Where have all the flowers gone?

Put in another long ride today. I started at Hachioji, then moved over to Itsukaichi by Akigawa Kaido and climbed up Umenoki as a warm-up. I thought. This is much too hard for a warm-up, very similar characteristics to the Wada climb: First a slow approach along a river followed by a steep and brutal climb to the top. Much harder than from the North side. Therefore OWI : 1.0.

Along the Yoshino Kaido I rode to Okutama, but then made a turn on route 184 and discovered to my dismay that an identical long tunnel to the one of the 411 road side shortly before Okutama is also existing on the other side of the Tamagawa. Complete nonsense. After a break at the station I gave Yanagizawa Togebaka a try and made it in less than 2:10 hours thanks to the good weather and some tail wind. Being 10 kg less heavy than last year also helps a lot. Please check the Togebaka section.

A quick run to Ensan was followed by .... surprise .. a train ride to Otsuki. Yes, no fruit lines and Sasago horrors today, instead an attack on Dosaka and then home to Hashimoto via Doshi Michi.

A real loop, something that looks like a loop on the map not these balloons with attached strings (as part of the way and return is the same).

Summary: 154 km or riding, 2.800 m of climbing, still massive construction works everywhere and, yes, the absence of Kos(u)mos(u) this year is significant as Tom remarked?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Sag' mir wo die Blumen sind .....

紅葉！

It was time to see 紅葉 (kouyou, the turning of the leaves), so I headed for Okutama yesterday. At the rest area overlooking the dam holding Okutamako, I met Chris from Canada who had just rediscovered doing bicycle tours and who had been consulting POSITIVO ESPRESSO for tour tips.

Further along the lake, I sought a place to have my first rest for food and found a sobayasan cum omiyageten where after buying some biscuits I ended up being served tea and kaki (persimon) by the two friendly and chatty ladies running the place. They were quite impressed one could cycle all the way from Tokyo within just a few hours. In old times, their ageing father who was also present had taken two days to do the same trip. Lucky I have a decent bike!

There was not much of kouyou in sight around Okutamako. This year's autumn seems rather mild, delaying the onset of the season. So I decided to cycle on, up into Tabayama Valley, where indeed I found kouyou - plenty of it. It was a real pleasure cycling through the beautiful landscape, so much I didn't really notice how much uphill I was going.

An overall leisurely ride across the Yanagisawa Pass took me onto the Autobahn down to Enzan.

Arriving at Enzan station, a special express bound for Shinjuku was about to pull in and I would have had to wait 40 minutes for the next one, so I decided to test the patience of the JR attendants by taking my bike onto the platform and into the train without even any pretence of having covered or wrapped it. Nobody stopped me. When I had to pay for the express fare on the train, the attendant told me that normally I would have to wrap the bike, but again no attempt to expel me. I apologised, and was about to explain that actually I knew what I was doing and I even had my bicycle bag with me, but then thought that was probably better left unsaid.