Cycling

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Done

Posted on 2025-05-26 09:29 by randy

I made it to Haneda. The above map is all the cycling I did this trip, minus the disastrous first day via Yokohama and Enoshima. The direct cycle from Atsugi to Haneda is definitely a slog – the first part is very mildly hilly but mostly annoying because there are so many roads and urban sprawl to navigate. Once I hit route 4 it was surprisingly green and lovely, I didn’t think to see more trees and forest towwards Tokyo. Even the urban buildings and infrastructure were covered in greenery. That, combined with the fact that there were very little people around, reminded me a lot of the Last of Us. Fortunately I did not get bitten by zombies.

After that the journey turns into a very pleasant riverside cycle all the way up to Kawasaki. The cycle path is smooth and easy to follow, and I quite enjoyed, although it was surprisingly cold today. I never thought I’d be buying a hot drink from the conbini in late May, but I did, and it fixed me right up. Kawasaki was easy to navigate, and before I knew it I was already in Haneda. I’ve not done the cycle to Haneda that often yet, but it is ‘customary’ for me to have a little break at the shrine in front of the airport before ‘finishing’ the journey. It feels like it’s the last moment of ‘Real Japan’ before heading into the international airport area, where there are lots of foreigners and everyone is rude again.

The last time I cycled to Haneda I also had an early morning flight – I cycled to Haneda late in the afternoon and tried to get some sleep in the airport, which was a terrible idea and I felt like crap in the morning, so I got a hotel this time. Yup, that’s lifestyle inflation, right there.

Two things stand out as things I’ve noticed on this trip. The first one is that there are just a lot less conbinis everywhere. I was talking to a friend and she didn’t think so, but I definitely noticed it. The ones I used to go to are all gone, and in all the places I’ve cycled at this time there’s the telltale tiles of former 7-11s and Lawsons everywhere that have now turned into moving companies, dentists and whatnot. Lots of dentists.

The other thing that was impossible to not notice when cycling Japan is the absolute terror and havoc caused by Japanese moms on electric bicycles.How do I know that they’re moms? There’s a very specific electric bicycle type that’s made specifically for carrying little children. It’s lower than a regular bike and has at least one kid seat, usually in the back. These bicycles are truly a menace to society. There are no rules, no laws. They do what they want and they go as fast as they damn well like. Will they pass you on the left or the right? Or will they play chicken with you and expect you to get out of the way? It’s a mad max world out here on the cycle paths of Japan. Moms on bikes have always been chaotic, but the rise of electric bicycles has supercharged the madness. Make your intentions known very early and give a very wide berth. Or, just stay on the road. It’s usually better.

So, what next? Am I done cycling Japan now? Am I going to do another one of these trips? Chances are very high that I’ll be back in Atsugi again for cycling, although I wish there was a better way to do it other than bringing my own bicycle. It’s always such a hassle. You can’t carry bicycles on trains any more (even when bagged) apparently, and the bus company for the bus from Haneda to Atsugi has said to me that they’ll no longer accept bagged bicycles as luggage. They’ve said this to me at least three times now, and some pleading has worked in the past, but it’s not exactly a reliable option going forward. Then there’s the hassle of bagging the bike up, unbagging it, hoping that nothing broke in transit, and then tweaking all the little things like brakes, gears, saddle and handlebars. It’s not too bad, as long as nothing breaks, but that’s always a worry.

A better way would be to just have a nice bike available on arrival, but the electric rental bikes are.. almost great, but often not. They’re not always available, and if they are, I found that there’s a fair chance that the battery won’t be fully charged. As I found out last winter, they are an absolutely pain to use when the battery’s dead, and it’ll drain quickly when someone my size cycles it up a hill.

So I’m not sure yet. I am wondering if perhaps the next time I will bring my own bicycle and cycle somewhere else. I don’t want to commit to “the big trip up North”, but perhaps I can do a casual sneak peek and see if it’s a thing I’m still interested in. We will see. For now though, I’m coming back from this trip feeling ten years younger and very excited about the future. It’s been a classic.

(On a totally unrelated note, I started playing Balatro this trip. It’s a fantastic game, definitely worth checking out even if you’re not into card games.)

