Two Days of Wisdom, pretending to know what I'm talking about

I was able to snag a bit of time, so here's what riding a bike everyday (for 2 days) feels like so far:

Places to go, but nowhere to be

I must say that the strangest part about it is the feeling of having a place to go, but no particular reason to go there. At times it can be somewhat scary, especially with questions like: "Where will you sleep?" Overall, though, it is a truly exciting and new feeling to set off from one town on your way to another, with so many unknowns along the way. I am not sure if that is what "adventure" feels like, but it is pretty neat so far.

On the feeling of distance

The difference, mentally, between my first day and second day was pretty astonishing. I am not sure exactly what I was expecting from riding my bike from place to place, but it certainly took WAY longer than I thought it would. I suppose any time I had ever ridden anywhere by bike, I would usually arrive at my destination no more than 30 minutes later. 

Obviously, this is not true on a bike tour! However, once I had a chance to change my mindset and try to enjoy the surroundings a bit more, everything became easier. Though I had only traveled 45 km or so on the first day, it felt like I had gone for some unbelievable distance. When riding a bike, the added amount of sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts make the journey quite interesting.

Sometimes, a man CAN be an island

For anyone who had done a backpacking trip, they can relate to this feeling, the sense that you are you're own, self-contained bubble. Everything I have with me right now is everything I will have with me for every day of the trip. I am my own ecosystem, my own island chugging along winding mountain roads, and also drying my laundry!

My current setup. Bandana and Towel didn't dry fast enough, so they got the strap treatment.

As it stands now, I am still terribly excited about doing this whole trip, and my motivation has only increased (let's hope it stays that way!). Finding good, cheap places to sleep, I predict, will remain a troublesome and persistent issue, but that's all part of the adventure, right!? 

At least someone here has a sense of humor...

A cycling computer, it can tell you the time AND laugh in your face (7:07 a.m. for those who couldn' tell)

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!

And So It Begins...

On the off chance that those who read this aren't just friends and family, let us begin with a proper introduction.

        So that's me, staring dumbly into the camera with some admittedly beautiful flowers in the background. My name is Dylan Jacoby, I'm 24, and I am going to ride my bike across Japan in order to raise money for the 赤十字 (Japanese Red Cross). I will begin my journey in mid July and it shall end roughly 2 months later. Why am I doing this, you might ask? Let me get right into it, then:

     Suffice to say I have always had an interest in coming to Japan. After graduating college with degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy (like peas in a pod, those two), I taught in a high school for 2 years and then jumped ship and came to Japan. I've been here since the end of January, studying in an intensive language school for 6 weeks and then traveling with friends and my girlfriend until just recently. On May 9, 2011 at 12:34 a.m., I decided I would ride a bike across Japan to raise money, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

     On March 11, Japan was hit by a massive earthquake in the Tohoku region of Japan causing horrific amounts of death and physical damage to the area. Like many Japanese and foreigners in Japan and abroad, I felt the general desire to help by either sending money or trying to actually go there and help out (since I was in Japan I though: "Why not?"). However, as time passed and the news showed more and more of what was actually happening, I progressed past the "Gee I wish I could help out" stage and started to really weigh some options. Here's what I learned about my situation: I have little money, I am young, fit, occasionally intelligent and I love Japan.

So, obviously the only thing I can do is plan a bike ride from one end of Japan to the other, right?  Right.

     Though I am indeed doing this for the benefit of the Japanese Red Cross, I would be lying if I didn't hope to have an unforgettable experience and some stories to tell along the way. I'm actually hoping that the acquisition of stories will make my foray into social networking a more effective fundraising tool. 

     BUT, and this is a big BUT (hence the excessive formatting), there are a few obstacles to overcome before I get on the road. Most importantly, since I didn't plan on this bike ride before coming to Japan, I don't actually have the tools to accomplish this task (i.e. a bike, or any of the other gear), but this is something that I will overcome.

     I was hesitant to begin this blog in the early stages of planning, and even more hesitant to let anyone know that I was writing it. But here you are, anyways. In my life, aside from whatever successes or failures I have been responsible for, none of them have felt particularly rewarding or upsetting. The reason? I've never really done anything risky or terribly important to me. Whenever entering into a situation, I usually knew my chances. Therefore I'm wasn't surprised when I succeeded and it wasn't too painful to fail. But this, my friends, this will be different. I have about 1,000,000 things to do between now and mid-July to make this ride work, and I don't know if I will be able to do them, but I guess that's the reason I've started down this path. I will need to work harder than I ever have starting from now until I am standing on the northern coast of Japan to even hope to accomplish this. My hope is to take some of those that are reading this along for the ride.

     I hope that this blog will be a way for people to hear my story, donate to my cause and maybe have a good time looking at some pictures. Like these one:

Posing with the infamous Banana Man and Friends

I'm not sure I got the pose right...

     Like I said, I am hesitant to begin this blog so early in the stages of development, but now I have pigeon-holed this blog into one of two scenarios. 

1.) I will not accomplish what I have set out to do, and I will (hopefully) learn from it and be stronger for it.

2.) I will chronicle the story of someone who had no idea what they were doing and then accomplished something pretty neat.

Maybe I'll throw a poll up here and see what you guys think ;)

PLUG TIME!!

Donate to the Red Cross:

     First and foremost, donate to the Red Cross! I would like to keep track of donations in my name, but that will come later, I would rather someone donate now, if they are willing. The benefit to donating to the Red Cross instead of the various "Earthquake Only" charities that have sprung up is that, on the off chance that too much money is sent to Japan on behalf of the earthquake, the money will be put towards the various other humanitarian programs they are running (more on those in a later post).

Donate to the Japanese Red Cross by clicking the button at the top of the page!


My Japanese Language School

For anyone interested, I had a very nice experience with the school I attended here in Fukuoka, Japan. So here's their website:

Genki Japanese and Culture School

And so it begins!

On Sunday, July 24, 2011, I will begin my long and arduous journey across Japan. I'll start out at Cape Sata and make the 60 mile trek to Kagoshima in just one day. 

Here goes nothing...