Planes. Japan has a very good but complicated transportation system that includes, intercity buses, trains, and of course planes. From the Bay Area the main direct airports are Haneda (HND) or Narita (NRT) near Tokyo or Osaka airport (KIX). Odds are your tour is starting somewhere else so you’ll likely need to get to your start town from either Tokyo or Osaka airports. Flying is generally easy but keep in mind that most intra-Japan or domestic flights from Tokyo originate at Haneda, not Narita. If you fly into Narita, you may have to transfer to Haneda to catch your connecting flight; Narita has a limited number of domestic flights. If you fly into Narita, you can transfer to Haneda either by train or limo bus. Keep in mind that clearing passport control, retrieving your luggage and getting through customs takes time. That will be true at Haneda too as you’ll have to go through check-in and security. The time it takes by train or limo bus is about two hours depending somewhat on Tokyo traffic (for the limo bus). So you’ll need to set aside about five hours to complete the transfer comfortably. If you can, it’s better to fly into Haneda instead of Narita if you plan to catch a domestic flight.

If you don’t want to rush, you can try a layover in Tokyo or at an airport hotel and proceed to your final destination the following day. A flight from SF to Tokyo is about eleven hours. If you tend to be exhausted after a long flight or perhaps you can’t relax and sleep on a Trans-Pacific flight, then a layover may make sense for you as long as you’ve set aside that extra day. We usually try to get to the destination city right away even though we may be tired. But we have done a layover in Tokyo and taken the Shinkansen—“bullet” train—from there to Kanazawa. One advantage of flying is that navigating the airport is much simpler than going into Tokyo to your hotel and then getting to a train station to catch a train.

By the way, the procedure for using airport limousine service in larger cities is usually to proceed to the stop where there will be an electronic kiosk for paying your fare and getting a ticket. (Be sure to have cash in order to pay.) When the limo bus arrives, you load your bags into the undercarriage before showing or giving your ticket to the driver and boarding. Depending on the route you may need to know which stop to debark from. But there is electronic signage and audio informing you of the next stop so you do not miss your stop. At your stop the driver and the ground assistant do not unload your bags and you will have to do that.

Airports in Japan function very similarly to airports here but there are a few differences. Here in the US almost all flights depart from a terminal. But as in Europe large airports in Japan often have flights that aren’t at a terminal jetway; instead you take a shuttle bus from the terminal out to the tarmac and board from the ground. This is important mainly because you’ll need to make sure you’re at the gate to catch the shuttle bus to the plane. If the last shuttle has departed from the terminal, you won’t be able to board your flight.

Airport procedures seem more efficient than in the US. Baggage handling and actual boarding are quicker. A half-hour between your arriving flight and a departing flight is not uncommon. Japanese airlines seem to have no problem boarding a full plane in about 15 minutes, which would be impossible here in the US. One time we were delayed in getting through customs and passport control and missed our connecting flight to Nagasaki. The next flight was in 20 minutes and it was the last one for the night. We checked our luggage and sped through the airport to a shuttle bus that took us to a different terminal. We arrived at the gate literally at the last minute before the scheduled departure and we got into the tail end of the boarding line. They shut the door behind us and we took off. Our bags arrived with us too. The shuttle driver clearly knew what he was doing!

Security in Japanese airports is similar to here except that there is no TSA Pre or Clear—everyone has to go through the same rigorous procedure including removing shoes, all laptops from carry-on, etc.

Trains. The railway system can be complicated because there are many independent train systems that serve local areas. For getting to and from major cities and towns it’s fairly transparent because they are served by one of the Japan Railways (JR), which were formed when the national railway system was privatized decades ago. Japan also has high speed rail, the Shinkansen, which can be faster than taking a regional flight because you don’t need to check in early nor go through an extensive security check. The Shinkansen trains, or ‘bullet’ trains, go about 180 MPH and are very smooth. Another advantage of taking the train is that train stations are in the center of towns whereas airports are usually on the outskirts. Train tickets can be ordered from the railway system in advance or you can buy one when you get to a station. Usually you can buy a ticket at a kiosk or in person at the railway office if it’s open. Be careful though: Japan is mainly a cash based society and foreign credit cards are not always accepted. This is changing since the 2020 Olympics. The kiosks can be faster than the office, which often have lines, but not all of them accept credit cards and definitely some do not accept foreign credit cards. If you use one, you can select English so that the entire transaction is understandable. Train usage in Japan is very high so purchasing a ticket in advance especially for the Shinkansen is advised as it can sell out. Rail stations are often centers of commerce as well. They are filled with businesses—restaurants, stores, food stalls, electronics stores, etc. so they are rife with services if you need something at the last minute.

As in the airports electronic signage for departures and arrivals is in Japanese as well as Roman script so you will be able to read them and know when the train arrives and on which track. Railway staff rarely are able to communicate in English.

Trains in Japan are punctual. They arrive and depart on schedule almost all the time. The rail system is about as efficient as in Switzerland. Train usage is very high in Japan. As with just about any place in Japan trains are marvelously maintained and clean. There are luggage bins as you enter the trains where you can stow your luggage before seating. Don’t worry them being stolen. As in Europe you select and purchase a specific class of ticket and you’ll need to make sure you sit in a car that is that class.

If you’re concerned about getting a seat on a train, you can purchase a ticket in advance for a reserved seat. However JR (Japan Railway) will not send the ticket to you and you’ll have to pick it up at a JR office either at the airport or at a station. If you want to have the ticket sent to you in advance, you will have to use a third party service to do that. The advantage of using JR directly is that you can select your seat, which you cannot do with a third party site. (The latter will select a seat for you.) Purchasing a ticket in advance for the Shinkansen is recommended!

About the Shinkansen. If you’re heading to a start town from Tokyo or Osaka, the bullet train is a viable option to catching a connecting flight. Grabbing a connecting flight at Haneda to your start location is so easy that you aren’t likely to entertain taking a train instead. However if you are planning to visit Tokyo before your cycling adventure, then consider taking a train instead of heading back to the airport. For a detailed and clear explanation about using the train system and buying tickets go here. There are just a couple of remarks I will add that aren’t mentioned in the above link. If you are bringing your bike you may not want to use the train. Not only is lugging a bike box/case around a burden in Tokyo but bringing luggage on trains is limited to no more than 160 cm (= 63 inches) for combined height plus width plus depth. Your case might be too big. An option is to leave your bike at a luggage storage facility at a train station to avoid dealing with it in Tokyo. But this won’t solve the size issue. If you’re using a S&S case you should have no trouble taking your bike on the train assuming there is space in the luggage storage bins in your train car. You can bring your bike on trains in Japan (and some buses) as long as you use a rinko bag though if you’re arriving in Japan by plane it’s unlikely you’ll be using just a bag to ship your bike. But this is useful if you plan to use trains during your cycle tour. For information on how to rinko your bike, go here. For rinko supplies including bags go here.

Entering the train system is much like entering BART: put your ticket in the slot in the automatic gate, it opens and you enter, and then retrieve your ticket. If you are taking a Shinkansen you will receive two tickets when you buy them, one ticket is the base fare ticket and the second gives you access to the Shinkansen. When you first enter the station, you just put in your base fare ticket. Once inside you enter a second set of gates to enter the Shinkansen area. Here you put in BOTH your tickets as the same time—not separately—and retrieve them on the other side. The automatic gate will read them both at the same time.

In town. Towns where tourism thrives such as Kanazawa or Hiroshima or any big city such as Tokyo or Osaka have very well developed public transportation systems. Usually you can purchase a one-day ticket that lets you hop on and off buses and light rail so you can tour the town at will. You can purchase a ticket at the Tourist Information offices.

Taxis. I can’t recall if we have ever seen an Uber of Lyft in Japan. But we have seen many taxis. Taxis in Japan are operated very professionally. Drivers are well dressed and always—as do bus drivers and train operators—wear white gloves. In the big cities taxi drivers are familiar dealing with Western tourists even if they can only speak Japanese. If you’re heading to a well-known hotel, they will probably know exactly where and how to go. If you have the address, you can show it to the driver. If you’re heading from a hotel to a location, you can ask the front desk to summon a taxi at a specific time and tell them the destination. That will be conveyed to the driver so you don’t need to be concerned about communicating with the driver. As in restaurants—really everywhere in Japan—you do not tip taxi drivers.

Safety. The biggest crime in cities is pickpocketing but it doesn’t seem to be anywhere at the level you’d find in Europe or the US. Armed robbery and mugging are very rare. On tours we’re mostly in the countryside and smaller towns where the level of crime is even lower. We’ve never had a problem leaving our bicycles outside a shrine, restaurant, public toilet, or shop and not locking them.

Starting a ride in a city. Japanese cities just as here and in Europe can have dense car traffic and it’s only when you get outside the urban center that roads calm down and you can relax. There are usually recommended bike routes to get in and out but as here it’s often a “bike route” i.e. just painted lines on a road that has no additional shoulder or room to accommodate cyclists, as opposed to a bike lane or bikeway. Despite how hectic traffic can be in some Japanese cities, the speed is often low and drivers are more attuned to cyclists due to how common it is to cycle to run errands in Japan. As mentioned before riding on sidewalks is acceptable in Japan especially if there is an explicit sign allowing it. Riding in the road and then jumping up onto a sidewalk or multi-use path when necessary is common in Japan. Despite the very well developed train network in Japan it still has a huge amount of lorries hauling goods everywhere. Even though they are smaller than the trucks in the US, the roads are narrow and they can appear very intimidating. Although they may seem to driving very close to you they know to pull out as they pass you to give you space. If they can’t pass, they will slow down and wait until they can.

Arrival and checking in at reception.
When you arrive at a hotel or inn, the staff are supposed to inspect your passport and make a record of it. If you are traveling not as part of a group, this would certainly be true. Our experience being part of an organized tour group is that this varies. Sometimes reception will ask to see and make a copy of your passport but sometimes this does not happen. This may be because the tour company has provided that information in advance and the staff feel they do not need to verify it when you arrive. But you should have your passport ready when you arrive at the hotel to check in just in case they don’t have it yet. The guides will tell you if you need to show your passport to the front desk.

By law when you travel in Japan you are supposed to have your passport on your person at all times. In reality we often leave it in our luggage in the support van. Other than when checking into an accommodation we have never needed to present a passport while traveling in Japan. But the police have the right to ask to see it.

Rooms.
Some hotels in Japan may offer a choice of Western or traditional Japanese rooms. However even if you prefer a Western room, there may not be one available that night. A Western room is what we would term a regular hotel room: beds, carpeting, a desk and chair, etc. Japanese rooms are what you might find in a traditional Japanese home as in the picture above: futons not beds, a low table called a zataku rather than desk, legless chairs called zaisu for the low table, sliding washi paper doors to enclose the main room, and perhaps a separate sitting area with regular chairs and small table (hiroen). There is always an alcove (tokonoma) with decoration, often a scroll or painting. Hotels catering to business travelers often have Western rooms; resort hotels may have only Japanese rooms or maybe just a few Western rooms. Ryokans usually do not have Western rooms, which means that you will be sleeping on a futon rather than a bed. A futon is similar to a mattress but much thinner and consisting of dense batting.

