Who's Idea Was This Anyway?

I was awake at about 4am (thanks, jet lag) with the sun just starting to rise. Sumi was still passed out, so I took the opportunity to get caught up on my three certification classes that I'm taking this summer. They are all online. They all started the last week of classes. So, I'll be spending some of our downtime here doing homework and reading. It's not that bad, really.

We got moving and hit the road around 6:30. Leaving Koga was a piece of cake, and we hopped back on the cycling path and continued on to our eventual destination of Nikko. The cycling path, at this section, had a lot of points where it would start and stop, joining city streets for a short time, etc. The maps that we were provided by the web site that does all of this were, in a word, terrible. They highlighted obvious intersections, then ignored confusing ones. We pieced together, from three maps, mostly where to go. it was at this point that the first problem was discovered. Our Wi-Fi hotspot that we had rented for the trip...wasn't working. We could connect to it, but it couldn't connect to the Internet. This meant that Maps and Google Maps, which we relied on a lot in our previous trips, wasn't working. We had GPS, thankfully, so we were able to plot ourselves using another app, but the map was not nearly as detailed. Well, we'd have to deal with it today, and figure it out when we got to our hotel.

The ride was more of the same for the first part of the trip. Flat, sunny, hot and uneventful. Other than getting lost, it wasn't bad, but getting lost took a lot of time.

The name of the river watarasegawa, and occasional kilometer markers were
written very large across the bike path so the small aircraft flying
above could read them

Lots of dam apparatus along the river

There were, of course, some amusing signs along the way.

A better mascot than Smokey the Bear

It says pedestrians have the right of way. That's not how I read that picture!

We finally made it into Ashikaga, a city about one third of the way to Nikko at around noon, several hours later than we'd hoped. We worked our way through the city and just made it onto the last section of the path when I noticed that one of Sumi's brand new trailer tires had gone flat. We backtracked to find some shade where I could work my magic once again, and found a nice little playground with some nice shade and a place to sit.

These small 12" tires are real pain to work with.

Now, about two and a half hours behind, we headed back out. And promptly got very lost. We both thought we were going the right way, but after about 30 minutes of flailing around, we realized we had no idea which way we were facing.It was noon, so the sun was almost directly above us, so it was no help. Our bad maps didn't help, and no Internet was just icing on the cake. We finally got out of town around 1pm, now three hours late.

Eventually, after passing through the wonderfully named town of Ohmama (pronounced exactly as it looks), we hit Kiryu, the last town before the mountains. It was getting late, and we had a mountain to climb before getting into Nikko. There will now be almost no pictures, because our only thought was getting to the guest lodge in Nikko before the owner went home.

The climb up to Nikko was about 32 miles. 32 miles of almost constant uphill cycling with 50 pound trailers. It was getting dark, we weren't even on top of the mountain yet and were just totally drained from the heat, the twelve hours of cycling. It was quite reminiscent of the first day out of Tokyo on our last trip, where we limped into our hotel at Mt. Fuji around 9pm with no working lights. That was not an experience we were keen on repeating.

And we almost did. Cresting the mountain, we came to a tunnel 2.8km long. Getting our lights set, we discovered Sumi's wasn't working. What else could go wrong today? Luckily, I had planned for just such an occasion. I pulled out a headlamp I had in my handlebar bag for use in an emergency. Well, this qualified. I swapped my light with Sumi, rigged my headlamp onto my handlebar bag, and off we went. It was also a turning point in the trip. We had been climbing the mountain for the last seven hours, but we finally hit the downhill. And by downhill, I mean down a mountain. We had about 15 miles left to Nikko. Without pedaling, we rolled into town in about 40 minutes, which included stopping several times to check the map. A huge, welcome relief after once of our worst days of cycling.

Yuji-san, the proprietor of the Narusawa Lodge, was friendly and understanding of our bad day. He showed us to our room, let us park the bikes and trailers inside and we gratefully showered and passed out almost immediately.

Narusawa Lodge, our Elysium