TJ Bike to Atami

Hello thrill seekers!

First, I want to mention I will be cleansing this list soon.  If you are certain
you want to be ON the list, send me an email to let me know.

My mass email plan is to send one large summary of my visit to Palestine, and then
send messages from the Peace Boat again!  I have been accepted to teach on the ship
from December 26th to March 30th, 2006, for a southern hemisphere cruise:
http://robnugen.com/travel/pb/52/itinerary.shtml

- - -

Recently, I rode TJ Bike (as in bicycle) from Tokyo to Atami, about 100 kilometers.
(I'll take a moment to mention one good thing about kilometers: they are shorter
than miles, and make bicycle rides easier, but seem more impressive!)  I planned it
to be an overnight trip on the way there, with a goal of sleeping on the beach in
Odawara.

Some of the uphill climbs were taxing; I haven't really exercised my legs in quite
a while!  I loved the downhills, zooming along with traffic on the highway can be
quite thrilling!  I would love to have a video camera mounted on my helmet; I could
post some great adrenaline rush videos!

I made the ride from my friend Jesse's house in Tokyo to Odawara (about 80 km) in
about 6 hours.  I was hungry and cold, but once I found a place on the gravel beach
(underneath an overpass towering overhead) I climbed into my sleeping bag and
almost instantly fell asleep. A spam email on my phone woke me up at which point I
turned off my phone, brushed my teeth, and settled in for the night.

I slept a few hours and then was too cold to sleep anymore.  I grabbed my tent from
TJ Bike's bags and put my sleeping bag in the tent.  I didn't actually use the tent
poles to *set up* the tent, so it was just like sleeping in a mummysack in a big
windproof bag.  It worked well, and I slept until 7am.

Once I got started again, I was really glad to have waited until morning: the first
thing to greet me was an uphill climb, followed by a relatively long bridge with
quite a narrow strip for me to ride between the wall and traffic.

In the remaining 20-few kilometers to Atami, there were two points where the
highway split into a tollway and a highway that climbed curvingly up a few hundred
meters through farming communities whose specialties were tangerines!  Really neat
to see tangerine orchards with monorails winding through the trees to carry the
fruit to the edge of the orchard!

But, the best part of those two sections of road were the downhill portions on the
other side.  Just relax and zooom down the hill with the gravity assist.

I made it into Atami with 3 hours to spare before meeting my friends, the lovely
Cheerful Dancing Fellows, my crazy class from this summer's Peace Boat voyage! 
They chatted a lot and I often tried to keep tabs on their conversations; my
Japanese is not all that great, and their Japanese ability is second to none.

We stayed overnight in a hotel with hot springs, buffet dinner, karaoke, and buffet
breakfast. After enjoying a warm bath in a rooftop hot spring and a lovely view of
the sun coming up over the ocean, we headed back to Atami station, where I was
blessed with food for my trip back to Tokyo!

For some reason, my stomach felt a bit queasy before leaving, and it felt almost
like I was nervous or something.  I double checked all my bags and backpack and
headed out.

The downhills on the way back were fantastic.  At one point I remember specifically
pacing RIGHT behind a large dump truck with the mountain on my left and the ocean
extending to the horizon on my right. Fabulously ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

About a different downhill, in my bicycle journal I wrote:

     Just went through SHINZENBA tunnel, reaching its entrance at
     13:56. At the apex, just inside was a man walking on the
     sidewalk. Traffic was a good 100 meters behind me in the form of
     a bus, so I slipped off the curb & zoomed past the man before the
     bus zoomed past me. Then ZOOOOOOM ZOOOM ZOOOOOO Flying down the
     hill and PASSING traffic then they all started to slow for a
     construction zone & it got too cozy for me so I stopped passing &
     had to slow down a LOT - cramming on my brakes, not knowing that
     I could slow down quickly enough.. !!!!! But I did. Blessings for
     the subsequent green lights. After the construction I passed
     traffic again and caught up to that bus. Haha!

There were a few other downhill zooms with traffic.  One was an actual traffic exit
ramp, and just as I headed down, I was passed by a rather large truck which
*totally* blocked my path as I gained speed and he was stopped by traffic.  The
gaps around the truck were all narrow and I simply couldn't get past the truck at
that speed with all the variables coming our way around the blind curve. I finally
squeezed past that truck as he actually stopped, my bags barely sliding along the
concrete barrier on my left.  I gained speed again as I zipped past cars with ample
room around them. Lots of green lights for me, but too much traffic for the cars to
move. Beautiful.

That is the kind of traffic for which I want a helmet-mounted camera to record the
adrenaline filled moments.

In the end, it took me 9 hours to ride the 100 kilometers back to Jesse's
(including an hour rain-delay).

I hope everyone has a lovely day!

     - Rob