Dan's First Post

It's Sunday afternoon and I'm icing my left leg after what was supposed to be an easy ride. For the past two weeks I was riding my road bike and was really pushing myself to see how fast I could go. This week I was back on my mountain bike (more on why later) and thought that it would be best to rest a little. Most of the top riders in the group were off at a race north of here and so the pace WAS slower than it often is, and the weather WAS cooler than it has been, but somehow we still managed to spend a lot of the time riding at 35 kilometers per hour or more (for a little exotic spice I thought I'd leave all measurements in metric!)

Tsukuba sits on the edge of the Kanto Plain, the largest flat area in all of Japan. For North Americans the word plain evokes images of endless, endless flat. Not so here. It is flat, to be sure, but it is not endless. Back in the olden days, before air pollution, residents of Edo (the old name for Tokyo) could see mountains in all directions: Mt. Fuji famously to the west, Nikko famously to the north, and Mt. Tsukuba (not quite as) famously to the east. It is this combination of the flat plains land (think rice paddies, not wheat fields) and the mountains that makes Tsukuba such a delightful place for cycling. I do miss the rolling hills of northern Michigan and southern Indiana, but at the same time there is something exciting about riding up a MOUNTAIN, and boy am I happy for the flatness when we get back down. Actually, Tsukuba and the surrounding areas are rather famous for cycling: we often see Keirin racers training when we're out for rides (you know a Keirin racer because he trains in the same ancient looking helmet they race in). The other nice thing about riding in Tsukuba is the perspective. Endless plains are dull. Green rice fields stretching out to the foot of the mountains are picturesque.

Today we rode one of our usual courses: up to the foot of Mt. Tsukuba (not up it--remember, today was an easy day) and then through the rice fields to our favorite croquette shop. I didn't grow up eating a lot of croquettes in Michigan. Wikipedia says they're a Dutch invention, and there were plenty of Dutch folk near Cadillac, but I associate them wholly with Japan. They're a staple of Japanese folk cuisine. You can get them at 7-11 all year round. (Not that I'd recommend it. When they're good, they're a true proletariat delicacy. When they're from 7-11 they're like soggy french fries.) The place we go for croquettes is a shoddy meat shop in the middle of nowhere. They don't actually have any meat in the display cases. I don't know how they stay in business. They must have regular customers (school food services? restaurants?) who make special orders. They do a brisk croquette business on Sundays, but at 50 cents to a dollar per croquette, it's not like we're bumping them into a higher tax bracket. But boy are the croquettes good. A standard croquette is basically mashed potatoes breaded and deep-fried. Some of the guys I ride with like this simplest of choices. I prefer the menchi-katsu, which is basically spiced ground pork and beef breaded and deep-fried, and the niku-jaga, sauteed onions, ground meat, and potatoes (all, of course, breaded and deep-fried). In addition to these you can get curry croquettes, a fancier variety of potato croquette, "salad" croquettes (?), fried pork loin (a bit much for a ride), fried liver (one of the riders has gained the nickname Fried Liver Endo for his preference for this treat), and then all sorts of fried fish. All for under two dollars. The guys I ride with like to eat. I'll have more posts on our frugal gourmet in the future.

And last, although this is a wordy post already, but I promised I'd write a short gear column as well. That's my bike in the bottom picture below. No, not the Time (with full Record, a Bora wheel on the back and a handmade Italian wood-rimmed tubular on the front), the Bianchi hiding behind. Don't get me wrong, I love the bike. It's a modern classic (a lugged steel Grizzly with full Deore XT (that era XT is my favorite of all Shimano's mountain components--advanced enough to shift like a dream and brake with plenty of power, but classically styled--very elegant)). But it's just not made to keep up with guys on seven kilogram Times and DeRosas. It's a perfect town bike, but I concluded I needed something faster for the road. So I brought back my old Buddi. I'll write a whole post on the Buddi later. For now it's in the shop, crankless. A 54-42 set up just killed me on the hills. I'm going compact. Let's hope it has a crank by the next time I write.

DS