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Miyagase

Posted on 2025-05-23 09:30 by randy

It starts out easy. Smooth sailing. Just enjoy the scenery. Beauty. Then suffering. Hardship, for a long time. But when you’ve reached the top, there is beauty again. And before you know it, it’s time to go back again. The return journey is effortless and thrilling, a rewarding payoff for the hardship you’ve endured. And then, it ends as smoothly and beautifully as it began.

The perfect day of cycling. For me. Others will say “pah, such a short and easy cycle?”, or “there are much more beautiful spots to cycle in Japan”. To those people, I say “fuck you, go away, this is my blog, what are you doing here, jeez”. I’ve been cycling all my life. In the past I often wondered why I often didn’t like the same things other people liked. When I was younger this made me insecure. As I got older that insecurity turned into stubbornness and just being comfortable with myself. I’m leaning more into the things I like, doing the things I want, and it’s been great. There is no place in the world I would rather cycle than right here, around Atsugi.

Today I cycled to Miyagase dam. It’s a route that feels like it’s mine. I “discovered” it a long long time ago, back when I was living here, before smart phones were a thing and I had to navigate the old fashioned way. I had spotted the mountain lake on a map, and made a route for myself with the least possible amount of turns and junctions. I went there by myself first. Then, a couple of weeks later, I sent out an open invite to all of the other foreigners who were working with me in Atsugi, and a large group of us went on a wild whole day cycling trip to the lake, most of them on good old mamacharis. That trip was one of the most memorable trips I’ve ever done in Japan. I hope that the other people who were on that trip feel the same way. I think, for a lot of us, it was one of the last things we did together before real life and real world responsibilities arrived or returned into our lives.

Unlike the first two cycles this trip I came prepared. I remember the little things that make cycling bearable in Japan: nipple plasters, a towel under my hat and around my ears so I don’t get sunburn, and an extra base layer for when the first one’s totally soaked in sweat. Turns out, when you’ve prepped well, cycling can be a lovely experience. Disregard my previous post, cycling is great again.

I’ve been back many times since then because it’s just a beautiful route. Every time I go I’ll remember without fail how incredibly alien everything was to me (I was really just a simple Dutch country bumpkin the first time I came here, I had never seen hills, let alone mountains..), and how incredibly tough the climb was the first time(s) I did it. I remember exactly the places I stopped to gasp for breath, to buy more drinks (the final convenience store before the lake shut down, sadly..), and to just sit and recover for a while. And I just cycle past it. I’ve gotten older, I’ve got all kinds of health issues, but I am definitely better at cycling than when I first came here. So at least I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

There’s a “secret”‘ tunnel at the far end of Miyagase dam at the end of the lake, which leads to a very nice and quiet lakeside road that goes back along the far side of the lake. There’s a small-ish tunnel at the far end of the dam park that leads to that road. I’ve been there many times throughout the years, and it’s always been rather ambiguous about whether you’re allowed to go there or not. And by ambiguous I mean there’s no obvious barriers, English signs or Japanese signs with big red letters, so in my mind that means “try it and see what happens”.

Since no one shouted at me when I went in the tunnel, I happily continued along the nice and quiet lakeside road, until I got to the end. Contrary to previous years, there was now a big giant gate, which was closed. Next to it sat an old man, guarding the gate, looking the other way. Because why would anyone come from the inside of the gate, right? He really wasn’t paying any attention to the side that I came from, and at that point I could have easily popped my bike up across the guardrail to the side of the road, which opened up into a public car park, but I thought it would be funnier to surprise our gate guard. I gave him a “konnichiwa” and startled the shit out of him, and he asked me where in the hell I came from. I told him “from the dam”, and he seemed quite surprised, but not angry. Then he just opened the gate and waved me through. I guess I wasn’t supposed to have taken that road after all. It’s fun every time though.

The way back was fantastic. All of the uphill suffering on the way in turned into roads that were sloped just right for a decent but not dangerous speed going down. It was actually quite chilly at the lake, especially in the tunnels, but as I descended again the air became noticeably warmer as I got closer to sea level. What a great feeling. I really missed this. Finally a classic cycle day.

Posted in Cycling | Tagged

I did it again

Posted on 2025-05-22 04:33 by randy

Jetlag seems to get worse and worse as I get older. Last night I went to bed around midnight, fell asleep pretty quickly, then woke up at 2am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Ugh. I had planned to cycle to the lake today, which I was pretty excited about at 2am, but by the time it was 6am and I still couldn’t sleep, I just wanted to stay in bed all day. It’s costing me a lot of effort lately to just go out and cycle. Still, I managed. Old man, two hours of sleep, chafed nipples, sunburnt face and ears.

