It Takes a Child to Raise a Village

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A few years ago I was visiting Venice. It was a fascinating experience to walk around this ancient city without cars, built on some islands in a lagoon that protected it from the chaos after the fall of the West Roman Empire. I was surprised how eastern some of the architecture looked, because I hadn’t known how tight the connections were between Venice and the Byzantine empire, the successor state to the East Roman Empire. More than a thousand years of history come alive when you walk those ancient cobble-stoned streets.

For a long time Venice has been slowly sinking into the sea. In many buildings I saw, the ground floor was more or less uninhabitable and ruined due to water damage or the risk from regular flooding during storm surges. Sadly, despite all efforts to save it, Venice will disappear in the ocean, gradually swallowed up by rising seas.

The same will happen to Amsterdam, once the capital of a trading nation from where ships sailed to every continent. And not just this city will disappear, but almost the entire country of the Netherlands. It’s not a question of if but when.

Its inhabitants will gradually migrate to other countries in Europe, such as Germany, France or Spain that will be less affected by a 20 m rise of global sea levels. The Netherlands will be virtually wiped out when that happens. So will be Bangladesh and many island nations, as well as Miami, Shanghai, Bangkok, Jakarta, much of Tokyo, London, New York City and many other coastal megacities around the world.

When I was a schoolkid, I learnt from science books that 0.3% or 300 ppm of the earth’s atmosphere was carbon dioxide (CO2). I wasn’t told that only 200 years earlier, before the Industrial Revolution it had only been 280 ppm. Later I learnt that CO2 is a so called “greenhouse gas”, as it traps heat from the surface of the earth and prevents it from escaping into space, thus raising the surface temperature of the planet. As our civilization burns coal, oil and gas and clears forests the CO2 level increases and the greenhouse effect intensifies. In the last couple of decades this has been happening at an increasing rate.

Last year the world consumed about 100 million barrels of crude oil a day. 99.6% of passenger cars on the roads worldwide in 2018 run exclusively on fossil fuels. Worldwide power generation from coal is growing rapidly and is expected to double from 2011 to 2023. Of all the fossil fuels, coal releases the highest amount of CO2 per kWh produced, yet many countries are still building new coal-fired power plant capacity, including here in Japan, where a TEPCO – Chubu Electric Power joint venture still wants to open a new coal-fired power station in Kurihama near Tokyo in 2023/2024.

In 2013, the 400 ppm level was already breached and it is still rising at an increasing rate. How significant is that number? Since humans walked on this planet it had never been as high as this: You have to go back millions of years to find an era when there was as much CO2 in the atmosphere: The last time the CO2 level was above 400 ppm was in the Pliocene (about 3-5 million years ago).

At that time the average global temperature was some 2-3 C higher than today, but temperatures in the arctic and in Antarctica were significantly higher than that. Trees were growing in the southern part of Greenland, which was not covered in thick glaciers as it is today. Trees were also growing in parts of Antarctica. Without billions of tons of water locked up in glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica, sea levels were 20-25 m higher than today. Also these oceans were warmer than today and water expands when it warms up. The rising CO2 levels will melt these glaciers again, until a new equilibrium is established several hundreds years or more in the future. The coast lines will move, gobbling up cities and farm land alike. Ultimately they may well look like those in the Pliocene again, but how much ice will melt and how rapidly it will melt still depends on what we do from now.

To give you an idea of the long term impact of this kind of sea level rise, the former Chinese capital of Nanjing, 200 km from the Yellow Sea, lies only 20 m above sea level. With 25 m of sea level rise the ocean would penetrate about 180 km inland southwest of Beijing. Some of the most densely populated areas of China (national population: 1.3 billion) would be swallowed by the sea.

In Vietnam the two biggest cities, Hanoi and the Red River plain around it, and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and all of the land southwest of it will drown. Many of Asia’s river plains that are now its biggest rice baskets will turn into continental ocean shelf. The same will happen in the Nile valley or along the Euphrates and Tigris in the Middle East.

Note that these are changes that will happen over the next centuries or more regardless of what we do from now. They are the least bad outcome of what is possible. If we do nothing, it will get far worse.

There are feedback cycles that amplify the negative effects. For example, once it gets warm enough in summer in arctic permafrost regions that the ground will melt in summer, then peat and other frozen organic matter in the wet soil will start to decay, releasing huge amounts of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. This in turn will raise temperatures even higher. Where white sea ice melts in the summer, darker ocean water is exposed below, leading to more sunlight being absorbed and higher air and ocean temperatures. This in turn leads to less sea ice coverage the next year. When snow on top of glaciers thaws and refreezes, it also changes its albedo. The ice absorbs more sunlight than the virgin snow. So every warm spell leads to more warming. Once the thick ice sheet in Greenland and East Antarctica starts melting, its elevation will drop. It’s colder at higher elevations. The reduction in thickness will speed up melting. We could end up with a run-away effect that is impossible to stop until there is no ice left (see this article in National Geographic for maps of what the world will look like then).

The young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who started campaigning against inaction against climate change as a 15-year old, used the image of a “house on fire”:

Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire. […] Adults keep saying: “We owe it to the young people to give them hope.” But I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.

The changes brought about by man-made climate change will be dramatic, but political action so far has been underwhelming. The steps taken so far or even the steps discussed in public fall far short of what is necessary to avoid even worse outcomes.