Futons are kept in a closet and put out by the staff while you’re at dinner. They are then stowed in the closet the next day. You won’t be able to lounge on your futon during the day since it won’t be out when you arrive. You’ll either have to sit at the low table or in the sitting area. If you expect to get “work” done on your laptop, there isn’t a convenient desk to use and you’ll have to make do with the small or low table or your lap. Because futons are thinner and denser than a mattress and there are no springs, they feel quite different. Some futons are thinner than others and they may feel hard to you. Your back may or may not like sleeping on a futon. On thinner futons your hip, shoulder, or lower back bones may be uncomfortable due to the minimal cushioning. If your futon is just too hard, you can try taking a spare futon from the closet and stacking two (or three) together to make it softer. Traditional Japanese futon pillows are smaller, denser, and less comfortable than the foam or down pillows we’re used to. They are stuffed with buckwheat hulls usually. If you find them uncomfortable, you can stuff some of your clothing in a sack to use instead. Also getting up from a futon takes more effort than a bed since you’re on the floor—you can’t just slide your legs off the bed and rise. If you’re next to the low table, which is moved by the staff from the center of the room to the side when they make up your futon, you can brace yourself against it to help getting up. Some ryokans have a piece of small furniture that looks like a freestanding armrest for a zaisu. This is intended to help you get up from the floor. Finally, futons have comforters, which you will welcome in cold weather but can be too hot in warmer weather (well, at least for me).

Japanese rooms have tatami flooring so you’ll need to remove all shoes while in your room; it is very rude to walk on tatami with footwear of any kind as it soils and degrades it. So you are either barefooted or in socks while in your room. In Japan cleanliness is highly valued.

In some ryokan or minshuku (small, private guesthouses) there may not be a private bathroom. The toilets and sinks may be in a common area. If you’re in the habit of waking in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, you may find this inconvenient. But many have en suite toilets. Ryokans with an onsen may omit a private bath/shower in which case you’ll have to use the onsen to shower up at the end of the day’s ride.

Bathrooms.
Bathrooms run the gamut at inns in Japan. A lot of hotels with Western rooms have all-in-one bathrooms, i.e. bathrooms that look manufactured as one whole unit and then retrofitted to a hotel room. In actuality these hotels are certainly new enough that rooms were constructed with a bathroom in mind and I guess a smart manufacturer must be building them specifically for hotels trying to minimize the square footage in the hotel room. These bathrooms are typical Western bathrooms just smaller. They contain a sink, toilet, and bathtub/shower. Everything is tightly squeezed in. Showers sometimes have no curtain; this isn’t too surprising because showering/cleaning in an onsen there are no curtains or barriers to contain the spray. Some bathrooms that have no tub and you just shower on the floor, which has a drain. These bathrooms always have a stool and a bucket, which is what you’ll find in an onsen. Some hotels and ryokans have separate rooms for the toilet and the bath/shower not unlike what you’d find in old Victorian flats in San Francisco. At ryokans these toilet rooms often have toilet room slippers, i.e. slippers left in the toilet room and used only while you’re in there. They are always a different color than the slippers provided in the room and to make things glaringly clear they are marked “Toilet” for the ignorant Westerners. Since in a traditional Japanese room with tatami flooring you’ll be padding about in either bare feet or socks, toilet slippers make sense in order not to soil the rest of the room.

Toilets.
Toilets in Japan are similar to bidets; there have an electric powered water jet to wash your bottom and then blow dry it; toilet seats are often electrically heated. If you are not familiar with the style of toilet, you’re in for a surprise if you accidentally activate it! Because the control panel and/or remote control is in Japanese, it can be very intimidating for the novice and you’ll probably avoid using it. However use Google Translate to decipher them or see this link and this link. And yes, there is toilet paper too. Japan also has “squat” toilets similar to what you’ll elsewhere in the world but these are never in hotels or ryokans. Some restaurants and bars still have squat toilets; some public toilets are squat but the number seems to be decreasing as they are replaced by newer toilets.

Like much of the rest of the world, you won’t find plush terrycloth towels in Japanese inns (but some high end hotels do have them). In my experience Japanese towels are adequate although sometimes they’re a little smaller than in the US. If the hotel or ryokan has an onsen you will find towels in the closet or armoire in your room rather than the bathroom, one large towel and one small one for each person. These are to be used at the onsen and brought back to the room.

In ryokans your room will often include either an electric teapot or a carafe of hot water for you to make green tea, which is kept in a container on the zataku. (Sometimes they are placed in the tokonoma.)

Yukata.
Ryokans and most hotels include yukata robes. Usually they are in the room when you arrive. However at larger onsen hotels, i.e. you may have to select your size yukata in the lobby. A yukata is a floor length robe with a sash that you wrap around your waist (twice) to hold the robe in place. The proper way to dress yourself is to put the right side of the robe under the left and then wrap and tie the sash to the right. (Note that putting the right side over the left is only done for the deceased.) In colder weather there is a jacket you may put over the yukata. Yukata resemble bathrobes but their function is for casual lounging of any sort. Walking around the premises and even on the street in a yukata—especially if it’s a hot springs town—is accepted. Going to your meal in the hotel or ryokan in a yukata is common. Yukata come in different sizes, usually small, medium, and large; if the one in your room doesn’t fit, you’ll have to ask at reception for a different size although some places have only one size. If you don’t select a yukata in the lobby, it will then be in the closet along with any things needed at the onsen (if there is one). You can find more detailed information at this link.

Slippers are at the entrance of the ryokan but in hotels you will find them in your room. You don’t wear your regular slippers in the toilet room (nor in a Japanese room at all!) nor go in barefooted. Use the toilet slippers. If the toilets are down the hall, you’ll always find toilet slippers there for your use. Slippers in ryokans and hotels tend to be on the small side for Americans males. If you’re a size 10 or above, you should plan to pack your own slippers or flipflops unless you enjoy cartoonishly clomping along in tiny slippers. You can probably walk around in your socks or barefooted in the ryokan although I must admit that I have never seen Japanese do this. In hotels you are allowed to wear shoes even into your room unless it has tatami mat floors. But even in hotel rooms without tatami you will find slippers in your room for your use. Ryokans are another story. I have yet to stay at a ryokan or minshuku that allowed street shoes or cycling shoes to be worn indoors. When you arrive you’ll find slippers at the front door. Usually there is a step or two up to the ryokan floor and that’s where you are expected to take off your street shoes or cycling shoes and leave them there. There is usually an area with cubby holes to park your shoes for your stay; there is absolutely no reason to bring your cycling shoes into your room. If you plan to change into street shoes to go explore the area or head to a konbini, you should bring them to the front door and change into them there and leave them there when you return.

Onsen.
Onsen are hot spring baths and Japan being a country with a lot of volcanic activity they can be found everywhere. There are onsen towns, destinations where Japanese people go specifically to take the baths. Hotels and ryokans can have onsen facilities too as hot spring water is often piped into the buildings. What we typically think of as hot springs in the US are not the same as onsen, as the former are usually not developed and are almost always outdoors in remote areas. Onsen are usually quite developed as the volcanic water is tapped and piped into facilities throughout an onsen town. Onsen can be indoor or outdoor but are usually indoor. Whereas a hot springs is considered an unusual luxury in the US, onsen are quite common and a big part of Japanese culture. This isn’t too surprising as baths were public faciliies for most of Japan’s history. Onsen have separate bathing areas for men and women. This is because you are expected to be naked in the onsen. Do not wear swim clothes in the onsen! If you’re uncomfortable being in public naked, onsen are not for you (which is a problem if your ryokan doesn’t have en suite showers.) There are typically set hours when you can use the onsen. They are closed for cleaning every day.

There is a whole ritual for using the onsen that I won’t explain in detail. But after disrobing and storing your clothing, room key, etc. you enter a bathing area adjacent to the hot water. You are expected to clean yourself well before you enter the pools. Going directly in the hot pools without bathing is deeply frowned upon (and yet I have seen Japanese do it!). Typically you clean yourself on a stool in an open stall; there might be a standing shower also. There is a bucket you fill with water to rinse yourself after soaping up. But I just use the hose from the tap to rinse. This is not an area where you horse around (also frowned upon). A more detailed explanation can be found at this link. After cleaning up you can enter the pool(s). If there is one pool it will be somewhere around 104-108F; multiple pools will have different temperatures. In my experience the pools are all tiled nicely, shallow, and some have steps you can sit on. Keep in mind the water is hot spring water so it will have almost always have a distinct mineral smell. The pools are not deep—they aren’t for swimming or even full immersion: when sitting on the bottom your head is above water. The idea isn’t to immerse yourself fully—keep your head above water. You spend as much time as you want in the pool(s) and then usually you get out, rinse off, and towel off before you leave the bathing area to get dressed. Your onsen ‘kit’ will include a small towel, about dishrag size or smaller. This you can use to wash yourself and “dry” yourself before leaving the pool area for the dressing room. When you get in the pool you place this small towel on top of your head for “storage” (or so I am told).

Using the onsen after a day’s ride is a great way to warm up if it’s been chilly or raining and they really help you recover from the ride in addition to helping you relax. A beer afterwards probably helps too! (You should not drink alcohol before entering the onsen.)

One thing you should know about onsen: tattoos are often forbidden. If you’re heavily inked this is potentially a problem and you should ask the guides or staff at the onsen. This is perhaps more an issue at a public onsen than at a private onsen at your accommodation. Tattoos are frowned upon at onsen because of the association of ornate tattoos with membership in a yakuza, Japanese crime syndicates.

If you’re at an onsen town (as opposed to an onsen that is part of your accommodation), you’ll have to walk to the onsen and pay a small fee to use the onsen unless the fee is already part of the tour. You’ll probably walk there in your yukata along with the towel and small towel from your room.

Heating and cooling.
Japan can be very cold in the winter and very hot and humid in summer, which incidentally make spring and autumn the more comfortable times to do a cycling tour. Japan doesn’t have a native source of oil or gas for energy and relies completely on imported oil. The other major source of electricity is nuclear power. Consequently Japan tends to be parsimonious in consuming electricity, so for heating and cooling you’ll find minisplit units, i.e. ductless heat pumps, which are very efficient. There will either be a remote control or a wall mounted control that you’ll have to set for heating, cooling, or just fan as well as the temperature you prefer and sometimes a timer. Of course it’s all in Japanese, so in order to know what you’re doing you’ll either have to read Japanese or use Google Translate to decode the text on the control. Here is a link with a detailed explanation.

Kerosene is also used for room heating in Japan. This is mainly at private homes. But if you stay at a private home such as in Shirakawa-go, you may encounter them. They put out a lot of heat but they also have that kerosene odor. Worse they can emit a huge amount of CO2 into your room.

Electrical outlets.
Outlets in Japan take the same two-prong plugs as in the US (although they are 100 volt, not 120 and 50 cycle, not 60). If you are bringing devices that have a three-prong plug, you’ll want bring an adaptor. Depending on the age of the accommodation you may or may not have sufficient outlets in your room. Older ryokans may have just one wall outlet in the room so you may want to bring along an extension cord with multiple outlets just in case.

WiFi.
I have yet to stay at a hotel or ryokan in Japan that did not have WiFi. Cell coverage in Japan is quite good, comparable to France’s (i.e. there are no dead zones) so you can also use your phone even in remote areas. In older hotels you will probably find an Ethernet connection (!) at the desk in your room. USB outlets? You’ll find them in newer hotels but probably not anywhere else so bring a hub if you’ve got lots of devices to charge.

