Revisiting That Mountain Roller Slide From Years Ago

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Watch Out for Kids!

Sorry for not posting anything recently. I've felt remarkably unmotivated in all things lately, but found some
inspiration in an email from someone asking about this mountain roller slide
that I'd posted about some years ago. Now that I'm into cycling (though currently generally unmotivated about it), I thought I'd
ride to the location to see whether it's still there.

Here's the ride:

Along the way I came across a lovely lotus field in the middle of the suburbs.

iPhone 7 Plus + iPhone 7 Plus back camera 3.99mm f/1.8 at an effective 28mm — 1/950 sec, f/1.8, ISO 20 —
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iPhone 7 Plus + iPhone 7 Plus back camera 6.6mm f/2.8 at an effective 57mm — 1/1600 sec, f/2.8, ISO 20 —
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Best I Could Do

with the iPhone camera









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Lovely Road








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Side Road Explored on a Whim

steep but pretty









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Becomes Less Lovely

the explored-on-a-whim road becomes extremely steep and broken

Next was to explore a short but steep (and nicely-paved) climb I'd seen
here. It starts under a new expressway bridge...

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Looking Back

to the start of the short service road where it meets the main road











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Goes Way Above the Expressway








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Ends In a Bamboo Grove

my iPhone seems to often be focus-challenged, and I can't tell

at the time on the small screen )-:

Next was the main climb of the day, the full Yoshimine-dera Temple
climb, ostensibly 3.6km (2.3 mi) at 10.2%, but the first kilometer is relatively mild, then it ramps up quickly.

Halfway through is a section of 450m at 17% that ends at the parking-lot
entrance to the temple, but the actual road continues to wind up almost two dozen switchbacks:

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Start of the Second Half

near the Yoshiminedera Temple (善峯寺)

I made a PR on the first half by a wide margin,
but had to stop before plodding on to slowly finish the climb.

The temple itself, which I didn't visit on this trip, is quite nice, especially in the fall. It's been on my blog many times
over the years, such as in “The Whole Gamut of My Blog In One Spectacular Visit to the Yoshiminedera Temple”

Anyway, I eventually made my way the remaining 12km to the location of the slide, which is in a small
entertainment complex that includes the ability to pick your own mushrooms
that you can have cooked there, or bring home. I opted to just stop in the cafe for curry:

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Lunch

The section with the slide is an area called “山びこの森”...

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Entrance to the Playground Area

Yamabiko no Mori (山びこの森)

Cost is 210 yen (~$2) per person, though elementary-school aged and below are free. The photo above is taken pretty much at
the little kiosk where you pay. A ticket is good for all day, in and out as you like.

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Enter This Way

Frankly, without a bazillion kids enjoying the area, it's sort of pathetic. There are a couple of teeter-totters,
the slide, and the “Tarzan rope” mentioned here, and that's about it.

To ride the slide, first grab one of the pads lying around or in the shed near the bottom....

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Climb the path to the top of the slide. It affords nice views of the slide as you go...

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Top of the Slide









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Heading Down

It takes some balance on the pad to get up any speed. Going slowly, it took me 30 seconds to get to the bottom,
but with some seating adjustments it could go much more quickly, I think.

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“Tarzan Rope”

I'm not sure how much effort it's worth to try to visit this place, but it can be reached via bus
from JR Takatsuki Station, though there are less than a dozen buses a day:

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Minimal Schedule

The left three columns show the schedule from the train station to the area, for (left to right) weekdays, Saturdays, and
Sundays/holidays. The row number shows the hour of the day; a number within a box indicates the minute (in that hour) when
the bus leaves, and in parenthesis, the bus's destination. For example, on weekdays, a bus leaves the train station
at 1:15pm, headed toward 杉生. The bus before that is at 11:37, and the one after is 3:55.

There's a bus stop right at the complex, called “森林センター前”. It takes about 40 minutes in the bus.

The right-side three columns show the return buses to the train station. The last one on a weekday is 7:38pm

After leaving, I went to explore some new roads, and found some lovely ones, as well as one that
had seen better days...

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Horrible-Quality Road

The first new road I tried, a long and lovely climb followed by a descent with many questionable sections of road, as seen above,
joined civilization at a spot I'd ridden by in the past:

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Weird Place

seen on my blog two years ago here

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful. I was disappointed to find that a 10km section during the return trip,
which had looked like a lovely descent on a big sweeping road, turned out to be quite unlovely because it cut through
miles and miles of strip mining, and so the road surface had become horribly pitted from the thousands of dump trucks
over the years, so it was decidedly unfun. To make it worse, there was a strong headwind filled with sand and gravel
from the mining operations, so it was an uncomfortable struggle even going downhill.

This satellite view gives some sense of it. It's not a road I'll be trying again
any time soon.

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Closer to home, there's a lot of construction of some sort along the river... there were dozens of dump trucks
visible at once. Here's where they were rejoining the road...

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Lots of Dump Trucks








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Well-Earned Treat

Coffee and Crepes at Cafe Morning Glory








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Kids Cooling Off in the River

a few minutes from home