Just the Photos Please

Last week on Saturday, April 3, Jerome and I were slated to do a 300km brevet in Chiba. It was the counterclockwise version of the course I had done in 2014, as reported here. The event was postponed to May 1 ... as part of schedule adjustments due to the Covid-19 emergency. So both 300km events I had planned to join to prepare for Okayama 1200 were not available! 

Jerome and I decided to do the first 2/3 of the event anyway. At the start area, we saw the Chiba brevet organizers, who were running another 200km gravel brevet. They offered to let us join ... but we were not equipped for gravel (need fatter tires), and Jerome had a dinner in any event, and the gravel brevet looked like we would not finish in time. We stuck to our plan -- for once.

We started amid the petrochemical refineries of Sodegaura and took in the crashing waves and salt air of the Pacific Ocean for a few hours of headwind along the coast from Shirahama/ Minami Boso to Kamogawa. But the highlight is really the Satoyama ... areas of well maintained fields and streams, rice paddies and forest, farmers out at work. There were plenty of cyclists on the road, but mercifully few cars once we got out of Sodegaura/Kisarazu. (As usual the Aqua Line was a parking lot on the return drive in the evening).

There was not much epic nor eventful about this ride, just a perfect Spring day in the countryside. So I will let the photos tell the story.

Taken just a few seconds before the photo at the top of this post, this one focuses less on the rapeseed (Nanohana) and more on the people. Also, a nice view of the flowering trees on the far hillside.