I love this bike. I love having legs. I love the wind at my back. I love riding with a smile.

Back on the Buddi after a three week hiatus, I spent the first hour and a half of the ride with a silly grin on my face. It's a dream to ride, and the new crank is just right. Humans weren't made for 54 tooth chainrings. I was going downhill at 60 kilometers per hour today and the 48 tooth outer ring was plenty big. And the nice thing about 48 is you can also climb with it. I wouldn't use it on a mountain climb, but in rolling hills with a 23 tooth cog in the back, it gives you a nice pace. Long live compact cranks, I say.

It was unexpectedly sunny today, and although it was hot by lunchtime, it was a beautiful morning. We left the shop a little before nine with a small group than usual. A bunch of regulars are at a training camp in the mountains in Nagano prefecture, and since we split into two groups I ended up riding with only five others. It was a perfect match in terms of pace and riding styles, and I was with a couple of the guys I've gotten to know best-- Furuhashi-san, who owns a coffee roasting shop that provides the best coffee in the prefecture, and Kurokawa-san, a 50 year old man who could beat the pants off just about any rider half his age. After riding in such large groups just about every week, it was nice to go out just the six of us. We rode what has become my favorite course. Essentially, we make a big loop around the chain of mountains nearest to Tsukuba. It ends up being mostly flat, but with terrific views in every direction. There's also something about being on the other side of the mountain, from Tsukuba, from the Kanto plain, from Tokyo, that feels far away. I like that.

The roads are mostly narrow, and we hardly ever see a car. This is the season for harvesting rice, so the farmers are busily working in the fields and we have to avoid the mud on the roads from the harvesting tractors, but it's nice to be out in that environment. Agriculture has a much more old-time feel to it here than in the States. Rather than mega-farms owned by corporations in the cities, most of the rice is grown by farming collectives and the people you see in the fields are the old-time farmers. It would be nice to see younger folks as well, but it's nice, anyway, that it's not all corporate. The other nice thing about rice is that the look of the paddies changes so much with the seasons. In the spring, when they flood the paddies and plant the seedlings it feels like you're in the middle of a lake when you ride along the country roads. A magical experience. The summer rice is a beautiful, fresh green, and the rice now a rich golden color. Then the soil is turned over and is fallow until spring and you see how rich the soil is. In Ibaraki prefecture, in addition to rice, there are fruit orchards as well. That's another way to be aware of the seasons. The autumn fruit is just ripening now--pears, persimmons, grapes, and chestnuts--and it's fun to ride along the orchard roads and see the fruit in the trees. Persimmons, especially, have a beautiful deep orange color when they're ripe, and make an ideal countryside scene.

In the end we rode somewhere between 85 and 90 kilometers today. The last 20 were tough--the sun was hot and we were riding straight into a stiff wind--but boy did the first half of the ride feel great. The combination of being back on my road bike, the new crank, and the wind at our backs was legendary. We rode hard; we rode fast, my legs felt great, and the feeling of joy was palpable. It was like I could hold it in my hands. (But then I would have fallen off my bike. Unlike Mom I'm not an expert on riding with no hands!)