can sell more of their thermal power.
About 2 1/2 hours from home I passed a Nepalese restaurant in Yokohama and stopped for dinner. I was the only guest but was quite nice.