There is considerable resistance to taking action against Climate Change. We are not used to thinking much about events beyond our own life time. Politicians will worry about the next elections, business leaders about their next annual business results. Politicians tend to take drastic action only in wars and other major disasters, but Climate Change is going to be bigger than any (non-nuclear) war or hurricane.

If we were honest and ethical, we would not put the stock market value of our power companies or car or airplane manufacturers or our airlines or tourism industry above the future of the planet. The resistance to change from both industry and consumers will be huge, but we owe people the unvarnished truth: That we can’t continue with business as usual.

Even if we switch to electric cars, the steel, copper and glass for those cars for now will be made using fossil fuels. Even the wind turbines, solar panels and battery storage that we have to build at a massive scale to supply renewable energy for our future civilization will largely be manufactured using fossil fuels for years to come. We have to spend our dwindling carbon budget wisely, for example on rebuilding infrastructure instead of on holidays in Bali or a shiny new BMW SUV.

There is as yet no clear technical solution for air travel or for international cargo ships without fossil fuel. The same is true for making cement or for steel production from iron ore. In the short term we could replace kerosene or heavy fuel oil with LNG to reduce CO2 output in transport, but that is not enough and we will need to go much further than that. The next steps will be much harder. We don’t have the solutions yet. Therefore we need a modern moonshot program for a post-fossil future, an all-out effort — not to put more humans on the moon again — but to decarbonise our economies.

Over the last year Greta Thunberg has become a household name worldwide. She has drawn attention to the urgency of change and to the drastic nature of the changes needed. Her youth and thus her expected life span versus those of the politicians and business leaders of today, who mostly won’t be around after the year 2050, gives her a different perspective which the rest of us can then also relate to. It’s not all about us, but about our children and all of humanity after us. Sometimes it takes a child to educate the world.

Archiving/Exporting Skype Chats

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Many long time Skype users have been unhappy how the service has changed over the years, especially after the company was acquired by Microsoft. I am one of them.

Starting out as a fairly powerful, secure and private peer-to-peer network, Skype gradually mutated into a client-server product with limited privacy and significantly reduced functionality and performance.

Every now and then I used to make backups of important Skype chats, so I would have the information available for future reference. This used to be doable with copy and paste, but that no longer works. Skype then offered a function to export the chats to a file, for viewing with a viewer.

In late 2017 that chat export functionality was removed from the macOS client in the upgrade from version 7 to version 8. Everything typed in chats after that upgrade no longer gets tracked on the client side but ends up on the server, where of course it is no longer private. According to Microsoft, the chat archives going back as far as April 2017 will be maintained until you delete them.

Skype chat archives after April 2017

To download chat archives, log into your Skype account from a browser using this link:

https://go.skype.com/export

Select what you want to download and click “Submit request”. You will be notified once an archive of the chats is ready for download. Alternatively, you can go back to above export link to check manually. Once you download and extract the archive, there’s a Javascript viewer for it.

Skype chat archive until 2017

For older chats, the macOS Skype client has an option to export the locally saved chats. Go to:

Setting / Messaging / Export chat history from Skype 7.x

Pixel 3a: “Analogue audio accessory detected. The attached device is not compatible with this phone”

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Three months ago my wife and I both changed our local smartphone plans and changed to a Google Pixel 3a.

Within a week she had a problem where her phone would suddenly shut down when the battery still had 50-60% charge left, while doing nothing. This even happened after the phone had been factory reset, with no third party apps installed. It took a few weeks before Softbank Mobile replaced the phone under warranty.

Now it’s my turn it seems. Recently I would find the phone with less than 50% of battery left in the morning when I had left it hooked up to the charger (so it should have been at 100%). I would reconnect the phone but it would not show the charging symbol. I then tried different cables and chargers and also rebooted the phone. Eventually it would charge again.

Today it showed the following error:

Analogue audio accessory detected. The attached device is not compatible with this phone

Nothing was plugged into its headphone socket or into the USB C port. There was no analog audio device connected. I googled the problem and most results suggested it was a problem with the USB C port. That makes sense, since it would explain both the charging issues and the audio warning, as one can plug an analog device into the USB C port via an adapter.

Other results suggested a factory reset may get it working again, but that did not work for me. After the factory reset I could charge the phone with the charger from my earlier Nexus 6P and a USB C cable when powered off. However, after I powered it up and started the system restore, it no longer charged from either that charger or from the Pixel 3a charger or a Pixel 3 charger. The problem was back.

Time to take it back to the Softbank Mobile shop, I guess 🙁

Needless to say, I am not impressed with a 2/2 failure rate for our Pixel 3a phones so far. The Pixel 3a was great while it worked. The picture quality seems as good as for its more powerful sibling, the more expensive Pixel 3 and battery life was decent too. But that is all meaningless if it randomly shuts down or you can no longer charge it.

UPDATE: Softbank Mobile sent the two months old Pixel 3a in for testing and repair. A couple of days later they quoted almost 20,000 yen (US$190) for the repair of the unspecified damage, which they said would not be covered under warranty 🙁

My First Flèche Ride (366 km in 24 hours as a team)

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On Saturday/Sunday April 20/21, 2019 I rode the Flèche ride I had signed up for in December. This will probably remain my biggest ride for the year.

The objective in a Flèche is to cover as much distance as possible in 24 hours as a team, with a minimum of 360 km. You can not stop at any place for more than 2 hours and you have to cover at least 25 km in the final two hours of the ride. Teams consist of 3-5 members, with tandems counting as one member. At least three members who have ridden the entire route together have to reach the goal. Traditionally Flèche rides are held on the Easter weekend in France. In other countries dates may differ because of the climate, but the Audax-Randonneur Nihonbashi Flèche did coincide with Easter. I was part of Team NishiTokyo and the ride started from Machida.

