YabitsuPass with Koji-san

Dry again from riding the day before through Tokyo City i got picked up by Koji-san on sunday. The bike came onto the roof of his Subaru and we drove about an hour westside to do a nice mountain ride.

Challanging though as we had a strong taifun the week before in that region. Koji is my contact at the bicycle distributor Intertec and he became a brave rider over the years using with Canyon a german bike. We parked the car on a public place in Hadano to prepare ourselves for the upcoming ride to Yabitsu Pass. And it started quite soon with a climb that is very popular in Japan looking at the Strava segment up there. Still very humid from the rain from the day before we had a good start. But after a while i could feel that i´m not used to this high humidity and i had a pretty though ride up there.

The view down to the city tough on this approx average 7% climb was very nice finding some holes in the trees of that beautiful forrest. After 15k we had finished the climb and also the most challanging part of the ride. On top we spent some time for pics and a little breakfast snack and a little lower at Gomayashiki Fountain, a natural spring for getting some water.

The downhill then, normally a nice speedy ride, showed the damage the storm did with muddy roads but also little branches and leaves on it. Was i a bit uncomfortable not sitting on my bike in the climb, now with that heavy dirt i was pretty glad. We rode a nice winding valley down to Miyagase Lakeside Park. Riding over Shiomizu Bridge was also the first touching point of Nakatsu River which we followed until we reached Lake Miyagase. We rode along and had to cross some bridges to finally leave the lake but coming back later on on the other side again.

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We took the road to Sagamihara which was slightly profiled up and down. It was time to do a break at a biker famous coffee shop. Unfortunately that day the shop was closed which Koji-san did not appreciate much ;-)

Anyways we needed to move on to do our break at a Lawson convenice store before doing some small climbs to reach again Lake Miyagase. Again we had to cross a few very stylish bridges before descenting back towards the sea to the city of Isehara. We had a nice speed returning to our starting area which just was stopped by closed railway barriers. We returned to the car and returned to Tokyo hitting before a little restaurant and enjoying a typical noodle soup to fill our energy reservoir.

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bike: Giant Contend SL1 Alu
starring: Koji-san, Gerry-san

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