Laundry.
Laundry is always a chore when you’re cycle touring. If you’re doing a short trip—a few days—it might be possible to carry a fresh set of cycling clothes for each day. For a longer tour, say over a week, your limited luggage is going to dictate how much clothes you dare to bring. Keep in mind that you’ll often need to bring additional cycling clothes for rainy weather or if you expect to encounter chilly conditions. Experienced cycle tourists generally plan to wash their clothes in the bathroom sink/shower/tub when they arrive at the destination hotel/inn and hope that it dries out by the next day. A rotation of three sets of bottoms and jerseys will usually do. You’ll always have a clean set in case you can’t do your laundry one day due to lack of a private bathroom, late arrival, early dinner, or just being too tired. There are a bunch of tips for handling laundry while on tour that I won’t go into here. But briefly having a clothes hanging cord such as Rick Steve’s, carrying laundry detergent such as Woolite, and knowing how to get as much water out of your clothes so it will dry quickly are the main ones. Clothes hangers? There may be enough to hang your washed cycling clothes on but don’t count on it–hang it in the bathroom on on the little rack in your room if your lodging has an onsen.

Japan has one convenience that beats touring in Europe: washing machines and dryers are common in hotels. In our experience practically every hotel (but not ryokan) has a coin laundry room that guests are welcome to use. Many have machines that will automatically dispense detergent. This is a real boon when you’re touring because instead of having a burdensome chore to do when you arrive at the hotel when you’re tired and/or hungry or have already had that post-ride biru (beer) or two, you can just dump your clothes in the washing machine for about 200 Yen (about $1.25) and retrieve it later. It’s worth every yen for the convenience! We’ve seen top loaders and front loaders in hotels but even the top loaders seem to have a high speed spin to remove as much water as possible. This makes drying even faster. You can then hang your clothes in your room or throw it in the dryer for another 100 Yen or so to make sure it’s dry by morning. You won’t need to do too much deciphering of the Japanese text because the operation of the machines is so simple. Use Google Translate if you’re not sure if detergent will be dispensed automatically. (If you see a detergent for sale in the laundry room, that’s a clue!) For travel we bring a few detergent pods we can throw into a washing machine if we need to.

Convenience machines.
Japan is the land of vending machines. There are vending machines for drinks everywhere on the street including in the middle of nowhere in the rural areas. This is also true in hotels. There is usually a vending machine area in hotels not just for juice and soft drinks but also electrolyte beverages (‘Pocari Sweat’!), hot coffee, cold coffee drinks, and green tea. Often hotels have filtered water dispensers, ice machines, hot coffee or espresso machines, and ice cream chests, and even a popular probiotic, Yakult. At hotels with onsens you may see machines dispensing beer outside the onsen. There is one other common convenience machine: a microwave oven. If you head to a nearby konbini (convenience store), you can get plenty of food items that you can heat up in the hotel microwave including soup, noodles, fried food, food bowls, etc. (Most konbini can microwave your food for you also.)

Bicycle Parking. If you’re on an organized tour, the guides will have it sorted out where you park your bike. This is the time to let the guides know—if you haven’t already—that you’re having a problem with your bike such as wonky shifting, noise, worn brakes, etc. Theft in Japan is much rarer than in the US especially bicycle theft. In general it’s usually safe to leave your bike unattended if you’re visiting a site such as a shrine, going into a store, or stopping to get a meal. That said at night I’ve noticed that our group’s bikes are cabled together if they are left in front of the hotel or ryokan in a larger city.

Joe McClinton, a former Spoker who is fluent in Italian and who has led bike tours in Italy, told me before I went to Italy to cycle for the first time in 2000, “So-called Italian food here is very different from what you’ll be eating in Italy.” At the time I didn’t understand what he said but it turned out he was right—what we get here is really Italian-American food, i.e. something derived from southern Italy that has been modified because immigrants couldn’t get the same ingredients here then modified again in restaurants for the American palate. The same goes for Japanese food: what we get here is just a subset of what you’ll get there and it’s different anyway. The number of food items and dishes we’ve eaten there that I’ve never ever encountered in the Bay Area is very high. Yes, you can get sushi and sashimi here and nowadays you can even get fresh ramen, which has recently become popular. But the variety of fish from which they are derived is much more diverse. Speaking of which, if you don’t like seafood you may have a difficult time eating in Japan. Seafood whether it be the myriad types of fish, crustaceans, or mollusks is found everywhere and various kinds of seaweed are eaten all the time. In fact dashi, the broth used throughout Japanese cooking is made from bonito tuna and seaweed. Common kinds of seafood eaten regularly in Japan include sea snails, octopus, and eel, which we rarely see here even in Japanese restaurants.

This isn’t to say that meat is uncommon—it’s not. Wagyu and Kobe beef are famous and everybody loves fried chicken, karaage. KFC has had great success in Japan because fried chicken is so loved. At Christmas time—yes, the Japanese celebrate Christmas even though they’re not Christians—people line up to order their bucket of KFC and Christmas cake, which often runs out if you don’t reserve in advance. But the proportion of food that is ocean derived is very high compared to the US.

If you’re vegan or vegetarian, be prepared to have a more difficult time in Japan. Buddhist cuisine, which is vegan (mostly), can be found at the temples but there are very few restaurants in that niche and they’re usually in the big cities. Animal derived food products are ubiquitous from dashi, which is made from bonito tuna, to sauces made from fermented fish., and ramen soup broth made from pork bones. Although tofu is readily available, you may not find that in some restaurants. And much of the time it’s opaque exactly what ingredients were used in a dish. Another complication is that where Japanese Buddhists draw the line is different from vegans: many Buddhists consume dairy since they believe that no killing is involved in obtaining milk and animals produce milk to feed their young. If you strictly vegan, then you will need to look for places that serve shojin ryori, or Buddhist cuisine, which is mainly at temples.

If you’re avoiding gluten, Japan is a really tough place. Although the prevalent grain products are rice and buckwheat, there are many common foods that contain gluten such as soy sauce and miso. Food package information is in Japanese and deciphering it for gluten is sometimes completely opaque.

When it comes to eating out in restaurants, you’ll often find that restaurants offer just one ‘type’ of food—ramen restaurants serve just ramen (but sometimes soba or udon too); sushi restaurants serve just sushi. When you’re out in the countryside you may have no idea what a place is serving unless they have pictures or it’s obvious when you look at the kitchen or what other patrons are eating. If they have a menu, you can use Google Translate to decipher the text.

On Cycling Japan tours most of the dinners are included, usually at the hotel or ryokan. But sometimes we are taken out to a restaurant and even on free nights we would occasionally go with the guides to a recommended venue. Their choice in eating establishments is always excellent, places that we would never find by ourselves. In traditonal restaurants it’s not uncommon to be seated at a low table rather than a standard height table and the flooring is often tatami so you’ll have to remove your shoes when you enter the restaurant. You will need to be flexible too in order to sit seiza or crosslegged on a cushion. Sometimes you can get a low chair or stool to sit if you’re not flexible enough to sit on the floor but depending on the number of westerners—and it’s always westerners who request the chairs!—there may not be one available.

Some places you may be seated at a low table but there is a hollow space underneath for you to put your legs and sit in a normal position. Then you only need to be flexible enough to get your legs under the table and later out from under. At hotels this isn’t an issue because they always have standard height tables and chairs for everyone.

Traditional breakfasts in Japan are quite different than here. Expect to get fish of some kind, white rice, and miso soup. In many hotels you’ll see a mixture of traditional and western foods although they may not be exactly what you eat at home. For example there is a traditional egg omelot (tamagoyaki) but it’s made with sugar and dashi in a square pan and folded into a roll; there are no fillings. You may see what look to be hard boiled eggs in a bowl; they’re not—they’re uncooked. Breaking a raw egg and putting it on a bowl of rice is common. (Eggs in Japan undergo inspection and cleaning to reduce the chance of salmonella contamination.)

A traditional breakfast food is natto, fermented soy beans that have a very gooey texture served on rice; it’s definitely an acquired taste! Don’t expect toast, bacon or sausages, or pancakes. Cereal is rare except for cooked rice. Yogurt is sometimes available but don’t count on it. Hotels generally serve some western breakfast foods e.g. scrambled eggs and may have bread or rolls. A change we’ve noticed over the years is that coffee is more available; at ryokans it’s usually green tea for a hot drink. In hotels it’s not uncommon to have a green salad available at breakfast. It’s rare to have salad at dinner. For me that’s great because I love salad at any time of the day! I’ve been surprised at the paucity of vegetables served at any meal. Vegetables are served but they are in small quantities. One change in Japan is that coffee has become increasingly popular and available although this is rarer at ryokans than at hotels.

If you have difficulty stomaching a Japanese breakfast—fish or natto first thing in the morning can be a bit much—you can plan either to buy something ahead of time at a konbini or else pack something from home to eat instead. Of course you don’t do that at the table where you’re being served as that would be rude. Roger brings instant oatmeal that he makes in the room with the electric teapot or hot water.

There are always some vegetables but the quantity is quite small compared to what I’m used to eating. Like the American diet in Japan people prefer carbs (rice or noodles) and protein (seafood or meat) with vegetables mainly being window dressing. This can be quite different from a traditional rural meal, which is vegetable rich. But modern life has come to Japan too.

Whole grain products are rare, or at least I’ve never seen them. All rice except at perhaps some western oriented restaurants in Tokyo is white. Although bread was originally brought to Japan from the West, it’s found everywhere in Japan. But finding whole wheat bread is difficult.

Desserts and sweets are ubiquitous but apparently the Japanese palate is different as they are almost always less sweet than they are here. But I think that’s a good thing because the higher level of sweetness overwhelms the flavors of the dessert, which are often delicate. Although you may not be served ice cream at a restaurant or ryokan, it’s found everywhere in Japan especially soft-serve ice cream and a variety of Magnum-type ice cream bars at convenience stores and markets.

Speaking of convenience stores, called konbini in Japan, it’s on a completely different level. First, they’re everywhere and lots of them. If you’ve been to Hawaii you’ve noticed that there are ABC stores on practically every other block. That’s what it’s like in towns in Japan. There is fierce competition between stores. You’ll see 7-11, Family Mart, Lawson, Circle K, Yamazaki, and Ministop. Second, these small stores are stocked with items we could only dream of here; they have a little of everything from household cleaning products, clothing(!), toiletries, stationary as well as a huge variety of foods. They’re like mini-Targets. Konbini like convenience stores here stock a variety of beverages and snacks. But in Japan they always sell hot food—croquettes, fried chicken, skewered meat—as well as an enormous variety of packaged sandwiches, salads, pastries, onigiri(rice balls), sushi, and a shit ton of Japanese prepared foods you never see over here. They also have a variety of plates or bowls of food that just need to be warmed up for a meal such as noodles, rice bowls, soups, gyoza. You can put together a full meal there! If you’re wanting a quick meal and don’t want to go into a restaurant, these stores are the solution. Occasionally you’ll find fresh fruit but fruit is mostly precut in sealed plastic cups. At checkout you’ll always get asked (a) do you need a bag (10 Yen additional cost)? and/or (b) do you want that heated (if you’ve bought something microwavable)? They usually throw in hashi (chopsticks) or a spoon if they see you’re buying something that needs one or the other. Some konbini cashiers do not handle your cash and instead your total payment due is displayed on a screen and you feed your cash payment into the machine. Then it dispenses any difference you’re owed. You’re always given a paper receipt on checking out.