There were supposed to be 5 of us, but one person did not make it to start, so only the 4 of us took off at 07:00 on Saturday. The three others were seasoned randonneurs. Ride leader Mr O. participated in Paris-Brest-Paris in 2015. In fact he was wearing the hi-viz vest from that event. I had first met him at a 600 km brevet. Last year Mrs N. won the Audax Japan “Randonneur of the Year” award: She completed a 2400 km brevet around the coast of Hokkaido, i.e. twice the distance of PBP. Mr D. organises brevets for AJ NishiTokyo.

I had little doubt that I was going to be the weakest rider in the team but it was going to be a team effort in which we would always ride within sight of each other, not even WATT on climbs but climbing together.

I rode to Machida the evening before to spend the night at a cheap hotel (Toyoko Inn Fuchinobe, under 5,000 yen per night). Trying to minimize luggage this time and with no rain forecast, I opted for shorts, a short sleeve jersey, a light wind breaker and a t-shirt to wear as a base layer for when it was colder. I wasn’t sure if that was going to be enough. I was the only one in bare knees and my ride mates wore long sleeve jerseys, but it worked out temperature-wise and I never felt too cold while we were in motion. At the Nishi Izu brevet on March 30 I was also the lightest dressed participant.

Mr D. had prepared a cue sheet with average speeds between all the turns and major landmarks. Besides the PCs (points de controle) for which we needed to collect receipts to document that we passed there, he had also picked three Japanese restaurants for 30 minute meal stops. Normally on long distance rides and brevets I only eat food I buy at convenience stores or dried fruit I buy before, as it saves time. So I knew we would have to be riding considerably faster in between the stops. We also cut out all photo stops. All pictures I took we either stopped for a different reason (PCs, traffic lights, etc) or I took shots while in motion. We didn’t even stop at Yamanaka-ko for a group picture with Mt Fuji.

Mr O. had only slept for a few hours before the ride, but he led the group for almost the entire ride. His speed was very consistent. Mr D. was in second place, then me, with the rear covered by Mrs N. who made sure we stayed together. Sometimes she would suggest for me to speed up “if possible” to close a gap with Mr D.

After we crossed from Kanagawa into Yamanashi on Doshi-michi (Rt413), Mr D. started having problems with his knee. He had already abandoned a 300 km brevet the weekend before because of knee problems, which he didn’t want to exacerbate. We traded places, me moving up to Mr O. and him being followed by Mrs N. Even if he had to drop out of the Flèche we could have completed as a team because we still had three people, but I was also worried about Mr. O.’ s lack of pre-ride sleep.

At Michi-no-eki Doshi we had a short break. Like on my training ride to Yamanaka-ko two weeks earlier there were lots of motorcycles about. There were fewer bicycles than I expected. A new cycling base shop had opened not far from the road station, no doubt trying to capitalise on the increasing interest in Doshi road from the 2020 Olympic road race course.

We made it to the Doshi-michi Yamabushi-toge tunnel 10 minutes ahead of schedule, about 60 km from the start and at 1130 m elevation. I expected we’d be OK time-wise if we made it there on time since that first 1/6 of the course had almost half of the elevation gain. The legs got a short respite on the descent to Yamanaka-ko. the cherries were in bloom along the lake but we kept our pace towards PC1, where we only stopped briefly to collect receipts. A few km after that we pulled into the parking lot of a noodle shop. The food was served quickly. We used the toilet after ordering to minimize time.

Along Kawaguchi-ko Fuji was not as clearly visible as before and we picked up a head wind. Via Saiko we climbed to the main road and then Rt71 through the Aokigahara forest. We didn’t stop for the view of Motosu-ko at the pass but headed for the descent towards Shibakawa on the Fuji river. On the west side is was colder and Fuji was totally obscured by haze or clouds. I did put on my wind breaker for the 30+ km descent. We made it to the Familiymart at PC3 almost an hour ahead of schedule. It was now the middle of the afternoon.

We turned east at the Fuji river bridge towards Numazu. First there were a lot of traffic lights but then there were longer stretches in this urban area where we could just keep on going. Everybody had a story to tell where someone had slept by the roadside around here on some brevet or other. For the first time Mr O. slowed down a bit as he was getting sleepy. We turned south into Izu and 35 km after PC3, stopped for another restaurant. While we waited for the food, everyone was sending out pictures from Yamanaka-ko, to let others know we were OK.

Evening approached as we headed into the center of Izu, past Shuzenji and up into the mountains. Mr D.’s knee problems became worse and he had to call for a break. Mr O. probed his leg muscles with his fingers and it seemed to help. We climbed to the pass in the dark, now considerably slower to help out Mr D. but it also made it a lot easier for me. At the top I put on my wind breaker again for the descent towards Ito. We had used up some of our time savings but still reached PC4 ahead of schedule.

We saw fireworks light up above the Izu east coast. Between Toi and Odawara there were 4 climbs of various sizes, the biggest one at Manazuru, where we used prefectural road 740 high above the main road. The pace was relatively slow there as most of us were getting sleepy. Before Odawara we rejoined the main road and the course became mostly flat. 264 km from the start we stopped at a Denny’s restaurant for a meal and a turbo-nap. It was hard to believe we still had another 100 km to go.