Yesterday I ranted about all the humbuggy things that got worse, today I should give props to something that got better: the cycle route along the riverside is just very nice now. There’s no longer any need to veer off into Hiratsuka to get around some major road or train track. I’m pretty sure the riverside is now the fastest route between the two cities, given the stupid amount of traffic lights on the main road.

I’m still committing noob cycling mistakes. Two days ago I wore a base layer that was way too thick for the weather and I ended up with sweat rash on my arms. Today I wore a thin, non-cycling base layer that tends to be really good for everything else, but unfortunately it just got drenched in sweat and did not dry up at all during the cycle, so I was cold and wet by the time I got back to the hotel. Lesson re-learned: I need to get some better base layers. At least I managed to do laundry after I got back. Now it’s time to catch up on some sleep..

Posted in Cycling | Tagged

Oof

Posted on 2025-05-20 14:47 by randy

Disregard everything I wrote about cycling and cycling trips two days ago. Cycling sucks. I suck. Everything sucks. What was supposed to be an epic victory today turned into easily one of my top 5 worst cycling days. The worst part is, I’ve really got no one else to blame but myself.

It all started out pretty well yesterday. Although the immigration at Haneda took forever, the bike arrived fine and nothing was broken. I managed to put it all together yesterday evening at the hotel near Haneda, with the intent of cycling to Atsugi via Kamakura and Enoshima today. At 10pm the jet lag hit and I was out like a light. Sadly I did not wake up early in the morning – I woke up at midnight, and I did not manage to fall asleep again. My jet lag seems to get worse with age, but perhaps it was also the excitement of doing my victory ride – any cycle that takes me back to Atsugi on my own bike is always a highlight for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, up the point where it got to 7am and I started micro-obsessing about the routes to take, the sunlight hours to avoid, and so on. At that point the fatigue started to hit, I got a headache and wanted nothing more than to just stay in my hotel room all day.

Two paracetamols later I was on my way. I was dreading the first part the most, because the roads between Haneda and Kamakura are the ones I’m least familiar with, and there’s always tons of traffic. Traffic ended up being less bad than I expected, but I did spend a significant amount of time tweaking my saddle and handlebars since any previous alignment got lost when packing the bike up for travel. I ended up cycling with a crooked steering wheel and a sideways saddle for a while until I got fed up with it, took my luggage off (otherwise I couldn’t reach the bolts) and fixed it. Unfortunately, even though it was supposed to be sunny all day, the sky was massively hazy and there were some insanely wild gusts of wind, even in downtown Yokohama. Definitely not great conditions for cycling, and I got sandblasted many a time as my route took me along the coast later on.

Yokohama, and many other cities in Japan, do this thing where they pretend to be cycle-friendly by having a separate area of the sidewalk marked off as a cycle lane. Unfortunately (I’m using this word a lot in this post) that area is a complete wild west, with crazy moms on cyber-electrobikes passing you left and right and causing general chaos wherever they go. What’s worse, there are many major junctions everywhere where the cycle lane just veers off into the street being crossed, and there’s barriers everywhere between the sidewalk and road, so you can’t just hop on the road and cycle straight on. The only ways to get around those is to either go into the crossing street until the next normal zebra’d crossing, or to carry your bicycle up and down an overpass. Both of these options suck, so the best way to deal with these kinds of situations is to just cycle on the road, completely defeating the purpose of those “convenient” sidewalk bike lanes.

By around 10am I had finally sorted out all my alignment issues and left the worst part of Yokohama and it’s wild gusts of wind behind me. My original plan had been to cycle via Kamakura, but at this point it had become very clear to me that I was way more tired than usual. I bonked, had shivers and felt generally miserable, right at the point where the roads started to get hilly. On the short cycles I do on the exercise bike I tend to be not in terrible shape, but I have noticed a bit of a decline after starting the weight loss medication I’m on. This definitely seemed related, because I don’t usually feel this fatigued and empty after a fairly short and flat ride. I foolishly decided to mostly stick with my original route, with a slight modification: taking the national route 1 to Fujisawa and Enoshima, bypassing Kamakura entirely. A slight shortening but still sticking to the spirit of the original plan.

