What Were We Thinking?

"Pack up all those phantoms
Shoulder that invisible load
Keep on riding north and west
Haunting that wilderness road
Like a Ghost Rider"


Well, we successfully made it from Ueno to Lake Yamanaka...

Fueling up for the trip!

We were up and out of our hotel at a reasonable 5:00AM. The sun had risen and the streets were largely quiet as we set out on our twisting path through Toyko, aiming to leave via Route 3 out of Shibuya. Now, Tokyo was designed long ago to withstand invasion. As a result, the roads, even the major ones, snake through the city, turning at seemingly random points, sometimes stopping and starting again with no obvious plan. Add to that the fact that streets are often called several things, and signage is sporadic, and we were jet-lagged, it took us several hours to travel the 15 or so miles from Ueno to the outskirts of town, having to stop and check our route every few blocks, waiting on traffic lights timed for something other than bikes, making wrong turns, not knowing what road was on our map. Not the most auspicious way to start our trip. But it was OK, things were going to get much worse.

As an aside, it was quite interesting biking through the Diet area, where all the governmental and diplomatic buildings resided. As we, two very lost gaijin on funny-looking bikes with big trailers, were weaving our way through the streets, we kept coming across government police standing guard at various posts. Like, a lot of them. One guy was, no kidding, polishing riot shields on the sidewalk as we pedaled by. It was obvious some big government thing was going on later in the day (Sunday) and everyone was preparing, and it was a sharp reminder at how paranoid the US has become. I'm sure there were about ten people monitoring us as we zig-zagged in a confused fashion through the area, but no one stopped us, there were no roads closed off, no weapons of any kind were visible. If we were trying to bike through D.C. and had this happen, the capitol police would have fallen all over themselves knocking us off our bikes at gunpoint and ripping them and our trailers looking for anything nefarious all in the name of "security". What was it Frank Herbert wrote? "Fear is the mind-killer, fear is the little death that brings total obliteration"

In any case, we finally made it out of Tokyo and were way behind schedule, so there wasn't much time for sight-seeing and pictures, but we did manage to make a few stops along the way. Just west of Tokyo, in Setagaya, was the Okura Daibutsu, a large Buddha statue that, I've read, rotates 180 degrees at sunrise and again at sunset. It was standing pretty still when we saw it.

Okura Daibutsu

A little further along, we saw the first of several Fox Shrines (specific meaning unknown to this blogger), small Shinto shrines set up in various places along the route.

Maybe they are just having a staring contest?

Once we realized just how far behind we had gotten, we started pedaling in earnest to try and make up some time. The next leg of our trip was a very beautiful ride along the Tamagawa, an east-west river that flows through many of the outer suburbs of Tokyo. There was a large bike path that ran most of the length of the river that was full of joggers, walkers and cyclists, most of them far more serious that us.

flowers in bloom along the path

Why a rhino?

A fairy riding a beetle?!!?

All along the river there were soccer fields, baseball diamonds and many other kinds of outdoor sporting settings with kids as well as adults just out playing on a Sunday morning. We were so confused by the lack of signs and our bad map that it took us quite a while to figure out when and how to get on the bike path, and wasted even more time when we came across the bridge at which we were supposed to turn off, only to find a marathon being run and the turn-around point was our on ramp. Of course, we were so lost it took us a few miles to figure out that was to bridge we wanted...

As it began to approach noon, we had been on the road for seven hours and were not nearly halfway to our destination, we pulled into a park that served as a rest stop along the shores of Lake Tsukui, about 30 miles outside of Tokyo for some rest and Japanese "soft serve" ice cream, which is nothing like American soft serve and is quite delicious. The park was beautiful, and about a hundred people were out enjoying the beautiful weather.

Various flower gardens in a "Roman Garden" setting, according to the signs

And we spotted our first real Engrish of the trip

Are those like sweet brussel sprouts?

At this point, we began the long climb up towards Fuji-san (Mt. Fuji). We've ridden up large mountains before, but this was something else. A total vertical ascent of 1750 meters (that's over a mile for you metric-haters out there) along about 50km (30 miles), all of this AFTER nine hours of biking, dragging our heavy trailers. The scenery was fantastic,

Pay no attention to the "phantom" cars. They ruined my panoramic shot.

or at least it was until it started getting dark. After about 13 hours on the road, we were exhausted and it was getting dark. Our new, rechargeable lights were very bright and did a good job lighting the road as we walked our bikes up 9-10% grades, too tired to even think about pedaling up them. After nearly six hours of continuous climbing, Sumi's bike light had run out of power, it was pitch black and we were still miles away from our destination and could barely keep pushing our bikes up the seemingly endless slope. We had turned off the rental cell phone, which we had been using to help pinpoint where we were, because it was nearly out of power, as well, but turned it on to call our ryoukan and let them know we were still coming, but not there yet. 

We were quite literally about to lock up our bikes and call a taxi to come get us when we, against all odds, came across a road construction crew directing traffic in the middle of a forest on top of a mountain. At this point, we were both completely spent. The thin mountain air made it hard for us to catch our breath, we had been on the road for almost 15 hours after a nearly 24 hour day flying from Chicago into Tokyo, we had one bike light and I can't imagine what was going through the construction worker's head as we stumbled towards him and a white guy gasped at him, in Japanese, how much further it was to Lake Yamanaka. He answered "About thirty minutes, riding fast.", at which point the look on my face must have been priceless, because he added "you just finished the worst part. It's all winding downhill after this". 

Downhill. We could still do downhill.

After a few more excruciating minutes of pushing our bikes, we came across a tunnel at the top of the mountain. Sumi had wedged her iPhone in her handlebar bag and turned on the flashlight for a makeshift, and quite bright, bike light. Mine had gone out, by this time, and there was very little moonlight that made it through the trees. We looked at each other, then started coasting down the mountain by iPhone light. 

...to be continued