Until the ill-fated 2020 Olympics in Japan the only places you could get Japanese cash was either the post office or…7-11! Japan is still primarily a cash-based culture and credit card use is much lower than here. Consequently many businesses do not accept credit or debit cards and you must pay in cash. This is especially true outside of big cities. Since 7-11 like most konbini was open at most hours, it is the most convenient place to go to get money. With the Olympics Japan expected an influx of foreign visitors who would need cash and the government liberalized the use of ATMs allowing currency exchange. Now other konbini chains have ATM machines and you’ll be able to get cash more easily. In order to use your card you’ll need to have set up your debit card with a PIN if you haven’t already (and notified your bank that you’re going to Japan.) If you’re at a restaurant or konbini, be sure you have sufficient cash. By the way, there is no tipping in restaurants. If you leave change on your table, you’re likely to find the staff chasing after you to give it back.

Although public toilets in Japan are more common than here, konbini are also places that offer public toilets.

Foreign food. As you know Japan has an incredibly deep and sophisticated food culture and it has benefited from contact with other cultures. Noodles almost certainly came from China originally just as was the case in Europe. Some foods from elsewhere somehow strike a chord in Japan and they become adopted and often transformed. A oft-cited and to us strange example is spaghetti napolitano. This so-called Italian dish is actually from contact with the US post-WW2. This dish is noodles with a ‘tomato’ sauce made from ketchup. Like the British, Japanese seem to prefer their bread without any crust, so you’ll get sandwiches with the crust completely removed. Speaking of bread, the most common form is milk bread, which resembles Wonder Bread but is tastier. Another interesting transformation is Mont Blanc. Originally from Italy/France this is a delicious chestnut puree served with whipped cream, sometimes made into a meringue. But somehow in Japan this dish now called monburan has been transformed into a cake with chestnut puree or cream. (It’s also very delicious!) Another foreign food that has been completely absorbed into Japanese cuisine is curry. Kare Raisu–curry rice, i.e. white rice with beef, deep fried pork cutlet, chicken, or just vegetables and Japanese curry sauce is ubiquitous. Although the sauce is definitely curry derived, being similar to Madras curry, it’s not what you would get at any Indian/Pakistani restaurant here.

Times for breakfast, lunch, and dinner are similar to the US. On Cycling Japan tours lunches are not included in the tour package but we almost inevitably eat together at a specific spot that the guides have picked out. There are probably several reasons for this and I’ll go into detail in a subsequent post. Lunch usually runs between 500 to 2000 Yen.

Dinners at hotels and ryokans. These are almost always kaiseki dinners (at large hotel/resorts you may have a gigantic buffet). Kaiseki is the Japanese equivalent of formal dining and involves multiple courses anywhere from about 7 or 8 up to about15. Most of the dishes are small, usually a bite or two. Depending on the number most of them will be set at the table when you arrive. Larger kaiseki involves subsequent dishes being brought to the table. Often there is a Sterno cooker or two at your setting where you will heat or cook some of your food yourself. Typically there is sashimi, tempura, a savory egg custard with seafood, Japanese pickled vegetables, soup usually miso, various seafood dishes, various vegetable or seaweed dishes. Rice is often served last unless you ask for it during the meal. Kaiseki meals have amazing variety and no two seem to be the same. Since each dish is on the small side, if there is something you really like, well, that’s all you’re getting for the meal. (There aren’t any seconds except for rice.)

Presentation is paramount in kaiseki so be sure to look at your food before you gobble it down. Although much of the food you’ll be able to figure out, there may be dishes whose ingredient(s) is unfamiliar. The food is inevitably very fresh; seasonality is important in Japanese cuisine so don’t expect to get corn in December. These meals are not dash and dine affairs; expect to linger over dinner.

Alcohol is always available at dinner time usually beer or sake; in Kyushu you may have shochu as well. Shochu is a fortified sake. Sake is like wine in that it’s very local so the sake you may get in one region is completely different than what you’d get elsewhere. This doesn’t seem to be the case with beer, which is always one of the big brands e.g. Kirin, Asahi. Craft beers can be found in the big cities but seem to be absent in the countryside. By the way, drunk driving is taken seriously in Japan. If your BAC is 0.05% or higher, you’re impaired enough to be arrested. That applies to cycling too so alcohol at lunch time is forbidden on tours.

Wildcat Canyon has been left to languish after half the road collapsed during a storm in March 2023. The problem is that it’s a county road and there’s been insufficient money to do a repair. Federal money is supposed to be coming to Caltrans and the county had said that construction will begin this spring and maybe be completed by fall. Keep in mind that construction schedules are works of fiction.

But I’m not grumbling about Wildcat being closed for this long. Why? Because it’s been closed to cars, not bikes, and since closure it has been heaven to ride. I wish the county would never repair this road! Initially when it failed everybody diverted to alternate routes including cyclists. Well, one of those alternate routes is Lomas Cantadas/El Toyonal, which goes by our house. For about a week there were cyclists(and cars) thronging the road. This road, if you don’t know, is part of the Berkeley Hills Death Ride and for good reason: it’s 3.5 miles long and most of it is 10+% grade with significant chunks above 12% and a maximum of about 18% in at least two locations. So most cyclists don’t like to ride up the road. The only other nearby alternate route is to use Highway 24. (Yes, cyclists may ride on the shoulder of 24 from Orinda to Fish Ranch Road.) Then someone realized that the road failure on Wildcat left just enough roadway for bikes to get by and no one was doing any enforcement. All the bike traffic has since returned to Wildcat. A day or two after the collapse I rode out Old El Toyonal to take a look at the closure, went by the barriers (my bad), and saw that about half the road was still in place. The only hassle was having to lift your bike to go around the K barrier at the bottom. Sometime after the initial closure the K barriers and obstructive fencing were moved to make it easy for bikes (and motorcycles) to get by.

Since then Wildcat has become a sanctuary of peace and quiet. Prior to the closure Wildcat was a cut-through for cars wanting to avoid the Eastshore Highway (i.e. I-80 by Berkeley), the jam on I-580, and the back up on 24 up to the Caldecott Tunnel. If you made the mistake of cycling on Wildcat during a commute period, you were in for a series of close passes some on blind curves or the impatient driver sitting right on your ass telegraphing the message that if you didn’t get out of his way right now you were going to get fucked. Because it’s curvy just like Redwood Road, it’s also a casual speedway for sports cars and motos. For now it’s our private Idaho. Although not exactly: motos ignore the closure signs and routinely take Wildcat now that the K barriers have been moved and even some cars are still using the road from Inspiration point to Old El Toyonal. The latter are probably associated with the Orinda Horse Association, which has its stables right at the turnoff to Old El Toyonal. It’s unnerving to be blasting down Wildcat and suddenly come upon a car!

Despite being “abandoned” Wildcat is kept in shockingly good condition. Initially debris from the dense oak tree cover just rained down on the road willynilly with no car traffic to push it out of the way. Riding it was a bit of an obstacle course but nothing compared to Planet of the Apes or even Old Scenic Road to Martinez before it was reopened. Has a sweeper been run on Wildcat during the closure? I haven’t seen one but I have no other explanation for why it isn’t knee deep in debris. Some regular upkeep must be going on even if it’s a “closed” road. Recent storms knocked down some old oaks on the road and they’ve been quickly and mysteriously cut up and moved to the side. Nonetheless you still have to be attentive to random tree branches on the road as well as the copious piles of horse manure deposited by the OHA members, who no longer have to cling to the narrow dirt shoulder and can use the road full-on (until they encounter a moto or a car).

Riding Wildcat is almost like being on a BLM road except that it’s paved. Without the roar of cars it’s like being in a forest all by yourself except for the occasional fellow cyclist. The old oaks turn the road into a tunnel of sorts although you can look to the east and peek through the trees to catch a glimpse of Briones Reservoir and the hills surrounding all that EBMUD land, which since the December storms are now approaching peak green.

For bicyclists Wildcat is a significant paved road to get between Berkeley and Contra Costa. Those on the other side take Wildcat to do the Three Bears or head further afield east to Diablo or south to Pinehurst. It’s part of the Pinehurst Loop that goes up Pinehurst, Skyline, Grizzly Peak, and back to Orinda. If you’ve done the Fall Social ride, you’ve taken Wildcat from Phil’s up to Inspiration Point and dropped down to do the Three Bears and then returned the same way. It’s a nice, fast descent and the way back to Berkeley is a challenging climb sure to burn your legs and lungs but without the scary steep grades you’d find on 24 or El Toyonal.

These days I’ve been enjoying Wildcat a bit differently. I’ve been riding my mountain bike up El Toyonal and then dropping down Old El Toyonal to Wildcat and up to Inspiration Point. Then I head onto the Nimitz Trail in Tilden Park. It’s a short ride between eight and fifteen miles depending on how far I head out the Nimitz. It’s a good ride for clearing out my head since it’s peaceful and quiet and with essentially no traffic and it doesn’t take long to do the ride. If you don’t live near Wildcat, you obviously can’t avail yourself so easily of its tranquility. Of course having to travel to Wildcat from further away, e.g. San Francisco, would defeat the purpose in that you’re dealing with all the hassles of transiting to Wildcat and probably losing more repose than you’re gaining.

In the meantime Wildcat is still closed but perhaps not for very long. If we are lucky, it will still be shut for the Fall Social next October. But for now I’m taking advantage of this boon from nature.

Our tour was not self-supported by any means. (For more information about self-supported touring in Japan, speak to David Shiver or Phil Bokovoy.) There are several companies in Japan that provide supported cycling tours. These are usually van supported tour so one’s luggage is hauled from stop to stop and varying degrees of on-road support are offered. We’re lazy so we have opted for package tours that have specific itineraries, van support, and all hotel/inn bookings handled by the tour company. In addition the company we have used, Cycling Japan, which by the way is Japanese owned and run, can provide rental bikes both regular or e-bikes (along with spare batteries if you burn through one during the day). They provide road bikes, hybrids, or touring bikes depending on your preference and they set them up according to your measurements.

Whether to bring your own bike or rent one. Taking your personal bike overseas is an undertaking unto itself. If you take your own bike, you will have to haul it in addition to your other luggage. Airlines have gone back and forth on whether to charge for bikes as oversize luggage; check airlines for the latest policy. If you plan to do any additional traveling while you are overseas after your tour, you will either have to find a way to stash your bike such as left luggage or you’ll end up hauling it with you even though you don’t need it. Sometimes it is possible to ship your bike to your start destination. If so, you need assurance that it will not only arrive intact but on time. (The same goes for flying with your bike. Airlines lose bikes occasionally and yours may not arrive on time.) If you want to use your e-bike, you will not be allowed to pack the lithium battery packs in your stowed luggage—it’s illegal. You will then have to take it with you into the cabin and there are limitations on the battery size and the number of batteries that can be brought onboard.