I could have, at that point, decided to go straight to Atsugi, but that would have come with its own navigational challenges, so I figured that, as long as I get to the seaside, it’s smooth sailing from there. Unfortunately (there’s that word again) route 1 has a little bit near Totsuka where the signage indicates that no bicycle are allowed. I could have backtracked a bit and taken a major side road, but instead, I saw a tunnel going underneath route 1 that seemed to be a more direct way forward, so I went with that. That was a big mistake.

I ended up being lost (with a maps app!) for half an hour around these parts. Despite checking the map at literally every corner, the roads were so unintuitive that I ended up doing a full circle back to this horribly steep hill, which I ended up having to push my bike up twice before managing to escape, all the while in the full 30 degree sun while worrying that my sunscreen had drooped off due to the excessive sweating I was doing. Not great. Whoever designed that neighborhood must love mazes. Eventually I managed to make it out of there but those hills definitely drained whatever energy I had left, and I was on reserve power from there on with a good 35km left to go..

And that’s when my nipples started to chafe! Yet another one of those joys of cycling I had forgotten about. Out of energy, nipples chafing, I continued on towards Enoshima, where I received some renewed facial sandblasting from the crazy winds at the seaside. I decided to take a break there and sit out the peak sun hour, though I could barely get any food in me. It just seemed that my body had shut down entirely, waiting for me to finish cycling before doing anything again.

The rest of the way wasn’t too eventful, though it was slow going. I was on familiar territory again, and route 134 has some decent wind shielding and uninterrupted road cycling, at least compared to the more urban areas I had just come from. Despite it being flat all the way to Atsugi I did end up taking a recovery break again mid-way because I could feel myself running out of energy again. This will sound like a duh moment, and I feel stupid even writing it, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to do any serious cycling while on weight loss medication. At least I’ve proven that now.

Despite the haziness and my lack of energy, I did manage to appreciate the moment where the suburbs of Hiratsuka finally end and there’s this brief bit of rice fields and mountain views before reaching Atsugi. I love seeing this every time, it never gets old.

This day is definitely in my top 5 worst cycling days, maybe even the top 3. I’m not sure about the rest of the rankings, but the two worst cycling days are definitely that time I severely underestimated the climb up to the Fuji five lakes, and that time I climbed up towards Mount Aso while also getting a flat tire and getting stopped by police. Oh, and to top it all off, after I reached the hotel and tried to sync my cycling data to Garmin, Garmin conveniently lost the entire day when I had to set up my bike computer with my laptop. Thanks Garmin..

So, while this post might seem like the start of another big adventure, it really isn’t. I’m only in Japan for a week, and it looks like the weather is taking a turn for the worse later this week, so this might have been the most cycling I’ll do this time. Still, suffering makes for a powerful memory. I won’t soon forget this day, and I have good hope that I can pick up the more strenuous cycles again once I’m off the weight loss medication. Here’s to the future.

Posted in Cycling | Tagged

Freedom

Posted on 2025-05-18 17:30 by randy

It’s 2025 and I have never been this free in my life. Freedom has been on my mind a lot throughout my life. When I was younger I used to think freedom was a universal good thing, but after the last few years (the last decade, really) I’ve come to see that reality is, as usual, a bit more nuanced. Ultimate freedom, for all the good that it would do, would also mean that you are not tied to anything. I miss being tied to my parents, my home country, and to the life I used to lead back in Japan. I still strongly enjoy the freedoms that I have, but now that I’m older, I also appreciate my ties, my bonds, a lot more.

In the past I’ve not been the best at acknowleding the ties that I have (had). As the saying goes, you only know what you have, when it’s gone. The sense of gone-ness has featured a lot in my life lately, and I’m still learning where to place that. People die. I’ve lost connection with the people and places that used to matter to me. My health is not getting any better. Getting old fucking sucks. Such is life. During the shit times, those negatives are all I can see.

But recently something happened that made me see my life in a whole new, much more positive, light: I started on weight loss medication. I’ve not been on it for that long yet, and I’ve had some miserable moments during the first two months I was on it, but two weeks ago I experienced something of an epiphany. For the first time in literally ten years, I didn’t have to worry about any stomach issues. I didn’t have to worry about what I ate, or how it would make me feel afterwards. It felt fantastic.

