I did a post about kids bikes a while ago. There was a Miffy bike in that post and recently, I saw another Miffy bike, so I thought I 'd do another post with that and some other kids bikes I've seen since.
This one is even smaller than the previous one and it looks like it's been ridden much longer.
In the same parking space, there was a bike with a basket with some acorns. I think I remember collecting acorns when I was little too.
We spotted this Panasonic bike outside our building.
It's got very detailed graphics as you can see.
This one was parked in front of the local supermarket.
Its name is "Hard Candy". Design is coordinated throughout even with the original basket that says "Hard Candy".
The last 4 posts about the Tokyo Cycle Mode have focused on the product side of the bicycle quite a bit. I do like looking at bikes and accessories, but I think that's just one part of the experience of riding a bike. Other things like the environment you ride in and the weather might actually contribute more to the overall experience. Of course, how the bike feels is very important, but it doesn't matter so much if that bike is a high tech race bike or a mamachari. Any bike that's in decent working condition can be a joy to ride depending on the occasion. I guess what I'm trying to say is that at Cycle Mumbreeze, we are not that obsessive about the gear. For us, just enjoying riding the bicycle is more important. Even riding a mamachari barely faster than walking along the river is an enjoyable experience.
Last weekend, we rode to the nearby Tsurumi River. Tsurumi river runs parallel on the West side of the more famous Tama River. Beyond Tsurumi River is Tsurumi, the Eastern ward of Yokohama, where I grew up as a child before my family moved to the US when I was 13. So, Tsurumi River is the first river I probably came in contact with. The name Tsurumi translates as something like "Crane watching". I've always wondered if there was a time when you could go to the river and see cranes there. But, Tsurumi River as far as I can recall had never been known for its beauty or cleanliness. I think especially when I was growing up, it was in poor shape from industrial sewage. It has been a while since I'd been there because from where we reside now, it's much easier to get to the Tama River. To go directly to the Tsurumi River seemed complicated, so we decided to first go to the Yagami River which is a small river that runs into Tsurumi River.
The above map sort of shows the route that we took although I couldn't get the route to be exactly the way we went. We rode mostly directly along the river.
The top photo is where the Yagami River meets Tsurumi River.
Kao looking at Tsurumi River.
It was a nice Sunny day and there were plenty of people out walking, running and riding bikes.
We ran into this family in the above photo. They were going rather quickly. Kao wanted to get a photo, but couldn't catch up with them, so I followed them instead and took this picture. You may not be able to tell, but there is a man running in front of the woman on the bike. The woman is carrying her child on her back which is quite unusual to see with so many options for carrying a child on a bike being available in Japan. It seemed the man who was probably the husband of the woman was training and the mother and child was following him closely behind.
There were many parts of the river front that were under construction.
"Tsurumi river basin area is in the shape of a baku(tapir)" this post says.
We crossed and went underneath a few railroads. This one might be right under the Shinkansen (bullet train).
We went to the Otsunabashi near the Tsunashima station and then headed back. Overall, the Tsurumi river didn't seem to be quite as well maintained or fashionable as the Tama river, but it seemed cleaner than I remembered from my childhood days and the local people there seemed to be enjoying the area.
Anyway, it was nice to revisit a place from my childhood and not be disappointed.
Kinya looks very glad because the bicycle which he rides is "cervelo". but he finished a test ride and did not look so happy.The reason is written in his post.
It was the first time that I participated in such an event. You can tell from the photo that it's very crowded. There was a line for each brand and the waiting time was long, but it was very windy and raining, so it was probably still less crowded than usual.
The test ride start!
He noticed the saddle was too low at this moment...
Yesterday we went to this event called Cycle Mode which is sort of like Interbike, but is also open to the general public. It was held in the convention center called Makuhari Messe in the city of Makuhari which is about half way between central Tokyo and the Narita airport in the Chiba prefecture. It was a weekday and a very rainy day, so it wasn't too crowded. They also offered free entrance for women on this day. I was in line to buy me a ticket when a man approached me and offered a free ticket. I was suspicious at first, but it turned out he had free entry already and had extra tickets. So, it was our luck that both of us got in for free.
The thing I wanted to do there the most was to test ride bikes, especially the high end road bikes. I've been looking at them in magazines, on the internet and in bike shops, but I haven't really ridden the more recent road bikes mostly made of carbon fiber. I'm not really in the market to buy one, but I thought I would like to ride them and see what they are about.
It was a huge show, so there was so much to see. We looked at so much stuff and took lots of pictures, so I will try and recount our day the best I can.
Right after the entrance awaited the booths of Eddy Merckx and De Rosa bikes. I've always liked De Rosa for their style and being one of the few Italian bike makers to still offer steel frames. They were definitely one of the bikes I wanted to test ride, but unfortunately the registration for test riding had already closed until 2 hours later.