Renting a bike means you’ll shed the burden of packing, hauling, and unpacking your bike. But you may get a rental bike that is not to your satisfaction. When you take your own bike, you have a bike you’re familiar with and set up just as you want. Since Roger uses e-bikes exclusively, he has to rent one. Before going to Japan I had never rented a bike and had always brought my own touring bike that is kitted out the way I prefer. The first time we went to Japan with Cycling Japan I decided to try a rental because it would make the travel logistics so much easier not to lug a bike around. I’ve been fairly satisfied with their bikes even if they are more modest—but not always!—than what I would ride at home. Cycling Japan does a good job of fitting the bikes after you arrive. The other major positive is that since we are renting the bikes from the tour company, they assume the responsibility for maintaining the bikes while on tour whether that be providing fully charged battery packs, repairing flats (!), or fixing something major. On our first tour in 2016 my rental bike bottom bracket failed just before lunch one day; Kenichi swapped it out for a new one during lunch. Yes, they carry spares of everything including a fully functional road bike just in case someone’s needs repair that can’t be done immediately! Another time my freehub died just as we arrived at a ferry port. While waiting, Dai tried to fix it but couldn’t. (The pawls turned out to be shot.) So he just swapped in a spare rear wheel. If these incidents had happened with my own touring bike, I would have had to hunt for a bike shop to do the repairs. (Do not delude yourself thinking that nothing wrong can happen with your own, carefully maintained bike. We’ve seen broken derailleurs, shot shifters, broken saddles, broken seatposts, you name it, on other people’s “carefully maintained” bicycles.) If you do bring your own bike, at least have it tuned up or checked over by a pro (= not you) before you pack it.

The fitting adjustments are done on the first day of the tour, which is a non-riding day. I’ve learned over subsequent trips exactly what else I need to bring to Japan to make my rental bike work better. You are encouraged to bring your own saddle and pedals since those are highly personal contact points on the bike. Cycling Japan’s bikes have front and rear lights. But I bring more powerful lights because of the tunnels as well as a bell to use when I’m dealing with traffic. Although they provide a large rear saddle bag, I also bring a handlebar bag to carry my camera, snack food, supplies, as well as an additional place to stow clothing. By the way, in Japan brakes are set up English style, i.e. the left hand brake lever controls the rear brake and the right hand lever controls the front brake. This is the reverse of what we’re used to.

An advantage of a package tour is you’re relieved of making a lot of decisions such as where to stay, where to eat, and how far to ride or which road to take and all the associated research involved in making those decisions. Although you may not know the nittygritty details in advance, you do know the general architecture of each day and have an idea of how easy or challenging the route will be as well as the sights you might see along the way. The disadvantage is that you’re also limited to a set route and spontaneity is severely reduced. If you want to go somewhere else on a day, you’d better be able to figure out a route to your hotel/ryokan for the night! On the other hand you’re availing yourself of the company’s expertise and experience in crafting a rewarding experience. Never underestimate the value of locals’ knowledge. Another disadvantage is that because we are traveling with predominantly English speakers, we tend to cluster together rather than being forced by circumstance to interact with Japanese people. The few opportunities we have been afforded to speak directly with locals have been because they spoke some English; those interactions we cherish. Of course if you speak and understand some Japanese you’ll be able to interact more freely and likely have a much more rewarding experience while on tour. Another disadvantage of a set tour is that you’re on a schedule so even if you’d like to linger longer at a particular town you can’t. Certainly for a first-time visit to an area of Japan a tour is a great introduction and you can in the future plan to go back to explore in more depth the areas that caught your fancy.

A package cycle tour is not like riding at home. At home you can take a day off when you like or skip a day because it’s raining or unpleasantly hot. On most package tours that are point-to-point the best you’re going to be able do is maybe ride in the van. But that may not always be possible. You wake up every morning knowing you’re going to be riding regardless of the weather or how tired you feel. Unlike Northern California most of Japan can be rainy at almost any time of the year. Every tour we’ve done there has had some rain, sometimes very light all the way to torrential, all-day maelstroms. So you’re likely to be riding in the rain at some point whether you like it or not. Regarding weather summer in all but Hokkaido can be insufferably hot and humid. But even Hokkaido is getting hotter in summer due to climate change. The best times to visit Japan to cycle are spring and autumn although winters from Kyushu south to Okinawa are milder than on the northerly islands of Honshu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido and comfortable for touring.

Roads. Roads in Japan are generally in better shape than in the Bay Area. Road maintenance is serious business in Japan. Earthquakes and monsoonal storms do tremendous damage to roads whether it be by landslides, collapses, or overflowing rivers wiping them out. So there always seems to be road maintenance going on. Even in the rural areas road failures seem to be addressed quickly. Whereas county road budgets here always seem to be impoverished, Japanese fund maintenance to the extent that even potholes are rare.

Vehicles use the left side of the roadway as they do in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand so you’ll be cycling on the left side as well, i.e. close to the left edge of the roadway. This can be initially disorienting for Americans and one can forget which lane to use when turning at intersections—turn left and stay to the left, turn right and also stay to the left! If you use a cycling mirror, you’ll need to switch it to the other side of your helmet/eyeglasses/handlebar in order to see the traffic behind you. Traffic laws as well as general expectations of cycling behavior are slightly different in Japan. For example there is no right/left turn on red: all vehicular traffic waits until there is a green light before turning. Cyclists turning right are expected to make ’square’ turns: wait for the green light, proceed through the intersection to the corner, then wait for the green light before going to the right.

No surprise: road signage is different in Japan. The main difference is the stop sign; in Japan it’s a red triangle rather than an octagon. But occasionally you’ll see “STOP” on the road surface. Informational signs are mainly in Japanese but city names are usually also in Roman characters. Most other signs are standard. You will also see a sign allowing bicycles to ride on sidewalks as well at not allowing bicycles. But the latter are often ignored as long as you’re respectful of pedestrians.

Because Japan has a very long history its roads are similar to what you’ll find in Europe: an extremely fine and dense network of tertiary roads. These roads are used mainly by locals and local delivery trucks and businesses; people traveling point to point and larger delivery trucks instead stick to the main roads. It is not uncommon to be on a road so isolated and narrow that two cars can barely pass each other—and these are small, narrow Japanese cars! It almost goes without saying that these roads are lovely to ride on. Of course to get to these tertiary roads you inevitably have to take the major roads and many coastline roads are pretty heavily trafficked especially near the bigger cities. Roads in Japan are often narrower than what our Highway Code would require. Lanes are usually narrower and the presence of a reasonable shoulder is hit-and-miss. Bikes are expected to ride on the left edge of the lane if there is no shoulder; the idea of “taking the lane” is indeed foreign in Japan—drivers do not expect you to be in the middle of the lane. That said we’ve had exactly one incident in the thousands of miles we’ve ridden there when a driver seemed so uptight about being behind a line of cyclists that he sped up furiously to pass us even when it was patently unsafe to do so; in other words he did what would be have been matter-of-fact here!

Tunnels. If you ride in Japan you’re going to be going through tunnels. Along the coast tunnels are cut through bluffs over which no road could be constructed. Given that we’ve cycled on 15%+ grades on coast roads—similar to the rolling hills on the San Mateo coast—that’s saying something. Their benchmark for when it’s too-steep-better-dig-a-tunnel seems a lot higher than here. Tunnels vary in Japan from short galleria like you’d find in the Alps to long and dark with dismal or no lighting. Tunnels are the “short cut” so expect to encounter trucks. No matter how much I tell myself that Japanese drivers are better and more considerate than US drivers I still am unnerved when I hear the roar of a diesel engine behind me in a tunnel. So I’ve made sure to use powerful lights to be seen as well as to see the pavement and warn oncoming traffic of my presence.

Driver behavior. Driving behavior in Japan is unlike anything we have encountered in Europe and certainly here at home: drivers actually observe the speed limit. And the speed limits in Japan are lower than they are here. Typically the speed limit is 60 KPH on arterials and 40 or 30 KPH on ‘residential’ roads. Drivers also are much more patient waiting behind cyclists before making a pass. Turning at red lights is illegal and cars observe this law making it much safer for pedestrians and cyclists. When passing automobile drivers seem to have a good sense of the ‘edges’ of their car and pass with a sufficient gap. Cars and trucks are overall smaller than in the US and even Europe and they’re going more slowly than we are used to.

How do locals cycle? Riding a bike on the sidewalk is very common in cities. That said those cyclists are usually running errands and going very slowly (less than 10 MPH). Cyclists occasionally do ‘salmon’ although to a lesser extent than here. We only occasionally have seen Japanese recreational cyclists and that’s usually on a Saturday or Sunday when they have time for a ride. Do Japanese cyclists obey the letter of the law? Nope. They’ll turn at a red light as long as it’s clear. They also cycle ‘salmon’ in cities. But in general they are respectful of car drivers and don’t engage in provocative behavior; in return drivers don’t mete out punishment passes and attempt to terrorize cyclists.

The years fly by and 2024, the club’s 42nd year of existence, is now one for the books. The club quietly does what recreational cycling clubs do: offer bicycle rides and club events for fellow LGBTQ cyclists, their family members, and allies to congregate and have fun. In the case of some challenging rides that might mean a bit of Type 2 fun though. Sometimes the club goes through periods of innovation that alter the direction of the club and sometimes those innovations become “traditions” until they become tired and dwindle away. Some of those innovations continue to today including the annual club picnic, which began shortly after the birth of the club. Mountain biking exploded and had a big club coterie in the late ‘80s and throughout the ‘90s but has since dwindled away with now just a meager presence on the ride calendar. What will 2025 bring? Surely it will be more of the same. Hopefully there will be some new events and rides that spark interest and can carry us into the future.

A “normal” winter. 2024 began with a “normal” winter after the deluge we got in 2023 when so many Bay Area roads were washed out and destroyed. Some of those roads weren’t repaired and reopened until 2024! We had the usual rain-outs of club rides but compared to 2023 it was nothing.

Will Bir. This is foremost on my mind thinking about the past year: Will Bir’s death from a heart attack while riding in the Presidio. Following David Sexton’s death in 2023, Will’s was another savage blow to the club. Will was a longtime club member whose involvement and dedication to the club was unquestioned. Will did it all and always with a smile on his face and usually while whistling. I’m going to miss him.

The return of the Ride Leader Appreciation Dinner. We hadn’t had a RLAD since January 2020. Then the Pandemic hit and we put it on hiatus for four years until this past spring at il Casaro on Church Street. It was great to gather with the club cyclorati and celebrate their club spirit. It’s the only goody the club offers to its members who volunteer to lead rides or host a club event at their house. Hopefully we’re back on our usual annual schedule and we’ll have one this spring for 2024 volunteers.

Tunnel Tops Park. The annual club picnic returned to San Francisco with some trepidation. A summer picnic is SF can either be a windblown fogfest or, if we’re lucky, a grand sunny day. We lucked out in 2024 and got the latter. Even better we held it at a new venue, Tunnel Tops picnic area in the Presidio, and it was a great choice with fantastic views, a cheery crowd, and a new, clean picnic area! A great turnout as well. It was also Will Bir’s last club event before his passing.

Pizza Night, the Marin Pizza Run. In our neverending quest to have more fun and food together we held two new events this past year. Pizza Night at Little Star Pizza on Valencia was going to be the first of several casual dinner gatherings but it turned out to be our only one last year. We had a great turnout, Little Star wasn’t crowded, and the pizza and conversation were fabulous. Hopefully we’ll have more of these in 2025! The other new event was the Marin Pizza Run held at Janet’s house in Marin. What better than a ride followed by even more tasty pizza! A fabulous jaunt out to China Camp and then camping in Janet’s beautiful backyard with slices from Cafe Verde Pizza on a gorgeous sunny day.