And with that came flooding back my excitement for life. I suddenly realized that, all the things that I do for fun, I didn’t really do for fun any more. I just did them because they were “things I did”. Sure, I derived some level of satisfcation from it, but it suddenly felt insigificant compared to how I felt at that moment. I realized that I could do things again and enjoy them as much as I used to. I realized that, no, it’s not just all downhill from here as I get older. Some things can get better. Some things will get better.

It reminded me of one time, when I was in my mid-twenties, sitting on a hard airport floor in Switzerland somewhere, because my flight was delayed for several hours. It sounds miserable, but at the time I felt absolutely fantastic. I was at the top of my physical game and my freedom game at the time, and I would’ve felt great anywhere. That is the feeling of excitement, of being comfortable with myself, that I have found again. It’s not always there (yet), I definitely still have plenty of moments where I’m my old numb self again. But the spark is there. Thanks to this feeling I have a reminder of what it feels like to enjoy life again. I am motivated.

The same week during which I had my epiphany, I booked a week off, bought a plane ticket to Japan, and packed up my bicycle for travel. I’m going cycling in Japan on my own bike, for the first time in ten years. It won’t be a mega serious cyling trip since I’ve only got one week and I intend to stay in Kanagawa, but it feels like the start of something new. Over the past ten years I’ve thought a lot about finally “finishing” cycling in Japan, by doing the last quarter of the coastline between Tokyo and the northernmost point of Hokkaido. And all those years I had been silently dreading that trip, because it’s the least hospitable cycling one could do in Japan, and I knew it would be a serious challenge for me given my physical state. So I swore it off. After my parents died, I asked myself how much I actually valued that trip versus the hardship it would give me, and I realized that it just wouldn’t do anything for me. It wouldn’t mean anything. And I stand by that. But now, with my newfound excitement and, hopefully, future physical fitness, I can also see a world where a trip like that is not a massive hardship for me, and I can definitely see myself deriving excitement and satisfcation from an epic cycling trip like that. Even if I never end up doing it, I have regained the freedom to do it if I feel like it. And that feels fantastic.

I’m writing this from an airport lounge at Heathrow. Life has been kind to me in that way. No more cold floor tiles in Swiss airports. I’ve got some sunny days ahead of me, no fixed schedule, no worries on my mind, and a newfound physical fitness. If you asked me even two years ago that I’d be where I am now, I could not have imagined it. But here I am. New adventure, here I come.

Posted in Cycling , Thoughts | Tagged

The electric bike

Posted on 2022-04-16 17:42 by randy

Last summer I decided to buy an electric bike conversion kit from Cyclotricity. They sell a 250W front wheel kit that doesn't require any major assembly or hacking into your bike, so I thought I'd give it a go. I'd like to think that I'm still as fit as I was ten years ago (because ten years ago I wasn't that fit either..) but I've definitely put on some weight since then.. Since my last major touring cycle I've probably put on as much as the weight of the touring luggage I used to carry, so it's as if any ride is a touring ride these days. Can't blame anyone but myself for that though.

The front wheel kit is pretty easy to install. The simplest version (the one that I got) comes with a battery, a controller box, a throttle (no pedal assist here, it's all manual control) and a front wheel that contains the motor, so in theory all you have to do is stick the bits on your bike without any disassembly other than taking the front wheel off. I did run into various difficulties though.

The first surprise was when attempting to put the new wheel onto my fork. It turns out the Surly Long Haul Trucker has some sticky-outy metal bits where the wheel connects with the fork, which is normally fine for almost any wheel because a normal wheel's wheel nuts are usually small enough to fit. But the motorized wheel's nuts were way too big, and I ended having to file large bits of my fork off so the wheel could fit. I'm pretty sure that the bits I filed off were decorative, but I really have no idea how it'll hold up in terms of structural integrity in the long term. The frame was already a write-off anyway since it was bent during a previous plane trip, so it makes for a nice experiment bike.

There were some other issues during mounting: the throttle unit doesn't fully break open, so if you want to put it into your handlebar you have to slide it on. This means having to remove the handlebar tape, brake/gear unit etc. I didn't like the idea of doing that right from the get-go, so I bought a handlebar extender instead, thinking it'd be useful for other purposes as well, like mountaing a smartphone holder and/or light unit. The one I got is way too wide though, and I'm not sure I'd buy it again. The controller unit goes underneath the frame in front of the rear wheel, and I again ran into mounting issues because the clamps provided were just a little bit too wide for my frame, and I ended up having to jury-rig that by wrapping the frame and the unit in tape to prevent the unit from jiggling around too much. It's all very ghetto, but it works.

