(Written on the 13th, scheduled with time delay.)
Right after I gave my bike to Kuroneko for airport delivery I was in shock. After one busy event after another, I had some free time to think. I sat down at a random 'park' (that is, a free bit of concrete) and after a while finally calmed down. I had anticipated this moment, because I thought that moment would clearly show how I felt about the impulsive decisions I had been making recently. Instead, what came was only a mild rationalization with no clear sway towards thinking it was a good or bad decision to go back early. My mind was still full of worry about the day's hotel and if I would be able to cancel all the next hotels without financial damage. The rest moment wasn't quite there yet.
I know very well that what I'm doing is a pretty weird thing, even for my doing. Impulsive booking a cycling trip, and then impulsively cancelling it and returning early for no tangible/external reason, not many people would do that. Of the small group of people that does touring cycling, an even smaller group does touring cycling alone, and even smaller group would plan (and unplan) a trip the same way I do. This does not bother me in one bit, but I can see that other people may have trouble understanding my motivations. Hell, I have trouble understanding my motivations. That's why I write blogposts like these.
Yesterday I awoke from the love hotel quite early. I never managed to turn the lights off and I left the outside door ajar just to cool the damn place down. It's an utterly terrible place to sleep. I'd even prefer a capsule hotel over a love hotel, but that's only because capsule hotels tend to be way cheaper. Anyway, I went for a short stroll through early morning Kochi (yes, I can say where I am now!) and walked towards the station. Not many people were awake yet on this Sunday morning. I considered taking a train back to Tokushima, which is where I came from when I took the ferry with my bike. But the connection between train stations and ferry ports seemed tedious so I got a train ticket instead. The Limited Express from Kochi to Okayama went along much of the same route that I had cycled the day before. It felt like rewinding the trip. Somehow, in retrospect, I still hadn't quite found my rest moment yet at this time.
Then I hopped on the Shinkansen to Osaka and did some shopping. Yodobashi is fantastic as always. I wanted new noise cancelling earphones since I lost some bits of my old ones on the flight in. Yodobashi provides. When it came to lunch I was deeply appalled though. Osaka station area is shockingly, disgustingly busy on a Sunday. Every restaurant had a queue of people waiting in front of it. I absolutely hate this. Queueing for food is just not my thing. I'm definitely not a city person. I also thought about finding a quiet cafe after lunch but that was clearly impossible as well. Yet somehow on my way back towards the station I found one place inside the station building that wasn't very busy, and I managed to have quite a decent curry there.
My final hotel is near the airport, and only a short train ride away from Osaka. And a bit of a walk, it turns out. Unfortunately my Google Pixel GPS chose exactly this moment to stop working, so I had to navigate the old-fashioned way. It wasn't much of an issue though. But at the end of the day (again, in retrospect), still no 'closure' moment about the trip.
The closure moment finally came today. I have a day free to do whatever I want since my flight is not until tomorrow, so I took a local train to Wakayama. I went on the train, put my new earphones in, put some music on and just sat back and enjoyed the scenery. That's when I realized: this moment is all I really wanted from this trip. One quiet, peaceful moment, to experience Japan the way I remember it, without any stress, or worries, or hurries. All I needed was one day.
That's when I knew I was comfortable with my decision. I knew what the way forward was. The way forward for me is not Japan, because I have been there before. You can never go back. There is only forward. You can never derive the same enjoyment from the same thing twice. It diminishes every time. That is why you must do new things. It may seem like common sense, or a thing you can make yourself realize just by thinking about it, but you can't. You really can't. You need to confront yourself with this reality somehow, otherwise it just doesn't hit home. For me, making an impulsive decision was the way to make me truly realize this. A lesson I learn in this way is a lesson I will never forget.
As an interlude and totally secondary reason, one very practical reason for feeling great about my decision is this: it's raining. It's a gray and miserable day today, and the area I'd be cycling in is even worse according to the weather report. Wind and rain are pointless hardships. At least when you're climbing a mountain you're suffering for a payoff, but there is no payoff for cycling in the wind and the rain for the whole day. All it does is make you feel more miserable.
That's the lesson of this for me: you can never go back, and repeating past experiences diminishes the value over time. You can compare it a bit to playing games: after you've leveled up sufficiently, you don't go back to the first level to hang around and repeat the same quests over and over again, right? There's always a next level, but the levels you've completed, they're done. They're fun to revisit after you've done them, but you'll never again feel the same challenge that you felt the first time you did it.
I imagine people will read the previous paragraph and think of it as something negative. I don't see it that way though. I'm quite stoically inclined, with a (healthy?) pince of nihilism added to the mix. It's just an unchangeable part of reality for me. I have tested my words on myself and by experimentation have confirmed that they are true, in so far as a statement about a state of mind can be true. So, not 'True' truth, but 'true for me'. I'm very happy about this, because I know it is something I can rely on. It helps me define meaning, so I no longer have to seek for it, or at least not as much as I used to when I first started doing cycling trips.
Tomorrow morning I fly back to the UK. I hope my bike will be at the airport, but now that I've rationalized my trip and my feelings about cycling I know I won't consider this trip a failure even if the bike doesn't make it or is damaged. It would be a minor setback compared to the mental clarity I found. That said, fingers crossed though. The trip's not over yet. But I'm on my way home.