The Pride Ride. For many years the club was an annual presence at the SF Pride celebration with a parade contingent and a booth. But both vanished due to lack of enthusiasm—it’s a lot of work to put that together. Instead it was replaced by the Pride Ride, which has morphed into our biggest club event usually bringing out about 50-90 riders. This year was no exception with a big turnout, more donuts and coffee, and a beautiful sunny day.

Injuries. Being club president is an accursed position and maybe cursed, period! Both David Goldsmith, our past president, and current president Jeff Mishler ended up with chronic injuries in 2024—in David’s case yet again—that kept them off the bike most of the year. We hope to see them both on a ride after their eventual recoveries!

For me 2024 had three special club rides.

Old Haul Road. I finally got to ride Old Haul Road. I led it but no one other than Roger wanted to come along, which turned out to be fine. Old Haul has been on my list for a long time. I moved away from the Midpeninsula 40 years ago and it hasn’t been easy to get back to Coastside to do it. It was a complete delight: a broad, tree swaddled avenue into the redwoods on a beautiful dirt road. I’m definitely going back but next time it’ll be part of a long mixed terrain loop.

Pedaling Paths to Independence. This metric century in February has become one of my faves—it’s a small event, it’s relatively inexpensive, and it’s got beautiful terrain. But in 2024 I hadn’t been riding due to health issues and so I did this ride with almost zero miles and thus a great deal of trepidation. Fortunately David Goldsmith was also game and he hadn’t been riding much either and we sort of rode it together supporting each other. (Jeff Mishler was the other Spoker who did it. But he was killing it and we saw him only at the food stops.) Despite a slew of technological mishaps I went against my bullheaded nature and did the ride with restraint, which allowed me actually to complete the ride without dying or cramping. (I got the cramps in the car while driving home!) It was probably the slowest century I’ve ever done but it was no less enjoyable.

Pescadero loops. I did these loops three times last year. It’s another revelation thanks to David Goldsmith. Now I drive to Pescadero to skim the cream off the top instead of schlepping all the way from Palo Alto or San Francisco. It’s never not beautiful, always quiet, and I’m hooked on stopping at the Loma Mar Store for good grub! I especially like doing the loop up Haskins Hill rather than going down Highway One.

In early November Roger and I went to Japan for a cycling tour, our seventh there. After many years of making pilgrimages to the European continent for our cycling vacations, in 2016 we decided to head to Japan for a taste of something perhaps different. We’ve been hooked ever since.

Japan has a long history of cycling despite being off the radar as a cycling destination. Yet Japan has a huge cycling industry and cycling is a part of everyday life there even more than in the US. If you are old enough, you may remember when ten-speed bicycles began to gain traction in the US in the early 1970s. We were flooded by bicycle imports. Yes, we had Raleighs from England and Peugeots and Motobecanes from France. But they were quickly followed by Bridgestone, Miyata, Nishiki. Fuji, Panasonics, Sekai, and many others—all Japanese made. Plus component manufacturers Suntour and Shimano as well as a host of other producers such as Nitto, Tange tubing, MKS, and Araya started selling their wares to compete with Campagnolo, Huret, Universal, and all the other European brands.

In Japan everyday people cycle to work or to run errands as well as cycle for recreation. People of all ages ride bikes including the elderly. Bicycles are deeply integrated into everyday life in Japan. Inexpensive bikes for everyday life, “momochari” are everywhere. Cities have dedicated bike parking near train and transit stations. At the other extreme keirin racing is very popular and high-end bicycles are still made by Miyata, Bridgestone, Fuji, and several others although they tend to outsource the actual manufacturing these days to China or southeast Asia.

What is largely unknown outside of Japan is the incredible countryside full of back roads and narrow lanes that are wonderful for cycling and make Japan worth a visit. This isn’t to say that everything cycling is hunkydory in the land of the Rising Sun. Arterials near big cities can be congested hellholes for bicyclists and most roads have no shoulders. But the liberal use of multiuse paths and sidewalks by cyclists is mitigating. In most other respects road infrastructure is much friendlier to cyclists than even the Bay Area’s. Speed limits are low compared to the US often no higher than 40 KPH on main roads and 25 KPH on residential streets. In addition to being driven more slowly cars as well as trucks are smaller and narrower making the inevitable pass less anxiety producing and safer. More importantly driver attitude is much more tolerant of cyclists and sharing the road, and drivers are very familiar with how to handle encounters with cyclists. In general Japanese culture values patience and politeness and it shows on the road. Tolerance for drunk driving is very low; the blood alcohol level for getting jailed is only 0.05% compared to 0.08% here. And taxis are everywhere if you need a lift home after a night of carousing.

We cycled from Nagasaki to Hiroshima over eleven days. It’s the second time we’ve done this trip. Two years ago immediately after Japan reopened to foreign tourism we rode this route. We felt like we had Japan all to ourselves and the absence of foreigners was immediately apparent. It was uncrowded and quiet. Autumn is also a great time to cycle in Japan. The oppressive summer heat and humidity are gone and if you time it right, the fall colors are exploding. We decided to go back not only because we enjoyed this part of Japan so much but because Roger fell ill with the flu shortly after we arrived and missed about half the tour. Thanks to the fantastically capable Japanese medical staff, who diagnosed Roger’s ailment and gave him a startlingly effective antiviral, his symptoms resolved one day later (!) and after recovering his strength he was able to complete the second half. We went back so that Roger could properly enjoy the entire route.

Our trip was a supported tour by Cycling Japan whom we’ve used every time so far. Although cycling on one’s own is possible, having guides to help us navigate not just the roads but also the language and culture have been essential since neither of us speaks nor reads Japanese. That said using Google Translate on phones it’s possible to get a lot of basic communication done albeit awkwardly. Unlike in many European countries the use of English has not made significant inroads into Japanese tourism infrastructure except in the biggest cities such as Tokyo and Osaka and even there it can be sketchy. Much of Japan’s tourism especially out of the big cities is internal tourism so hotel and ryokan staff expect Japanese. At the more isolated country towns it’s solely Japanese.

The Japanese guides not only assist with interpreting and translating but also convey cultural information that we tend to overlook or are completely ignorant of. Here’s an example: traditional Japanese inns—ryokans—have Japanese rooms, i.e. futons not beds, low tables and no chairs, and tatami mats covering the floor. One should never wear shoes in the ryokan let alone the rooms and one shouldn’t roll one’s suitcases on tatami. Tatami mats are expensive despite appearing to be spartan to Westerners. Wearing shoes or otherwise abusing them makes them look ugly and harder to keep clean. Another example is proper behavior in the onsens. Onsens are hot spring baths that are commonly found throughout Japan. There is a specific protocol in using the onsen that all Japanese know but is opaque to foreigners.

Our trip was jokingly called the “atomic bomb tour”. For most Americans Nagasaki and Hiroshima are one of the familiar city names other than Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka due to the US atomic bombings of those two cities that directly ended the Second World War. Of course other than historical remnants that have been preserved there is no sign of the bombings almost 80 years ago. Nagasaki is set on a beautiful inlet surrounded by tall hills. Part of the city goes steeply up the hillside and provides scenic views of the bay. Does that sound familiar? The population is only 400,000; it’s a big city but it doesn’t feel like it. Hiroshima on the other hand is huge with about 1.2 million residents. It too is a port town but set on the Seto Inland Sea, which is replete with hundreds of small to medium sized islands. Hiroshima feels big, more like NYC than SF and has a distinctly fashionable and urban feel. Nagasaki is on the western side of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands, and Hiroshima is on the western side of Honshu, the main island. To get from one to the other we rode 500 miles taking in a lot of rural areas and coastal roads, took a tiny ferry to get across a bay, and walked under the ocean to get from Kyushu to Honshu. Japan is not flat by any means; it’s mountainous and cutting across the center of its islands always involves going over passes. We did something like 45,000 feet of climbing on our tour with most of those climbs being reasonable, i.e. less than 8%. But there were quite a few spikey, short climbs especially on rolling coastal roads hitting 15% or more. Low gears are essential! The climbing would have been even more challenging except of Japan’s propensity to carve tunnels through mountains rather than turn ancient goat trails into ridiculously steep roads. Every day involved going through tunnels. That’s both a blessing and a bane—the tunnels make it easier to get over the mountain but some of them are long, dark and poorly illuminated. Oh yeah, and the trucks go through the tunnels too. In the US this would be a recipe for disaster and either bikes would be forbidden to ride in a tunnel or we’d have to use a separated walkway. But in Japan drivers are more patient and not speeding. So after having gone through many tunnels in our travels there we have more confidence that we’re going to make it out alive at the other end.

Our trip would take us through Nagasaki, Saga, and Fukuoka prefectures on Kyushu and then through Yamaguchi, Shimane, and Hiroshima prefectures on Honshu. But before I go into any trip details, there are some things about Japan that make it different from North America or Europe.

Next: What is it like on a cycling tour in Japan?

Recently I capitulated to nostalgia and rode on some old wheels shod with 23 mm tires again. (I did it before.) These tires are actually narrower—22.4 mm when pumped to 90 PSI, which today seems like an absurdly high pressure. I used to think that 23 mm tires were too heavy and slow and I preferred 19 or 20 mm tires, which you can’t even get anymore. Do you remember when road bikes all came with 23 mm tires? Do you even pay attention to the width of your tires? If you’re new to road cycling, you’ve probably never even seen 23 mm tires. Tire width is esoterica only wheel nerds obsess about and you likely don’t give it a second thought. Odds are you’re riding 28 mm tires or wider since that’s the trend these days in road bikes. (You can look carefuly on the sidewall of your tires for something like “622-28”, the “28” indicating the nominal width of the tire when inflated.) Not that many years ago a 28 mm tire would have been considered enormous and many road racing bikes of the 1990s and early Aughts couldn’t fit anything bigger than a 25 mm tire, which was the widest size tire racers would use. The “standard” size was 23 mm.

In the past five years I have rarely ridden anything less than a 27 mm tire. This trend started when I got some Hed Belgium rims in 2012. These were heretically wide road rims for that era—21 mm internal width when the going trend was 17 or even just 14 or 15 mm. (Today we’re edging up to 23 and even 25 mm internal width!) I put nominal 25 mm tires on them and the extra width of the rims caused the tires to balloon out to 30 mm measured width. They were and continue to be the most comfortable road wheels I own. (Gravel and mountain bike wheels are another matter.) These are supremely plush yet fast wheels. Mind blown. Until then I ate only at the table of “skinny, pumped rock hard, light” so those Hed wheels were a revelation. Putting those HED wheels on any bike would improve the ride as long as the frame could accept that big and wide of a tire. Now I’ve become so used to wider tires that when I look at those wheels with 23 mm tires, they look scary thin; even 28 mm tires are starting to look “narrow” to me! Thanks to Jan Heine and Grant Peterson for debunking the old malarkey that skinnier meant better because faster. It turns out comfort can make you faster too.

I then began to experiment with different kinds and sizes of wheels and tires. I’ve tried 32 mm, 35 mm, and 42 mm tires as well as 650b rims. Each width is more comfortable than the other if a tad bit heavier. 650B wheels are heavier but they provide a Cadillac ride that puts a smile on my face most of the time. I haven’t looked back. The only “downgrade” I’ve played around with is 26 mm Rene Herse tires, which I’ve mentioned in the past. (These tires expand to about 27 or 28 mm in actual width.)