We walked by the Pinarello booth which had a long line of people waiting to test ride, so we decided to come back to it and then we went to the Bianchi booth. Bianchi is one of the few bike brands that Kao knew of and wanted to test ride and the registration line was still open, so we got in line. It turned out that they closed the line right after us, so we just managed to get in. We waited a while (maybe little less than half hour) and then we signed up to test ride and they told us a time which was about an hour and a half later(!) to come back. So, even after waiting in line, we had more than an hour before we could test ride a bike. I thought I was going to test ride bikes one after another, but it looked like it wasn't going to be that easy.
So, we decided to walk around and just look at stuff and see if there was a bike we could test ride without too much wait. We spotted this cool classic Pashley in a booth nearby.
There was cycling class for children too.
Then we came to the Cervelo booth.
Cervelo is really the cutting edge of race bikes. Like this P4 time trial bike above. I thought their bikes are things that belong in the elite road racing world, so I didn't even think I could ride one, but it turned out that their bikes were available to ride and the line didn't seem that long. We waited about 5 minutes to sign up and it was available half an hour later.
Kao opted to test ride a Masi entry level road bike which was available immediately.
Kao on the test course.
Kao's impression was that it wasn't actually all that different from her old steel road bike other than that the components worked much better.
This is the Cervelo RS that I rode. Kao took pictures of me riding it, so she will probably put them in a post soon. I was pretty thrilled to ride it so that I didn't really check the seat height before I took off, but as soon as I started, I immediately knew that the saddle was way too low. Being on the course for the first time with other people was also distracting. There was too much traffic to really pedal with any effort until the long straightaway at the end of the short loop. Officially, you're supposed to ride just one lap, but it seemed most people were riding multiple laps. I didn't really get enough of a feel with just a lap, so I kept going. The backside of the loop goes out of the building for a bit. It's shielded from rain with a roof, but there were little pools of water on the course. Enough water got onto the tires and onto the course inside the building and there was a sharp turn right after we go back into the building where the water on the building floor made it super slippery. I felt my rear wheel slip even though I wasn't going all that fast. I didn't fall, but I saw a guy fall right in front of me. Kao said she saw 3 poeple crash just during the time I was riding. I did try and ride with a bit of effort on the front straightaway, but it was way too short to really get a good feel. I ended up doing 3 laps. The bike was light and responsive and the carbon frame felt solid, but really the course seemed inadequate to really gauge the ride. The Cervelo RS is a climber's bike, so I would've liked to have gone up a short hill with it.
After that, it was time to go for our Bianchi test ride. Kao rode this Bianchi carbon road bike. She had never ridden a carbon bike and said it was much more impressive than the Masi aluminum bike. For my Bianchi test ride, I made sure to have the saddle raised this time. I also rode a carbon road bike. The saddle height was much better, but the handle bar/brakes set up seemed a bit awkward. I couldn't tell too much of a difference between the Bianchi with the Cervelo on this short course though. I felt the wheel slip a couple more times again and after the ride, I didn't feel too much more like doing more test rides. I also thought maybe riding other carbon road bikes might feel about the same with these conditions. As a fan of road racing, I like looking at the bikes that the pros ride, but I think having ridden these bikes, I'm slightly more over the mystique of high end road bikes. I thought these bikes were way too expensive for me to consider before, but I think now I would much prefer a custom steel bike even if I could afford a carbon race bike.
After that we just wandered around the big event space. One thing that really brought out the bike-nerd in me was the Dura-Ace di2 shifting system at the Shimano booth. The picture above is not the bike I rode, but the bike next to it was equipped with the di2. The di2 is Shimano's electric shifting system. Instead of pulling on the shifters, you only need to press buttons and then motors inside the derailleurs will shift the gears for you. It was pretty neat although you can only get so much out of shifting gears on a stationery bike.
I think the most impressive display I saw was this Fuji display of track bikes.
I think these are actual track bikes and not street single speeds. I am not a huge fan of the whole fixie culture, but I like looking at track bikes used in real competition.
We found what I think was the most interesting booth after that. It was a booth made up of a whole bunch of makers of clothing and accessories. Yakkay helmet was one of them. I tried one out and it seems to look OK as far as I can tell in this photo.
There was also a maker of leather accessories called Maware. We actually spotted Mr. Fisher in this booth as we walked in, but he was just leaving so I didn't get to meet him, but later I found he also took pictures of these accessories and put them up on Twitter.
There were like 4 or 5 clothing makers that made clothing that were like regular clothes except they were made for riding the bike. I didn't get pictures of the clothing this time, but we got a lot of brochures and shop cards, so I think I want to look them up and do a separate post about them. Maybe we'll visit some shops as well.
Anyway, it was a fun event. We saw a lot of other stuff which I didn't write about like seeing Japanese pseudo celebrities speak at the talk show stage and various booths of bikes and gear and it would be impossible to recount everything, but you can check out more of the pictures I took in the slide show above or check out the flickr set here. I am not sure I will attend it again next year, but it was really fun and I think it's worth checking out if you're into bikes and you've never been to such an event.
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