Meanwhile the BRM421 300 km Fuji brevet by AJ NishiTokyo had started in Machida at 22:00. I was wondering if or where we would meet participants heading towards Odawara from Enoshima, for their clockwise loop around Mt Fuji. Indeed we came across the staff car parked by the side of the road, waiting for the fastest rider of that event to pass through and to take pictures. The staff members welcomed us with big cheers, took our pictures and we actually witnessed the first rider coming through soon after. As we rode east towards Enoshima we passed all the participants of BRM421 and shouted out encouragement towards them across the highway.

The nap at the restaurant seemed to have helped Mr O. and the flat route was better for Mr. D.’s knee. It became harder again for me to maintain the pace, but that was a good thing because it meant we could finish it as a team. We blazed down the west coast of Miura past Enoshima, Kamakura, Zushi and Hayama. Then we turned away from the coast towards Miura-Kaigan station for PC5, a 7-11.

The first birds could already be heard in the night as the morning approached. A mere 8 km from PC5 we collected another receipt at PC6, a Familymart in Yokosuka, to document we didn’t take any shortcuts. The more important next destination was a Jonathan restaurant in Yokosuka at km 337 where we arrived before 04:00. This was our designated 22 hour spot. We would eat and rest here until 05:00, 2 hours before the ride closing time, before our last ride segment of at least 25 km. The designated minimum goal was the Familymart at Yamashita-koen in Yokohama, just south of Minato Mirai, which was 26 km, for a total distance of 362.4 km.

We had just over an hour at the Jonathan restaurant. After having some food we all took a nap, until awoken by the alarm clock set for 04:50. We paid individually at 05:00, took our receipts and set off for the goal. We had almost 2 hours left to cover 26 km. There were traffic lights but not that much traffic. In between traffic lights Mr O. pulled us again at 28-30 km/h. As we got closer and closer we had an ever increasing margin against bad luck, such as a last minute puncture that could have screwed everything up. When we got close to Yamashita-koen, Mrs N. suggested not stopping there to collect receipts to prove we covered the minimum distance but continuing on towards Tokyo since the spirit of the Flèche is to ride as far as possible in those 24 hours. So we continued on past Minato Mirai and on to Rt15 as the clock moved towards 07:00. We would only get credit for the shortest distance from the last PC (Jonathan) to the 24 hour point, so not all the distance we rode counted towards the result. We all had coffee at a conbini on Rt15, where the 24 hours expired.

After that we collected and sorted our receipts and filled in the PC times on the brevet cards. Then we got back on our bikes again and rode another 27 km to Hibiya-koen in Tokyo, now without any clock ticking but still not much slower. We handed in our brevet cards with receipts for checking at the reception desk. There were teams that had cycled here from Sendai, Niigata or Nagoya. I met several randonneurs I knew from other events. The chairman of Audax Japan was also there. All the teams were called up on stage one by one, to briefly introduce themselves, with the team’s route projected on a screen behind them.

And there we were, all four of us, with a certified distance of 366 km in 24 hours (and over 3,000 m of elevation gain):

The ride home alone from the event seemed like the hardest part. All the adrenaline must have dissipated and the smallest climbs seemed painful. At home I went to bed and slept for 4 hours until dinner.

On Monday the legs were still complaining on the shallowest of grades. The next day they felt almost normal. The third day I felt fine again.

Dekopon, Cherry Blossoms and Some Rain: BRM330 200 Km in West Izu

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The dekopon season will be coming to an end soon, but to compensate the shorts-and-short-sleeves season has started! I enjoyed both on Saturday, buying local dekopon (4 big juicy ones for 300 yen) in West Izu. The roadside stand worked on the honour principle: I dropped my coins into the collection box and took one bag of fruits.

I was the only rider in shorts at the start of the 2019BRM330 200 km brevet in Mishima, out of 13 who had shown up, out of 30 who had signed up, the others having been put off by a weather forecast that predicted a high chance of rain in the evening.

I drove to Mishima on Friday night with the Elephant Bikes NFE in the back of my Prius and parked the car in a coin parking lot (700 yen for 24h). I stayed at the Toyoko Inn, which was also going to be the goal of the 203 km ride which started at Mishima station. There were 2 courses, the hilly Matsuzaki course and the insanely hilly Darumayama course. I had tried and DNFed the latter in 2017, so it was Matsuzaki again for me.

Before the 08:00 start I loaded up the course on my GPS unit, but hit an unexpected snag when it reported a file system error that required a factory reset of the unit, meaning I’d lose my stored breadcrumb trail for navigation that I normally use. So I had little alternative but using my phone and the paper cue sheets for navigation. However, I had not brought my usual plastic cover for the phone to protect it on the handle bars in case of rain, nor had I weather proofed the cue sheets. The map bag of my front bag is not totally waterproof.

I used RWGPS to load the course and map and it gave me verbal directions in English throughout the ride. I kept the phone connected to a 10,000 mAh USB battery in my front bag until the goal. I have two USB batteries and two phones. There’s always a plan B and sometimes a plan C! 🙂

When the rain started to come down on the way back near Toi, I covered the phone with a plastic shower cap from a hotel stay which I secured it with rubber bands. I always keep one shower cap in the front bag as an emergency cover for the leather saddle or whatever. When my wet fingers made the touch screen difficult to operate, I used spare dry socks that I also kept in the same bag to wipe the screen dry again.