Going back to 23 mm tires for a week was a regression. But I couldn’t help it: the old bike that has these tires won’t take anything bigger than a 25 mm tire. So it’s stuck with skinny tires. Anyway my recollection was that the bike was fast and comfortable and I fondly remember many a ride zipping down roads at high speed. In particular I remember one fast ascent up Mt. Diablo, a club ride where I got schooled by Erik Leung. So I had to take a trip down memory lane hoping to relive those fond, or perhaps imagined, sensations of thin, light tires.

What was it like to ride an old bike with 23 mm tires now? To be honest it was a bit of a letdown. The wheels still felt sprightly and wickedly nimble—that much had not changed. They are fast. But the ride quality was comparatively awful: near constant vibration, juddering, and bouncing around whenever the asphalt was heaved or cracked. Perhaps roads are worse today than they were 25 years ago. Scratch that: roads ARE worse today. Counties cannot keep up with road maintenance because asphalt prices are much higher today, road budgets are cut, and road maintenance is partially funded by gasoline taxes, which are diminished by the explosion of electric car use. Torrential winter rains that wash out roads and increase pavement failures don’t help. The bike frame itself is quite compliant and not at all stiff and rigid like a carbon frame. But so much of the ride quality is due to the narrow tires. I used to think those sensations meant “excellent road feel” (= good!) when it’s really just being bounced up and down over every little bump in the pavement and feeling every little divot and crack. Those skinny tires pumped up to 95 pounds pressure were like riding on rigid Conestoga wagon wheels. My hands were aching so much that I thought I didn’t have gel gloves. But I did. The ride quality is not very forgiving. But that was what we were told back in the day how fast wheels were supposed to feel and we sure drank the Kool-Aid.

You’re not losing much by moving on to fatter tires. There is no doubt that they are heavier: there is more rubber and more casing. They do not spin up as quickly and that sublime feeling of “instant” acceleration that a light rim and tire give is muted by the extra mass. In exchange fatter tires make up for that minor buzzkill by providing a much more comfortable ride. It’s not exactly smooth but the jarring, shocking hits are replaced by subdued bumps. And the reduced bouncing actually makes for a faster ride. With 23 mm tires there is a constant benumbing vibration from every type of pavement save the smoothest of asphalt.

Yet skinny, narrow tires like 23 mm still have their allure. On smooth pavement they are addictive—they hum and flow and feel great. And if they’re 23 mm tubular tires (with silk casings), then they are like crack cocaine. Because they’re lighter they are absolutely amazing to spin up. And climbing on them is the cat’s meow because they accelerate easily with every pedal stroke. If I lived in a place with good roads like Switzerland, I’d ride 23 mm tires all the time. I don’t foresee local roads getting better with time, only progressively more awful. So 23 mm tires and their ilk have become for me a special use case. Or just a nostalgic visit to a previous era. With a harsh reality check.

For everyday riding here in the Bay Area a 28 mm tire is more comfortable and more functional. Those big volume tires allow lower inflation pressure and give a “magic carpet” ride while still being moderately light enough to feel a bit nimble. Plus, they’re less likely to incur a pinch flat when you hit that occasional monster pothole you didn’t see.

I don’t see myself going back to 23 mm tires as my regular ride; if anything I’m heading in the other direction and eyeing 32 mm tires for everyday use. The tires are indeed heavier due to more casing material and rubber. But that can be mitigated by using TPU tubes. And they are just excellently comfortable. Oh, and the other tire in the pic above is 42 mm wide. It’s like riding on a magic carpet compared to the 23.

But for the occasional ride—especially if I know the roads are of good quality—I’ll rock 23 mm tires for a trip down memory lane.

Do you ever pay attention to the club ride code? No, it’s not some code of conduct á la Velominati (“HTFU”) and no, it’s not like the (Boy) Scouting Code of Conduct where, for example, you promise not to possess any booze, fireworks, or porn. Every Different Spokes ride listing has what amounts to sage advice to the ridelorn, a pocket summary of how difficult or easy a club ride is as rated by the ride leader. A ride listed as 70-4-D is very different than a 25-1-A!

Go The Distance
Each ride has a Distance-Terrain-Pace rating so that you know what you’re getting into, you know, kinda like that hankie thing (“Let’s see, he’s got a blue hankie in his left pocket—ah, he’s into randonneuring!”). In our previous website when you listed a ride you were prompted to enter something for distance, terrain, and pace. Jerome’s template actually didn’t prevent you from entering text such as “sorta short” or “hella long” for Distance. But I don’t ever recall anyone ever doing so—we all thought you had to enter a number. Putting in text would have defeated the purpose of the ride code, which is to transform something subjective into something “objective”—your “short” may be someone else’s “way too long” but everyone understands miles (and maybe even kilometers too). But our current website is more open-ended: we no longer have specific fields for distance, terrain, and pace—you have to remember to include the information when you create a ride listing. In that respect it’s less user friendly even if you can now enter any text you want for Distance. But a number is the most helpful. (But see below.)

Hard Numbers
While the Distance part of the ride code might seem like a fact, it too is sometimes just an estimate (or worse, wild speculation). Prior to the Internet we would use road maps—AAA was a godsend—to estimate the mileage. Do any of you remember map wheels? These were like mini-mechanical cyclometers. (How many of you even remember the first mechanical cyclometers?) A map wheel is a ‘ruler in a wheel’: you rolled the small wheel on the tip of the tool along the route on your map and it measured the distance in inches, which you converted to miles according to the map legend. Sometimes we drove the route to get the mileage or consulted books like Grant Peterson’s Roads to Ride. Estimates on mileage could be anywhere from spot-on to being off by several miles. Ride leaders were encouraged to err on the high side since almost no one liked to do more miles than advertised. The Internet has made estimating route distances a lot easier with tools such as Google Maps, MapMyRide, and RideWithGPS. Using these tools you can hit the mileage spot-on almost all the time.

The ride code presumes a ride has a defined route and a definite distance. But what if you like to do open-ended rides, riding as long as you want (or get forced by circumstance to endure)? You may start a ride with no definite route: you’ll just ride where you feel or as long as you feel. Ride leaders may prefer to talk to whomever shows up on their ride and work out a consensus on the route. Our previous website presumed your ride had a defined length (more accurately, it presumed the ride leader would give it a definite length). The current website is less constraining and you can clearly put down a number or leave it as a text description, eg. “Probably about 60-70 miles depending on how I feel” or “We might go to X, Y, or Z and we’ll decide at the start”, because we no longer have a numeric field for distance; it’s just text embedded in the description of the ride. If you’re the kind of ride leader who likes to meander rather than “follow the dotted line” or your style is more spur-of-the-moment, now you can with a clear conscience post this kind of ride on our website.

Terrain Terror
Things are less clear when it comes to Terrain and Pace. Terrain is rated from one to five, with one being “mostly flat, easy grades, suitable for beginners” and five “many steep hills and climbs, for strong riders”. Including a terrain ranking intuitively makes sense: a ride’s difficulty or ease is correlated not just with length but with how hilly it is. But hilliness has at least three components: the total elevation gain, the steepness or grade of an elevation gain, and where the elevation gains takes place during the ride. Two rides with the same elevation gain can feel quite different if the overall steepness of the climbs is not the same; a steady 5% grade even if longer may feel a lot less stressful than a shorter one with a 13% ramp. Yet If you’ve ridden up Mt. Hamilton, you would likely agree that its relatively tame 5% grade gets wearisome after eighteen miles.

Making matters even more complicated is the nature of the climbs: for example, a ride that has all the elevation gain in one climb often feels less hard than a ride with the same gain split between two climbs. There is just something psychologically challenging about having to do that second climb even though it’s physically no harder than doing it all at once. Going over La Honda to San Gregorio and back is about 1,700 feet each way and it always feels more draining to me than just going up Mt. Diablo, which is quite a bit more. Is it losing your “climbing rhythm” or your body having to get revved up to climb again after the descent? It’s the same amount of calories burned regardless of whether it’s one 3,400-foot climb or two 1,700-foot climbs. Where the vertical gain happens also seems to affect how difficult it feels. A ride with a big climb towards the beginning and a long flat section afterwards feels easier than a ride with the reverse order. That shouldn’t be too surprising since we are often fresher at the beginning than at the end of a ride. In addition the most recent part of an experience tends to color our recollection, so a final climb may make the ride seem harder than it really is.

Even the road quality has a significant impact on the difficulty of a ride. Climbs on dirt or just an uneven surface literally are harder than the exact same grade with smooth pavement. But our ride code doesn’t include that except to indicate whether the ride is road, dirt, or mixed. Yet all of this is folded into just one number for Terrain. The point of the terrain rating is to provide guidance on the level of climbing difficulty for a ride. But a single number has to encompass several variables and so it will never be able to do it justice. Ride leaders may need to explain in detail what riders will confront such as the number and type of steep climbs and where they will occur.

Although there isn’t a requirement to include total elevation gain for a ride listing, tools such as MapMyRide and RideWithGPS routing can generate a close approximation for a known route. Of course if you’ve ridden the route in advance with a cycling computer such as a Garmin, then you already have that number. The total elevation gain in combination with the Terrain rating can provide a good estimate of the overall level of difficulty for a ride.

Pace Posers
If the Terrain rating is vague, consider Pace. Just about every cycling club in theory and practice ends up using a subjective pace rating. For example, what exactly is “moderate” or “touring” pace? It’s really based on one’s perceived exertion. As your conditioning increases what was moderate before feels easy now. (One hopes.) Then try to interpret that across a wide range of cycling ability in a club and you have a virtually meaningless rating. Your “moderate” might be another member’s “easy” or “strenuous”. In an attempt to make the Pace rating more interpretable a Spoker in the distant past thought there should be average speeds for each rating. You probably had no idea there actually were “objective” speeds for each Pace rating, did you? In the previous website it was hidden away; if you just looked at the Ride Calendar you had the Terrain and Pace ratings at the bottom, and for Pace it was just Leisurely-Moderate-Brisk-Strenuous. If perchance you looked at the “About Our Rides” section you would see a hyperlink to Pace and Terrain that took you to the detailed ride key. There you would see, for example, that Leisurely mean an average speed of 5-7 mph and a moving average of 8-10 mph. As helpful as this is to provide objective speeds for different paces, most cyclists have no idea of their typical riding speed, which one presumes is their most comfortable pace. It also presupposes that you have some objective means of measuring your speed, i.e. a cyclometer, and that you pay attention to it.

Grizzly Peak Cyclists has an interesting take on pace. In order to find rides with a pace you can keep, riders are asked to “calibrate” their pace by doing the Three Bears loop at your regular riding pace and then compare your time against a table. For example, if you can do the loop in 1 hr 40 min this is what GPC calls “Touring” pace. Presumably this is also how ride leaders advertise their ride pace, ie. they do the Three Bears to learn their “normal” speed and then use that in their ride listings. I like their attempt to ground the pace ratings in something objective that any rider can then use. But I wonder how many GPC members or ride leaders actually go through the motions to calibrate their pace. My suspicion is that they just show up on a club ride and see how fast the ride is under that specific ride leader and make note; if a ride leader usually lists rides as “moderate” and you can’t keep up, then you know that you shouldn’t attend that ride leader’s rides because they’re too fast for you. So it is with Different Spokes: if you aren’t familiar with a particular ride leader—not that we have so many—you check them out to see if you can keep up or if they lead rides too slow for your taste. Of course, ride leaders also improve or lose their conditioning just as you do. So next month’s “moderate” may feel like “strenuous” or “leisurely” to you. Even with calibration pace rating is still relative and ever changing!