My little bike shed is pictured below. I remember the days when I used to rent a 'studio' apartment that was a converted garage the size of this..

As you can see the cables are a bit of a mess. There's not really any way around this. I certainly could have tidied them up a bit better, but the way the package is set up is that you'll always end up with a bunch of connectors and wires that need to go somewhere. I can definitely see the value of a bicycle that has everything integrated in the frame.

I did a bunch of rides with it last year and I quite liked it. I hardly noticed the additional weight of the battery pack and wheel motor, probably because my touring bike is pretty heavy to begin with, and so am I. What I definitely did notice is the pull it provides on a hillclimb. The 'throttle' really only has one setting if you're going for the 250W model: on or off. I've cycled hillclimbs with up to a 10-12% gradient with this, and they are a piece of cake, even with a heavy bike and a heavy person on it. 250W is plenty to get up a hill at low speed with only a little human power added. If you're a hardcore cyclist and/or a glutton for punishment I'm sure it's hard to imagine 'cheating' by skipping the uphills, but for someone like me who's not in it for the performance, this is fantastic. Because of where I live I pretty much cannot avoid a 10% hillclimb if I want to go anywhere, and the motor just lets me 'skip' this without too much effort, or alternatively I can keep my speed up by adding my own power.

Before I bought this I did wonder if the front wheel unit would have enough grip when pushing, since the weight will be on the rear wheel, but so far I've not had a single issue. The front wheel motor is plenty grippy for every situation I've encountered.

What I like: it doesn't actually feel much heavier than usual, and I can skip any uphills that I don't want to do so I can preserve my strength to do longer rides.

What I don't like: the cables are an unavoidable mess, and I'm not really sure about the reliability. I did one longer ride last year where the motor kept cutting out on me despite the battery telling me it still had plenty of juice left. I couldn't reproduce that this year with a freshly charged battery, so I suspect it's not a case of faulty wiring or motor issues, but just the battery not being very accurate about its actual level. I need to do more rides to confirm that though. And even if it does fail: "escalators don't break down, they just turn into stairs". It's the same for an electric bike.

I still love cycling.

Posted in Cycling , UK

Life in the UK: Quarantine and Cycling

Posted on 2020-04-12 13:36 by randy

It's been a month now since I came back to the UK after my holiday in Egypt. As soon as I got home I received a phone call from my boss emphatically telling me, in case I hadn't checked my work email yet, not to come to work. I've been working from home for a month now, and it has been utterly fantastic. I'm definitely lucky and privileged here. Others will prefer more face-to-face human interaction, or have jobs or even lives that are at risk because of this. On a societal level this crisis is a terrible thing. But if I'm being perfectly honest: my quality of life has only improved since we went into quarantine.

The main thing I have gained is time. No more 1.5-hour commutes. That's 3 hours of my time back every day. Being able to spend that freely on things that I enjoy doing has made me feel so much better about myself. No more becoming frustrated at train delays or overcrowded and overheated train carriages. I just get to relax and enjoy the things I would do anyway even if there wasn't any lockdown. I'm actually getting a decent amount of sleep lately, and I feel like a different person because of it.

The lockdown in the UK means that everyone is supposed to only go out a maximum of one time a day, and only for buying essentials or for daily exercise. Based on what I've seen, that lockdown is only mildly enforced at the moment. Public places like parks are being locked down for cars, but there's still people who can walk or cycle there. I've seen footage of beaches being quiet as well, though I've not been there myself because lockdown. There's definitely more police patrols on the streets than usual, but I haven't seen any blatant disregard for the social distancing rules in my area (yet).

The most change in behavior I've seen is in supermarkets. There are now long queueing areas in front of the entrance, with a security guard waving people through one by one so as not to ever get too many people inside at the same time. And because of the social distancing the space between people in queues is massive, so the queues go on forever. People have been very civilized in respecting those rules, so far. I guess if the alternative is that you have to elbow your way in and risk getting too close to someone who might have 'the disease' (omg), that kind of helps in getting people to have. It's been a most civilized crisis so far.