During a brevet on February 10, 2019 organized by Audax Kinki, a participant was sadly hit from behind and killed by a car in a tunnel. Brevet participants are required to wear reflective vests throughout the ride, but sometimes they wear a backpack which could partly obscure the reflective vest. Thus we were asked to wear the vest on top of any backpack. I actually brought two reflective vests, one to wear and one for my light string backpack (for spare clothes) to “wear”, which made getting changed quicker. I had bought the second at a brevet reception when I had forgotten the original one at home.

Most of the starter group did not spread out much until we turned the NW corner of Izu and the bigger climbs started. I took some pictures of the others and the scenery, but it was too hazy to see anything of Mt Fuji or even much of the mainland coast of Shizuoka on the other side of the bay. Mt Fuji remained totally hidden for the entire day.

As it got warmer towards noon I started fading a bit. I would have been really uncomfortable in long pants and thermal jacket. I was now riding on my own but comfortable in the knowledge that I was 50 minutes ahead of minimum pace at that point, which should normally ensure that I would complete the ride under the time limit.

There were a fair number of cherry trees, but most of them weren’t in full bloom yet, many quite sparse at the top still, so I didn’t take too many pictures of them.

There were only two timed controls on this course between the start and the goal, with 161 km in between. Near the southernmost point of the ride there was a photo check: We had to take a picture of a viewing platform on a mountain road together with our brevet card to prove we passed there. I climbed the mountain road together with a young couple. They had already suffered a puncture in NW Izu that had cost them time, while I frequently stopped for pictures.

From there I enjoyed a long descent to Kumomi Onsen. I had visited there in December and then climbed Mt Eboshi, which offers a breathtaking scenery of the coast. We passed Iwachi Onsen, where I had often visited by car when our children were still little.

I was trying to make it to near Heda village by sunset, where a staff member was taking pictures of all of us as we passed, but my own pictures took priority. At the last conbini in Toi before the wilderness it started raining and I put on my rain gear. On the descents I had to be a lot more careful. The wet asphalt soaked up all the light.

The rain became quite intense and I couldn’t help thinking of the 17 non-starters who had listened to the weather forecast… but with my time buffer I expected I’d still make it in time, unless I had bad navigation problems in the last 20 km. The phone became difficult to use when its touch screen got wet. Once, the RWGPS app somehow ended up back on the route selection and I had to restart the Navigation, which seemed to have cost me my downloaded maps 🙁 Now I could only use the turn by turn instructions to follow the course, but no map view. Fortunately, those turn by turn instructions worked flawlessly, even if the sound volume wasn’t always high enough to be clearly audible. Worst case I had to check the screen. Twice I went off-course but it soon let me know and it recovered when I backtracked to the wrong turn.

After more than 3 hours of riding in the dark I finally got close to Mishima station. When I stopped at the traffic light across from the Toyoko Inn, a staff member waved at me and handed me a note with the finishing time after I crossed. It was 21:19, only 11 minutes under the cut-off time. At the goal reception I presented my brevet card, the receipts from PC1 and PC2 (both 7-11 stores) and showed a photograph of the viewing platform. I had successfully completed! The young couple also made it. They arrived a mere 2 minutes before closing time. Another cyclist who had punctured on the last part of the ride in the rain was over the time limit.

On the drive back to Tokyo I stopped twice at Tomei expressway service areas for some rest, as I was too sleepy. When I got home I unloaded the car, took a shower and went to bed at 02:00. Two more weekends before the 360+ km Fleche ride for which I’m preparing.

2019 AJ NishiTokyo 200 km Miura Peninsula

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This is one of the last views of Mt Fuji I had last Saturday (2019-01-19), when I rode my first brevet of the year, BRM119 NishiTokyo 200 km Miura Peninsula. I also saw Mt Fuji from the Yamate area of Yokohama (near the Foreign General Cemetery), from the waterfront south of Yokosuka and from various spots on the west coast of Miura, including just before Enoshima.

This 200 km ride around Miura peninsula from Machida to Machida is one I have done before, though much of the course outside Miura was different from last year’s. There’s a 13h 30m time limit (6:00 start, 19:30 close), with two timed checkpoints and a third location for a picture check. I finished in 12h 42m. Together with my ride back to Tokyo it came to 237 km (on Strava).

First Brevet of the Year

January brevets here are always very popular and fill up quickly when the signup period opens. BRM119 by AJ NishiTokyo was no exception. It filled up the first evening.

For a 200 km ride this course has minimal elevation gain (less than 1200 m) so it’s not quite as physically challenging as other 200 km brevets (hence maybe easier for people you didn’t ride much since the end of the 2018 brevet season in October), but there are no easy brevets. In this one you trade mountains for traffic lights and some busy roads. The January chill definitely will suck your energy, especially before sunrise and after sunset. You will be using a lot of energy just to stay warm, even when simply breathing in cold air!

The temperature on the ride ranged from -1° C at the start to 19° C near Jogashima, before dropping back to 5° C at Machida. This is a huge swing that’s difficult to dress for. I have a large front bag with sufficient space for clothes (and food), but I don’t know how others handled it — probably by feeling very chilly for the first few hours and very warm during the day!

The temperature swing aside, the weather was near perfect. The sky was nearly cloudless for almost the entire day. We were spoilt by ocean views and Fuji views.