A mitigating factor in pace is group size. A larger group is going to have more variation in ability to keep the pace. So slower/faster riders are likely to have others to ride with and not get left alone regardless of the posted pace. So even if a rider strictly speaking isn’t holding the listed pace, the ride will still be social. The Pace rating is supposed to be the pace that the ride leader(s) plan to follow, not what other riders may choose to do.

And there is nothing to prevent ride leaders from adjusting the pace to match the participants’ wishes. I’ve certainly led B-paced rides where all the participants were capable and preferred a faster pace and we ended up going faster.

Promises, Promises
For ride leaders listing a pace and keeping to it are two different things. Just because a ride leader advertises a “B” pace doesn’t mean it actually turns out that way. In the early days of the club there were frequent admonitions to ride leaders and riders to keep to the advertised pace: ride leaders should lead a ride at the pace they announced and participants should take note of the pace and either adjust to the listed pace or if too strenuous then give that ride a pass. “A” pace riders who showed up at “C” pace rides risked slowing the group either by bringing the average pace down or by inordinate waits at regrouping points. Slower riders typically didn’t have the greatest time because they felt pressured to keep up and may have ridden harder than they liked; the faster riders may have been irked because the ride was supposed to be a “C” ride but ended up being something slower.

A few years ago Roger and I led Social A rides. They weren’t the same as Aaron’s Relaxing Rides but they had the same goal: to offer a club riding opportunity for slower or casual cyclists that also took in a serious dose of yakking. While “animals” may like to ride in a breathless state, this is not conducive to easy conversation. And while you may want to get in your HIIT workout on a club ride, the point of the Social A and the Relaxing Rides was to get some cycling in and enjoy human company rather than get in an anaerobic workout. The Social A rides differed from the Relaxing rides in being “avid cyclist” length rides, about 25-45 miles typically, rather than short city jaunts. What I learned from leading these rides is that it is oh-so-easy to intend to do an A pace and another thing to do it in actuality. Yes, the pace was “slow” and many of the attendees could go faster, and we definitely had riders who took off. I had to actively monitor my cyclometer and force myself to slow down in order to keep to the A. I’m sure it’s the same with B and even C leaders: just because a certain pace is perhaps your most comfortable one that doesn’t mean you can’t go quite a bit faster when you are motivated. Keeping to the advertised pace is sometimes not so easy!

Asking ride hosts to “keep to the listed pace” can be a discouragement. Ride leaders aren’t employees required to do their “job” according to work rules. They’re getting in their weekend fun time too and they want to ride however they ride. If they want to go fast or slow at any moment, why should it be of concern? Well, it does have an impact on the participants, specifically whether they feel welcomed or not and a part of the party. Being dropped and riding alone is probably not what they thought they were getting into.

I must admit that my thinking has evolved over the years. I used to be pretty libertarian: if you came on one of my C or D rides, then I presumed you did a self-evaluation as to whether you could keep up or not. That was your responsibility and not mine. I wasn’t merciless but I also wasn’t concerned if you got discouraged (because I was going either too fast or too slow for you). That was your problem, not mine. I now think about the impact this has on the club as a whole. Riding with others is, whether we realize it or not, a shared task that everyone on the ride engages in. We do have a responsibility to know our abilities but once we’re on the same ride then we’re in it together. For me leading a ride is not about me riding indifferently to those around me—it’s the one time I down-prioritize how I want to ride and put the group first. That’s easy for me to do because I have the luxury of being able to do lots of rides during the week in whatever way I like. So occasionally leading a Different Spokes ride at a preset pace that I don’t feel like doing at that moment is not a big deal.

Crashing The Party
In the early days of the club fast riders frequently showed up on slower rides and slower riders showed up on brisker rides (maybe unwittingly). Part of it was the newness of the club as well as not knowing how to interpret the ride code since it was so vague. Also faster riders would think it wasn’t a problem to show up on a slower ride. That would be true if they indeed kept to the advertised pace. But a couple of things tended to happen. If enough fast riders attended, they were in essence hijacking the ride: seeing them bolt down the road affected the behavior and expectations of the other riders especially if the ride leader tried to keep up with the fast riders—sometimes unconsciously—and the ride ended up being faster. I and a few others would crash slower rides thinking we’d just do the same ride faster and start with the group and maybe have lunch with the group too (if we didn’t get tired of waiting). I don’t think we ever thought how our actions affected everyone else. I don’t ever recall a ride leader reprimanding me for this behavior but they probably should have.

Secondly some people soon got the impression that this was the normal situation, i.e. all our rides were “fast” and all the club members were “fast”! Over the years I’ve heard over and over, “Oh, Different Spokes is for fast riders” when really it was only a small part of the club, the so-called “animals”, who were blazing off the front. In the Bike-A-Thon era this unfair reputation probably did not affect membership because so many in the community wanted to support the club. (We had hundreds of members who never showed up on a ride and just wanted to support the club.) But I wonder if part of the decline in the club post-BAT was partly due to our unfortunate reputation.

Mind The Gap
It also works the other way: slower riders can hijack a ride. It takes a pretty callous ride leader to ignore a group of slower riders who aren’t in a position to say, “Go on, we’ll be fine!”. Perhaps they don’t know the route or it’s their first Different Spokes ride. Our ride leaders are put in a difficult situation when the ride really needs to split into two groups. If the leader stays back, then those who came expecting a certain speed might get turned off. If the leader follows the advertised pace, then the risk is discouraging the slower riders and of them not getting the camaraderie they clearly want. Even if ride leaders discussed this at the beginning, e.g. “Hey everyone, this is a B-pace ride so you should be able to keep a moving average of 10-12 mph”, the reality is that hardly anyone would know what that means. Most of the time you only find out after you’ve started the ride and someone starts to lag behind. Furthermore lots of riders can keep a “C” pace on the flats but then slow down considerably when it’s hilly. Even when they pay attention to the objective pace listing, how are they to figure out how fast they’ll actually be able to ride if they don’t know the terrain? Having led Social A rides, I’ve heard enough stories from A-pace cyclists about attending a Jersey Ride or another club ride and having to race to keep up, usually failing to do so. I suppose if they didn’t understand the ride code one could say it was their own fault. But you can’t really fault them because the ride code is so imprecise, vague, and ignored in practice, and they’re looking for companionship on rides too. It’s just unfortunate we usually don’t have more rides to offer to casual, novice, or slower cyclists.

Even longtime members who should “know better” attend club rides regardless of the listed pace and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just human nature. Most cyclists ride alone most of the time and we LGBT cyclists get to socialize with our own ilk infrequently. So naturally we’re drawn to any club ride no matter the advertised pace. When the club was bigger we had 130-150 rides per year. But now that we’re quite a bit smaller we have maybe two-thirds as many rides. Although riding together is perhaps the best way to be welcoming, there are other ways to welcome and include all riders when they can’t keep up such as more frequent regrouping, checking in with slower riders, or advising them about other ride possibilities such as the Short & Sassy rides. And perhaps that is what ride leaders need to think about when some riders need to keep to a different pace: the attitude we display rather than the pace itself.

Hostesses With The Mostestest
Despite ride leaders being called “leaders” they actually don’t need to be at the front. Even before cycling computers, RideWithGPS, Komoot, etc. the club encouraged ride leaders to provide paper maps and/or cue sheets. Anyone who could read a map could go as fast or as slow as they preferred and still stay on route. Ride leaders didn’t actually need to “lead” or be at the front at all.

More properly ride leaders should be called ride hosts. David Gaus is a perfect example because he almost always is either in the middle or even at the back rather than the front. As a host he posts the ride, shows up to ride it at the advertised pace, and gives direction when necessary. If there are faster riders he’ll make sure they know where to regroup to wait for the rest. He’ll even ask for a volunteer to lead one of the two groups and he often leads a ride by being the sweep—yes, you can do that! If a ride has more than one leader, then as long as they don’t mind riding at different paces they can accommodate riders who are slower or faster than the listed pace.

Size Matters
When a cycling club is large enough to support enough rides at different paces, riders will usually self-segregate. But when the club is small—as we are—then the sole club ride on a weekend is the only opportunity for Spokers to ride together, so they may come out regardless of the listed pace. Clubs like Western Wheelers or ACTC, which have over a thousand members, have the luxury of offering several rides at different paces, lengths, and terrain types on a typical weekend. In the early days of the club it seemed like there was such hunger for socializing among LGBT cyclists that mixed groups were more the norm. Of course that led to some conflicts. Rides would split up sometimes with unhappy consequences and that led to a steady mantra for ride leaders and riders to “keep to the ride code!” in order to avoid disappointment. The idea was truth in advertising: no one likes to be sold a false bill of goods. Every time a ride deviated from the listing increased skepticism of the ride code.

The smallness of our club combined with trying to reach out to as many riders as possible led to another tendency: rides got listed as B pace no matter how fast they actually were. Why did ride leaders pick B? Besides the vagueness of the ride code I think it was partly modesty, partly wanting to get a good turnout, and perhaps a good dose of social pressure. Lots of people think their normal riding pace is “moderate”. Interestingly without anyone saying anything it became a common understanding that listing B rides was the “Goldilocks” choice: there were usually better attended and the ride wasn’t slow and it wasn’t fast—it was just “right”! Except they often weren’t. They were sometimes C or D pace. I think it was the Den Daddy way back in the day who coined the term “the animals” for the Spokers who liked to ride fast. So if you didn’t ride like a slowpoke and didn’t ride as fast as “the animals”, then you must be in the middle and hence a “B” rider. If you led a B ride and you got a good turnout, guess what pace you’re likely to list your next ride? I recall a club ride listed as a “B” where we were pacelining uphill on Foothill Boulevard in Palo Alto at over 20 miles an hour. That was an eye opener for me.

Swept Away
Although it’s not a formal part of the Ride Code, indicating whether or not you have a sweep or how you’ll manage to keep the group together can make a ride listing more informative and allay concerns in advance. If you don’t have a sweep or your ride is not a no-drop ride, then instead explain generally how you will handle regrouping and waiting for slower riders. At the beginning of the ride the ride leaders can go into detail on where and how often they intend to regroup.

What it ultimately boils down to is that the ride code is merely proffered guidance and there is no hard guarantee that the ride will turn out exactly as the ride host intended (if their intention is even clear). Hopefully no one goes away terribly upset or disillusioned. After a while ride hosts become known quantities and those that continue to attend rides learn with whom they can or prefer to ride. In other words if you know the ride leader, you’ll know how they ride and if you don’t, then you take your chances. Although it certainly helps to provide the most accurate guidance, ride hosts need to remember that it’s ultimately about having a good time, which depends not just on the ride itself but also on the quality of human interaction during the ride. And don’t forget: if you want clarification you can always contact the ride leader! The ride listing is a short summary of their intention and you can always ask them to elaborate.