On the last Sunday of the month I finally rode my November Century (
164 km on Strava). With that I was at 135 consecutive months of one 160.9+ km (100 mile) ride per calendar month. It had been 5 weeks since the last one.
The previous weekend I had done some hiking at Mt Tsukuba with my family. I wasn't as hard as Oyama in the Tanzawa mountains, the views were great but parts of the route very crowded.
Crowded was one thing that the Izu east coast was not, thanks to the weather forecast which promised some rain in the morning and overcast for the rest of the day.
I got up at 5:30 and left for Odawara by car about an hour later. It drizzled repeatedly on the way there. I don't really like the combination of rain and cold (8 deg C) but I had brought my rain gear and put it on after I had unloaded the bike from the car.
It drizzled on and off for the first two hours of the ride. I didn't use my shoe covers but was wearing the rain pants over my fleece trousers and the rain jacket over the LS summer jersey, a combination that was easily warm enough. At a convenience store stop in Manazuru I swapped a t-shirt for the jersey, that was better.
Traffic was reasonable and I hardly saw any cyclists during the day. People just don't want to get wet, I suppose
I did not load any route on the GPS that would show me the lengths of all the climbs, just took as it came. In a way that was easier as I wasn't reminded of all the climbing still left to do. Individually none of them are that long, there's just a lot of them on this route.
The mikan (satsuma orange) harvest was supposed to have started but I didn't really see any roadside stalls in operation yet. That's one of the treats of winter rides in Izu (especially over on the west coast). I ate plenty all day, but not a single mikan!
When it brightened up around Atami I took off my rain gear and wore my LS jersey with the t-shirt as a base layer. That worked for most of the rest of the day.
After Ito the cycling route branched off from the main coastal road. I took the exact same route on the way back.
I found some dried apples in a Lawson convenience store. They were quite a nice substitute for my usual go to snack (dried mangoes), which I had used up on the hike the week before.
I had coffee at a convenience store near Izu Kogen as I was wondering how far to still head south from there. To get my century, the halfway point would be about 20 km from there but in the end I turned around a couple of km earlier, at seafood restaurant Isobe. I would ride the extra near Odawara instead. That way I could get back to the main road at Ito by sunset.
On the way back I found a dead fish on the road which had been run over by something. It must have fallen off the back off a truck because it was hundreds of meters from the sea. I see a lot of road kill on my rides but usually don't take pictures. The most common are snakes. The most unusual until the fish had been a baby wild boar.
For my next car I want to get a battery electric vehicle so naturally I am keeping my eyes open for the state of the charging infrastructure.
I found this DC charger near Izu Kogen. According to the data plate, the high voltage side was 6,600 V, which is the supply side voltage on most transformers on Japanese utility poles that step it down to 100 V / 200 V for residential use. Here the output side was 420 V, presumably matched for the 400 V DC standard of Chademo (the Japanese charging standard). Above the charger unit was single solar panel as a rain cover. Units that size have a rated output in the 400-450 W range (at full direct sun). It would take about 200 of them to keep up with a 90 kW charger (as this may have been due to its 200 kVA supply rating). But when I looked closer, the panel was not even connected: Its connections wires were still neatly rolled up and zip tied. It was really just a stylish rain cover.
It got dark as I made my way to Ito. The last 60 km or so I rode after sunset but the temperature didn't drop much. Sometimes I wore the windbreaker on top of the jersey.
I think I ate a lot during this ride, trying to make up for my lack of fitness as I had not been riding much, other than my centuries and some local shopping and other errands. I never felt too exhausted and especially during the evening part I felt quite good.
Back in Odawara I headed east on the main road. This part was easy, no hills, only a couple of traffic lights. I cycled far enough out of Odawara so that once I returned I'd be comfortably over my desired distance.
I loaded the bike into the car, changed back into regular shoes and drove home. It was late enough that there was no major traffic jam any more.