Leave the house!

For all my complaining about the weather recently it seemed a sin to waste this beautifully cool yet sunny afternoon. And now that it's sort of summer and the sun doesn't go down just after one arrives home, really, was there any excuse to not go for a bit of a cycle?

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I didn't plan to go very far, I just wanted to get out to take some pictures. So it was just the bike and the helmet, nothing else fancy, and I even forgot to take something warm. But in the constant inner dialogue between my lazy-self and my explorer-self—"I guess we can go back now..."; "Yes, okay, soon, but what's around the next bend? Just the next one, come oooonnnnn..."—the explorer won out until I was genuinely cold and wondering how much longer decent light would last. And besides, by then I had gone past the cement and the trash disposal places and reached the small settlement after it I'd seen on Google maps. I wasn't sure how the road, now a narrow single track, continued on, and well, it didn't seem the time to go and get myself lost. Never start travelling down a steep hill if you're not sure where you're going. There may be other hills beyond that that are between you and your final destination, and you don't want to find out about them when it's getting dark.

So this is just another slideshow of stuff I like looking at, you know, piles of disorganised tools and materials and just general crap that people like to hoard.

There are also some views, like the stitched together ones taken from a house situated above the expressway. And speaking of stitching, the first picture is of the new dressing rooms behind the Uchiko-za, with a neat new pathway to complement it.

On the less organised side, I especially liked the cans of some kind of solvent—maybe paint thinner—that someone seems to have given up on. I liked the first few, and was ready to move along, but then I couldn't believe my luck when there was a big pile just around the corner. It seems the person can't even be bothered to fold them flat anymore.

I also saw my second snake here ever, writhing in the road. I'm not sure if the truck that passed by just before I saw it maybe hit it... it was moving quite strangely. But he or she made it into the bushes eventually, so good luck, buddy.

Total distance: 12.3km
Lowest point: 40m
Highest point: 360m