No rain today!!!

Was quite a nice day, especially after all the rain and clouds recently. I snuck out for a cruise on the Monkey after work, found some nice scenery, which is more than capable of speaking for itself. The flog course pics are for Pop. Sorry to rub the green-ness in your face, it wasn't my intention!

Sunday Follow-up

Once again a big thanks to Kato Cycle. I sent an email yesterday, and already they have taken care of me. They'll bring new parts to the race on Friday (the day before race day), and will bring me a heavier rear spring. The original one is way too soft for me, and may be the cause of all the problems. I could be golden from then on. If not, there are other avenues to explore, so one way or another I will get sorted out.

Riding on Saturday was awesome - in the mud! I used mud tyres for the first time, and wow do they make a difference! I could go nrearly as fast in the mud and wet as I can in the dry. Here is a picture or two of the bike, post riding. For those of you interested, the problem are on the bike is the spring located in the center of the frame, more specifially, the lower mount for it.

no bloody comment.

Big White

Woke up to this today. Finally got sunny day, and with it a nice view. Had a big storm last night, lightning and thunder - reminded me of home. Very rare to see so much snow on Fuji this time of year. Been a funny spring.

Big Wet

Yep, still raining. We've had two dry days in the last fifteen.

And rainy season is yet to come.

yay.

Weekend Report

Phew, finally got the darn photos sorted out. My new wonder phone and blogger didn't want to cooperate, but I tricked them both in the end.

Saturday night saw a party for a student, in honour of her wedding that morning. This is a Japanese tradition, where friends and coworkers go to this party rather than the full-blown wedding. The bride (holding the plate) is my friend and ex-sudent Hitomi, and the dude is her new husband. A nice couple.

This is a scene of the crowded little restaurant - a bit overloaded for this gig, but made for a good atmosphere.

Some of the locals.

Sunday morning and I head for the hills. Got to enjoy a nice, empty highway - rare in these parts.

Some of the hills near where I headed for. Still snow to be seen - it's hanging around late this year.


After all the partying (I had a post-work-meeting-party Friday night) I was really, really tired yesterday, and didn't ride very well. I had fun though, and got to practice in slippery conditions, which is good, because that is what the June race is EVERY year - it's the start of rainy season, so it is always WET and MUDDY. Due to the tiredness though, it felt rougher than ever, and due to me being out-of-sorts the bike felt like it wasnt working very well, but it was just me. Hope next weekend is better.

Still here...

Fear not, I'm still here. I just got back from a day of riding today, and got stuck into the cleaning up, rather than the uploading pictures/writing posts thing.

Been a long, busy weekend, bedtime now. Will post the full version tomorrow.

Oyasumi!

Done!

WooHoo! Now all my bikes are fixed! I got a package in the mail today with the parts for my new DH bike - and I just installed the new shaft. In my excitement to get it done I forgot to take photos, but it is MUCH better quality than the one that broke. The steel seems better, the bolt holes are centered, and not tapped as deep, and just overall it seems a much stronger piece than the one it replaced. I think I know where they cut costs on my frame, and I'm cautiously confident that the problem won't come back in a hurry.

Big thanks to Kato Cycle for the great service!

http://www.katocycle.com/

One more fixed bike.

Only one to go now. Last night I managed to remove a very sticky part on my "playbike" - and thus replace it with bits I actually wanted to use (and are actually useful). And today I borrowed a recoil kit from my student (and riding homey) Kato, and was able to fix the fork. I can now actually attach the front brake to the bike, which is very reassuring. All in all, a very happy and productive day.

Only one broken bike to go now, unfortunately its the one I want fixed the most...

Anyway, coz we all love pictures, here's a pic of the playbike. Lotsa fun.

Cross training

as in Cross Country. Snuck out for another muddy ride today - was fun, and I feel good. Good because I burnt some of the calories I stuffed in at yesterday's BBQ. And good because, well, sometimes it's just good to get muddy. 19km and an hour and a half of therapy. I should ride more.

rain

rain, rain, rain, rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrain rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrain rainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrainrain
rainrainrainrainrainrainrain









rain.

Biwako scenes

Dad will remember this place. It's beautiful. The race was in the hills just to the west of Biwako, and we could see the lake from our base-camp at the race venue. This is about as country-fied as it gets for most of Japan.

Also threw in some pics of the little inn we stayed in, and some dawn shots from race day.

XC

This afternoon I rode my XC bike for the first time in ages. A lack of time and a nagging throat bug had kept me off the bike for more than a month. I thought it was going to hurt a lot (due to lack of fitness), but it wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared. Good news. Was fun, very wet, we've had three days of rain. Earnt my beer credits for tonight.