I rode from my home in Tokyo to Machida the night before, as I had booked a room at a ToyokoInn to better cope with the early start time (06:00). This is a chain of inexpensive hotels. The rooms are clean and offer all the essentials. The ride reception to pick up one’s brevet card opened at 05:00, with a pre-ride briefing scheduled for 05:30. I went to bed at 22:00 to get more than 6 hours of sleep. My alarm went off at 04:10 and I left the hotel 40 minutes later.

I was well prepared for this ride. It was my third Century (160.9+ km) ride of the month, all three of them started no later than 06:00 so I knew the temperatures before sunrise and how they would feel in what I was wearing.

These are my improvised shoe covers, a pair of old merino socks with strategically cut holes for the SPD cleats, during testing the week before:

I had more than enough clothes with me, for example a choice of a winter jacket or a windbreaker to wear on top of my LS merino jersey and I used both, at different times.

I wore most of my clothes at the start at 06:00 from Machida:

The only time I really did feel cold was when riding back to Tokyo after the event, as I hadn’t bothered to change back into my thermal underwear and base layer and consequently felt the wind chill on my hands. I improvised some poor man’s Bar Mitts ™ out of plastic bags and rubber bands that kept my hands toasty warm for the rest of the ride.

Pacing myself

During the descent towards the Tamagawa river from the west I could see the whole of Tokyo below me in the dawn, including the skyscrapers of Shinjuku and Tokyo Skytree, the 634 m broadcast tower on the opposite side of the city.

About an hour into the ride, the sun rose. It was dazzling us at times. Near Kawasaki station we hit rush hour traffic, but after that we switched to a cycling path by the riverside. After 48 km we reached PC1, the first control. Here I took off some of my layers as it was warming up.

Between there and Tsurumi we were cycling near the port area, with many trucks carrying heavy shipping containers on the road.

In Yokohama we passed Minato Mirai with its old brick warehouses and other historic buildings. After a Yamashita park we climbed up to the Yamate area, also known as the Bluff, a hillside that was home to the first foreigners who arrived in Japan for trading when Japan opened to the world in the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate. I got a surprising view of Mt Fuji from just outside the Foreign General Cemetery on the hill.

With a large group it’s always tempting to try to hang on to faster riders and I probably ended up doing that, riding a bit too fast for the first 60 km or so of the ride. Then my legs gradually started to complain and I dropped the pace and stopped for food near Yokosuka. I kept a more sustainable pace for the rest of the ride and felt pretty good. I also stopped often for pictures.

After Yokosuka you get good views of Boso peninsula on the opposite side of Tokyo bay. The scenery becomes more rural. By now the temperatures were much milder. I was riding without my winter jacket and later even removed my base layer under the long sleeve jersey.

I passed Hayama, Zushi and Kamakura on the west coast, enjoying views of the ocean and Mt Fuji. After Enoshima the road turned off the coast and headed north. I had a comfortable time buffer and didn’t have to worry about control closing times.

It was still daylight at PC2, the last control. From here it was 31 km to the goal. Once the sun set, the silhouette of Mt Fuji in the dusk was still visible to the west and I stopped a couple of times for more pictures.

I arrived at the goal with about the last fifth of the participants still behind me. AJ NishiTokyo staff served hot drinks and snacks. We talked and took some pictures of each other and the arriving finishers.

Outlook into the season

My next brevet will be a 200 km ride in west Izu at the end of March which will be a lot more hilly, but before that I will do at least one Century ride in February. In April I will be participating in a Flèche as part of a mixed 5 person team riding 360 km in 24h to meet up with other Randonneurs in Tokyo. Most likely I’ll also be riding a 400 km brevet in May.

I am not aiming for a 600 km ride or for completing the Super Randonneur series (200, 300, 400 and 600 km) this year, let alone participating in Paris-Brest-Paris 2019 in August. Rides up to 400 km are enough of a challenge for me 🙂

1-518-684-5177 Domain Owner Spam

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Today I received the following spam message:

Attention: Important, DOMAIN SERVICE
Domain Name: [MyDomainNameHere]

Call: 1-518-684-5177

ATT: Domain Owner JOE WEIN
ADMINISTRATIVE CONTACT
[MyAddressHere]
WWW.[MyDomainNameHere]

Requested Reply Before
January 7, 2019

PART I: REVIEW SOLICITATION

Attn: Domain Owner JOE WEIN
As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification for your business Domain name search engine registration.

This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your registration and save.

Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this proposal making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web.

Privatization allows the consumer a choice when registering. Search engine subscription includes domain name search engine submission.

You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated below unless you accept this proposal. Do not discard, this notice is not an invoice it is a courtesy reminder to register your domain name search engine registration so your customers can locate you on the web.

This Notice for: WWW.[MyDomainNameHere] will be terminated on January 4, 2018 Act today!

[ ] 1 year 01/07/2019 – 01/07/2020 $75.00
[ ] 2 year 01/07/2019 – 01/07/2021 $119.00
[ ] 5 year 01/07/2019 – 01/07/2024 $199.00
[ ] 10 year -Most Recommended- 01/07/2019 – 01/04/2029 $295.00
[ ] Lifetime (NEW!) Limited time proposal – Great value! Lifetime $499.00

Payment by Credit Card or Check
Call our New York main office: (518)684-5177

At the bottom was the following disclaimer, separated by many blank lines to make it unlikely that anyone would read it:

By accepting this proposal, you agree not to hold DS liable for any part. Note that THIS IS NOT A BILL. This is a solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated unless you accept this proposal. The information in this letter contains confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the DS. This information is intended only for the use of the individual(s) named above. There is no pre-existing relationship between DS and the domain mentioned above. This notice is not in any part associated with a continuation of services for domain registration. Search engine submission is an optional service that you can use as a part of your website optimization and alone may not increase the traffic to your site. If you do not wish to receive further updates from DS reply with Remove to unsubscribe. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that disclosure, copying, distribution or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of this letter is strictly prohibited.

