The Best Worst Beginning

A quick word before recounting the beginning of the trip. Hopefully later I will have the time to tell the full story, but for the sake of background I must explain the importance of Kawasaki san. Since the first night I met him, him and I have become quite good friends, and have met about 3 times a week every week since being in Japan. This has afforded me countless nights of precious Japanese practice, as well as an insurmountable sum of free, delicious dinners (I swear I always offered to pay!).

To be perfectly frank, Kawasaki san has done more for me than I can ever repay (both in money and kindness), and as such the only thing I can do from here is try my absolute hardest to fulfill this crazy dream of mine to ride across all of Japan. So without further adieu, let's see how I've fared thus far.

There I am, just chillin' out on the southernmost point of mainland Japan. NBD.

How did I get there? Well first of all, Kawasaki san decided it would be best if he personally escorted me down to Kagoshima in the south. We would travel by bullet train, rent a car and then figure out the details. Upon renting a car, again it was decided that the best course of action was to take the care by ferry across Kagoshima bay and just drive all the way down to Cape Sata (2 hr drive), where I could just start riding from there.

This plan was significantly faster than my initial thoughts, which involved riding from Kagoshima to Sata in a 3 day (or so) round trip.

So after arriving, seeing the sights and taking some pictures, I unload my bike and nervously set up for my 80 km day (50 miles). After a short argument about who would leave first, I was off on my 6-8 hour ride back to Kagoshima. Excitement was high and blood was pumping after I descended a short hill and climbed another. My body felt solid and my legs strong as I pedaled and pedaled, each stroke bringing me closer to the beginning of a once in a lifetime trip. The humidity was high, but I didn't care because I was living the dream, baby! I was on a bike, flying down a hill without a care in the world, about to blaze my way across an entire country and I BOOOOOOM! My tire hits something hard and the bike wobbles for a moment. "Well that sounded just plain awful, I hope everything is ok" I say to myself.

I didn't actually have time to finish that thought, because my tire had gone completely flat before I was able. Contrary to the length of the description above, this all occurred in just under 5 minutes, within the first 500 meters of the trip. As fate would have it, the winner of the "who would leave first" argument was Kawasaki san, and about 2 minutes of walking later, he comes rolling up to ask what was wrong. Luckily I still don't have enough Japanese to convey my feelings of embarrassment/defeat for having a minor failure so soon, so as I loaded my bike into his car, smiles and small talk were really the only options.

I wasn't able to repair the tire, because we had left my bags in Kagoshima, thus I had only a patch kit and some tire levers with me (which are surprisingly ineffective when dealing with a burst tire). Therefore, Kawasaki san and I just drove all the way back to Kagoshima. Upon arriving, Kawasaki san and I have a party with some of his oldest friends from elementary school in order to celebrate my first day. After I finished explaining that celebration wasn't necessary, we proceeded to have a wonderful time as planned.

Dinner (which consisted of fish that my host had caught on the same day) with some more of the nicest people I have ever met!

Day 1: 0.5 / 3200 km ridden

Day 2 actually held a bigger surprise. This blog needs to be a full disclosure description of my many experiences/successes/failures. As such, I must admit that I wasn't able to practice riding with loaded panniers for even one minute before beginning day 2, a projected 90 km (56 mile) day. Thankfully, it turns out that riding with panniers (bike bags) in traffic is TERRIFYING when you don't have a sense for their weight. Call me blessed, but the presence of a torrential downpour the moment I began riding also sweetened the deal.

Needless to say, I pulled over, waited a bit, spent 30 minutes doubting myself and generally freaking out when I decided that two things are true about my current plan. 1.) quitting is not an option, unless thievery or injury prevents continuation. 2.) as long as I finish the trip generally around 55 days from now, I'll be just fine. Since Kawasaki san already saved me 3 days by driving me to and from the Cape, I have a bit of time to spare.

So day 2 was instead a mental prep day. Japanese people are really good at keeping you busy, so I really hadn't had time yet to take in my current location and mental state. Furthermore, an opportunity to get some tune-up work done on my bike and, most importantly, practice riding with loaded panniers, was too good to waste. Finally, checking into a hotel and renting a laptop (for free!) would be a great way to catch up on some much needed blogging.

Rather than make an real distance on the trip, I waited out the rainstorm, my girlfriend helped me find a cheap hotel and then I spent the whole day riding around with loaded panniers to familiarize myself with the feeling. Overall, a quite successful, though technically unproductive day!

Day 2: 55 km ridden, 0 km progress made.

Total distance covered: 0.5 / 3200 km (totally badass, I know)

I truly truly hope that I am able to continue finding enormous Buddhas  just chilling out in open fields

Tomorrow will be the real test, though. 80 km and no idea where to sleep will surely give me a sense of the adventure I'm looking for here!