Aussie Beef

In the grand old tradition of taking pictures of your food (well, it is a grand old tradition around here), here's a picture of tonight's dinner - a nice, big, Aussie steak. Dunno why, just got an urge to eat steak tonight. Man it was good, too.

For comparison, here's a picture of some local fare, eaten on the way home last Friday - curry ramen noodles with half a pig's worth of pork in it. Was also mighty fine.

Enjoy.

Race Scenes

Without further ado, here are some race scenes from last week.

First, our pit area. Lots of gear and bikes, as you can see. Also two of our support crew hard at work cooking us dinner.


The Head Chef Nass, aka Nassty Boy (said tongue-in-cheek, as he's one of the nicest human beings I have ever met, btw, he's closest to the camera) cooking up a storm. He drove two hours up from Osaka, just to cook us all dinner (which was wonderful, and at his expense). On closer inspection, the other dude in the picture is Kato, who is not helping to cook, he's just hungry. But he did provide good moral support, I think...


An unknown rider approaching the final set of jumps before the finish line. It was one of the few decent photos I got of a rider, my digital camera is just too slow for that kind of photo.



Another picture of the final section, this time of a friend. Her name is Hiroka, and she's one of the top female riders in Japan. While she's not airborne in this pic (blame the camera again...) she's stylin' fo' sure....on her way to second in the womens' elite category, missed first by a heartbeat - I bet I know how she must feel...

btw

I just realised that now I can add one more meaning to the title of this bloog.

That is "I lost in Japan" because I didn't win.

Just kidding, I'm really happy with my result, and looking forward to the next race.

bugger

Done broke the new treadly already. Luckily it's only a small thing, and I should be back up and rolling soon. I broke a pivot shaft in part of the suspension - looks like this now.

Easy to replace once I get my hands on a new one, and I'll be ordering spares. I consider this a slight design flaw, but I can live with it now that I know, and as long as I have a spare one or two lying around in the toolbox. I'm more than willing to put up with this seeing how bloody good the bike is.

Not sure when the breakage occurred - the race had a nasty drop in it (with a horrible flat landing) that was really hard on the bikes - could have been there, but can't tell really. I only noticed it yesterday.

I'm back!

and still in one piece. I actually got back late last night, then left again this morning, but now I'm back for a while.

So, how did it go, I hear you ask? Well, it went pretty well. I got on the podium, bu not quite as high as I hoped for. 2nd. Not too bad, the course caught me by surprise, a lot more difficult than I was expecting, and so did the competition - there were three other fast dudes in Sports.

Nice neck of the woods, too, but I'll talk about that in my next post. For now, I'm just going to show off a bit. I'm the weirdo in the pink T-shirt. I also got a nice, shiny medal.

Here I go again.

Just got word that my driver and support crew are on their way, and will be here within the hour. Which means that departure is closely approaching, and I have just enough time for one last check of the gear, and one last lap around the house.

We'll be pulling an all-nighter behind the wheel, then an easy day of practice tomorrow. Good thing is that we are staying in a small inn (rather than the usual thing of camping) so I should get a few decent nights' sleep before the big race on Friday.

Wish me luck!

Pictures

these are the pictures that wouldn't go in the post below. Sorry. One day I'll work out how to use this bloog properly, until then you'll just have to put up with the Blogging-for-dummies version. At least they are visible now. Please note they are in exactly the opposite order that I wanted them to be. sigh...

Hi

I'm back from stage one of the Golden Week Race Adventure. Three days of trying to outrun gravity. Ouch. Not the ouch of injuries, luckily just the ouch of sore muscles and bones due to too much riding.

New bike is fantastic, wonderful, brilliant, and a whole lot more superlatives. It really, really makes a BIG difference - I think it's going to be a good year on the bike. I have already found myself riding in ways I didn't think possible for me, and I'm not even really used to it yet!

Also got to ride with my friends, which was fun, because they are crazy. And got to ride with Mio-chan, for more about Mio-chan, see below a few posts. Was fun to hurtle down the mountain right behind her, and also to hang out and talk with her. She speaks English really well now, I guess that's no surprise after five years travelling the world to race. Right now I think she's on a plane on the way to Spain to race the first World Cup event of this year.

Saturday night we went out to eat at a TENDON shop, and no, they don't serve tendons. TENDON is a bowl of rice with tempura on top, lightly battered and fried stuff, often prawns, fish and veggies. YUM.

Yesterday my student Kato came up to Fujimi to test out his nerve and his bike, not new, but it has a few new nice shiny bits on it. He did well, had a lot of fun, and most importantly, didn't crash! I got some pictures of him and the course, complete with melting snow, just to make sure we got muddy. On the whole it was hot and dry though, I think I'm very dehydrated...

I'll whack in some pictures now, I may write more tonight before I leave.