Harvesting contact details for domains via WHOIS for spamming is illegal under the terms of service.

This spam is deceptive advertising. Some people will make payments because they mistake the spam email for a domain registration renewal reminder, which it isn’t. Never do business with spammers!

Water Abundance XPRIZE – Do the Numbers Add Up?

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On October 22, 2018 a US$1.75 million prize was awarded to two companies for a way of providing abundant water at a price of no more than $.02 per liter using renewable energy.

The technology developed by the Skysource / Skywater Alliance condenses humidity from the air using electrically powered compressors. It’s basically the same process as in a domestic air conditioner unit that has water dripping out of it, except that the Skywater units will filter and then sterilize the water using ozone. Condensation through a compressor is an energy intensive process.

There are other processes for generating fresh water from abundant sea water that also have a reputation for consuming a lot of energy. Desalination is used by many coastal cities and regions to top up insufficient ground water supplies. About of half of Israel’s water supply comes from Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants that desalinate sea water from the Mediterranean. Desalination plants also provide about 30% of Singapore’s water supply.

Reverse Osmosis consumes about 3 kWh of electrical energy per 1000 liter (1 m3) of fresh water extracted. If produced from fossil energy sources such as coal, oil or natural gas this energy demand will result in CO2 output, contributing to global warming. If produced from renewable energy, it requires considerable investments in generating capacity on top of the desalination plants themselves.

How does the Skywater process compare to RO with regards to energy consumption? The Skywater website is not exactly helpful, as it present gibberish instead of actual data:

What are the power requirements for the machine?
The Skywater® 300 runs on approximately 7 -10 kilowatts per hour. It operates on 50hz or 60hz and either 208-240V (single phase) or 380-440V (3-phase). This power can be supplied directly or from a generator for portability.

The Skywater 300 is a unit that can generate up to 1100 l of water per day. The above quote was neither written nor checked by an engineer. Note that energy is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh) while power is measured in kilowatts (kW). There is no such unit in physics as “kilowatts per hour”. Whoever uses this term basically doesn’t know what they are talking about! A device drawing one kilowatt of power will consume one kilowatt hour of energy for every hour of use.

Let’s assume they meant a power demand of 7-10 kW (which is the same as 7-10 kWh per hour). That means a daily consumption of 168-240 kWh of electricity. With an output of up to 1100 l, this amounts to at least 150-220 kWh per 1000 l (1 m3). This is roughly 50-70 times more than the specific energy consumption of a Reverse Osmosis plant. Other commercial units of water generators have similar specs. For example the units offered by Water-Gen in Israel are quoted as consuming 310 kWh per 1000 l, or roughly 100 times the power consumption of reverse osmosis units.

Today we’re still a long way from having access such an abundance of cheap electricity from renewable sources that we could afford to use 50-100 times more of it than another proven solution would use. Installing solar panels or wind turbines to power RO plants is expensive and consumes land. Building 50-100 times more solar farms or wind turbines to generate the same amount of water using water-from-air technology instead would make little sense, at least within a reasonable distance of the coast where you could still pipe desalinated water from coastal RO plants.

Water-from-air technology may make sense only in limited areas such as mobile military units in remote areas where cost is no object (but only if humidity is not too low and it’s neither too hot or too cold, i.e. if they’re not deployed in a desert anyway).

On the present evidence, water-from-air technology is far from ecologically benign or economically viable, compared to more efficient technologies available. The first step would always have to be reduced use of conventional water supplies (e.g. better irrigation systems, growing less water intensive crops) encouraged by appropriate pricing and reuse of waste water for other purposes.

trafficads.net scam ads: “Googleユーザーのあなた、おめでとうございます！”

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For a few months I have been seeing sudden popups in the middle of visiting various websites. The ads are hosted on URLs such as http://trafficads.net/graun/?pubads={some-hexadecimal-number} and the back button will be disabled – there is no way to get back to the article that had been reading.

The ads are in Japanese (I am accessing from a Japanese IP address) and tell you that you can win an iPhone X, iPad Air 2 or Samsung Galaxy S6. They then ask some easy questions about who founded Google, in what country it is based and what year it was founded. Regardless of your answers, it will tell you that they were correct and that you have won an iPhone X 64 GB. You are then asked to give your credit card to pay for shipping. I strongly recommend you do not give them your credit card!

Before I started seeing the ads in trafficads.net, I think saw them on a number of different domains that kept changing. For several weeks, one consistent domain has been used instead.

I do not know yet how those ads get injected into the Chrome browser. However, I have seen them on three different machines, one of them a Mac, the others PCs. I doubt all three of them could be infected with the same malware. There’s got to be a different mechanism.

There are a number of Japanese web postings that discuss these fraudulent ads masquerading as prize wins to get people’s credit cards, but none of them explain how the ads are injected or what countermeasure there is, other than closing the tab of the ad once it appears.

Large Cassettes for 11-Speed Road Bikes

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In an article entitled “Sensible gearing for non-racing road bikes” 3 1/2 years ago I described one of the options:

Road Cranks With Large Cassettes

Shimano road cranks use a 130 mm bolt circle diameter (BCD) for the outer ring and 110 mm for the inner ring, which limits the smallest inner ring to 34T. Your only option of getting a lower lowest gear is a bigger cassette. Cassettes are limited by what number of teeth your rear derailleur (RD) can handle. Medium and long cage RDs handle bigger cogs as well as bigger differences between the small and large gears than do short cage RDs. A 9 or 10 speed road RD can also be replaced with a 9 speed MTB RD for more capacity, as they are pull compatible. This allows cassettes up to 36T. The drawback of bigger cassettes is extra weight and less closely spaced gears that require bigger cadence changes when changing gears.

Things have changed a bit with 11-speed groups and also with the 10-speed Tiagra 4700 group, as these newer generation parts use different rear derailleur geometries and cable pull than their 9 and 10 speed predecessors. Therefore 9-speed mountain bike (MTB) long cage derailleurs with enough chain wrap to handle 11-36 cassettes no longer work with 11-speed road groups.

Tiagra 4700

The medium cage Tiagra RD-4700 GS derailleur supports a 10 speed 11-34 cassette when used with a double crank (compact 50/34, mid-compact 52/36). It can handle an 11-32 cassette with a triple crank (50/39/30). We will be disregarding the short cage RD-4700-SS here, as it can only handle cassettes up to 11-28, not enough for low gearing.

The geometry of the Tiagra rear derailleur is compatible with its 11-speed siblings such as the 105 RD-5800-GS or Ultegra RD-6800-GS. The ratio of cable pull to sideways movement is the same, but each click of the Tiagra right shifter will pull more cable, causing a bigger sideways movement of the derailleur to match the more widely spaced 10 sprockets on the Tiagra cassette compared to 11 speed cassettes. What this means is that you can use an 11-speed derailleur with Tiagra 4700 shifters and vice versa, a Tiagra derailleur with 5800 or 6800 shifters. The number of gears will be determined by the shifter, not the derailleur.

105 5800 and Ultegra 6800, 105 R7000 and Ultegra R8000

Both the medium cage 105 RD-5800-GS and Ultegra RD-6800-GS derailleurs officially support 11-32 cassettes. On some bikes you will be able to use an 11-34 cassette by adjusting the B-screw on the rear derailleur. The next generation 105 R7000 and Ultegra R8000 medium cage derailleurs officially support up to 11-34, for 6% lower gearing than 11-32.

Shimano offers two 11-34 road cassettes (105 CS-HG700, Ultegra CS-HG800) that are functionally the same, but the Ultegra cassette is about 10% lighter. These 11-34 cassettes have the added benefit of also working with older 9/10-speed freehubs, unlike other Shimano 11-speed cassettes (12-25, 11-28, 11-30, 11-32). Thus they not only give you lower gearing but also access to a great variety of cheaper wheels! In particular, if you have an existing bike with 10-speed drivetrain including an 8/9/10-speed only freehub and you want to upgrade to 11-speed but don’t want to buy new wheels, these 11-34 cassettes may be just what you want!

All of the above 11-speed RDs can handle cassettes up to 11-40 if used with a Wolftooth Roadlink derailleur hanger extension. This little inexpensive gadget (about US$22) will lower the rear derailleur enough for it to clear bigger sprockets.

While Shimano doesn’t currently offer 11-36 road 11 speed cassettes, they are available from SRAM (PG-1170) and Sunrace (CSRX1).

The Roadlink will not change the length of the derailleur cage, so the chain wrap capacity of the derailleur remains unchanged. Therefore you could run into problems if you cross-chain too much (small/small or big/big) with a larger cassette than your derailleur was designed for.

If you shift down too far while on the big ring when your chain is not long enough, your rear derailleur may get sucked into the cassette and get damaged. This is a worst case you definitely want to avoid.

If you keep the chain long enough to be safe with big/big cross chaining, your chain may go slack and slip or fall off when you up-shift too far while on the small ring (small/small cross-chaining). The safe thing is to pick a chain length that covers the big/big case, just make sure you shift to the big ring at the front once you’ve up-shifted into the middle of the cassette at the rear.

Using a 10/11-speed Mountain Derailleur

If you want a rear derailleur designed for 11-36 or even bigger cassettes (and sufficient chain wrap for all cases), another option is to use a Wolftooth Tanpan (about US$40), which lets you use 10/11-speed long cage mountain derailleurs such as the RD-M786-SGS with 11 speed road shifters.

UPDATE (2018-09-21)

I have installed an 11 speed 11-34T cassette with a Shimano RD-R7000 GS rear derailleur on my Bike Friday. It was indeed compatible with my 10 speed Shimano Deore centerlock disk brake freehub. With a 52/36 mid-compact crank set it gives me virtually the same low gear as my previous 10 speed 50/39/30 triple crank with an 11-28T cassette (21.3 vs. 21.6 gear inches). This allowed me to switch from a 10 speed triple to an 11 speed double without giving up my low gears or having to buy new wheels. My tallest gear grew 4% taller (95.3 vs. 91.6 gear inches). The longer cable pull per click of the shifter ratchet of the 11 speed system makes for lighter shift action and less susceptibility to friction and cable stretching. Even though a 50/34 compact crank with an 11-32T cassette would have given me the same gears, the 11 speed 11-32T wouldn’t have worked with my freehub and a 10 speed 11-32T is not officially supported by the 10 speed 5700 GS or 6700 GS rear derailleur.