About two weeks ago I went to the local (smaller) supermarket to pick up some things and happened to see a pack of toilet paper, which I took. My wife and I joked about the whole 'toilet paper shortage' meme after we got it, but I've not seen any toilet paper since. Though apparently it's available for ordering for online delivery. It's incredibly hard to get a delivery slot though. I managed to get one for a date two weeks from now, but online delivery opportunties are definitely scarce.

So there is that: a mild anxiety about availability of daily life products. Not having toilet paper I can live with, but I do feel that it's good to have some small supply of food. You never know if an event will occur that will cause society's infrastructure to have a hickup. Depending on the length of that hickup it might be nice to be able to bridge that gap by having a few weeks worth of food at home. It's very far from being an existential risk though, since there's still plenty of food in the shops. There is absolutely no reason to panic-buy.

Since the quarantine began I've been cycling almost every other day. It's starting to feel good again. I've been very out of shape. I just have trouble motivating myself to do any form of exercise after I finally make it home after a long working day. I'm not the type to go a gym either, so I've been very happy with the great weather we've been having lately, which has allowed me to cycle outside a lot. I'm starting to remember that feeling of not constantly feeling like you're dying at every hill. I think in time I'll be able to enjoy it again.

Cycling in the UK, or rather, in Hertfordshire has honestly not been good, comparing it to the other two countries I have cycled a lot in: Japan and the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a hard standard to beat given how much it caters to cyclists, but Japan also felt a lot nicer and safer. That probably has something to do with the area I lived in as well: in Japan I lived in a very flat area near the seaside and next to mountains, whereas Hertfordshire in the UK is just hilly everywhere. I've seen plenty of areas in Japan where they just blasted a hill to make a relatively flat road, and there were lots of tunnels, but that's not really a thing that Hertfordshire does. It's just up and down and up and down. Fine if you're fit, not fine if you're me.

People here are not used to cyclists. Pedestrians will happily cross a road without looking if they don't hear a car coming. And on paths that are supposedly cycling paths, like this path called Ebury Way near where I live, it's just uncomfortable. It's a dirt road with lots of bumps and ups and downs, with pedestrians everywhere, often walking side-by-side, oblivious to cyclists until you're right on top of them. There's a lot of people who walk their dog without a leash. The dogs don't quite get that it might not be the smartest thing to stand still in the middle of the path when they hear a bicycle approaching. I've had a bunch of near-misses with dogs on that path throughout the years, so all of that kind of means that I prefer the regular roads for cycling (at least when I'm back to my before-level of fitness). The only disadvantage about the regular roads is that they can get narrow and tend to be even more of a constant uphill/downhill. I definitely miss cycling in Japan and the Netherlands. It's just not the same in the UK.

Anyway, rant over, and it's a minor one. It's still great to be able to go out on my bicycle (while avoiding other people and not stopping at parks of course - respect the social isolation!) and be able to go wherever I want. Nature is beautiful this time of year, and there's hardly any cars on the road because of the quarantine, which makes this a perfect time to cycle. Time to get fit again!

There are certain aspects of life that are obviously better during this quarantine. I hope we can keep some of those aspects once this is all over.

Posted in Cycling , Daily Life , UK | Tagged ,

The cycle of change

Posted on 2020-01-03 07:20 by randy

I've done quite a few cycling trips, but three clearly stand out as the major ones: Tokyo to the southernmost point of Kyushu, Tokyo to the northernmost point of Hokkaido, and Kyushu back to Tokyo. As far as the Japanese coast line goes, the last bit that I haven't done yet is from the northernmost point of Hokkaido back to Tokyo via the east coast.

Next year is the ten year anniversary of that first trip, the one from Tokyo to Kyushu all by myself. Inevitably, I find myself thinking about my life in terms of "before the trip" and "after the trip", about what kind of person I was before, and what kind of person I was about to become. That first trip is the marker for the biggest change in my life. I moved back from Japan to Europe. One life ended, and another one began. I was young and naive and full of a hope and a freedom that I will never ever regain. The term 'cycling trip', to me, is about that feeling of youth and freedom. But it's a feeling I've gradually lost over time.

Europe taught me some harsh lessons about what it's like to actually be an adult. I really had just been playing around in Japan, and I was not quick to change my ways after moving to the UK. I landed a job with a lot of freedoms, and I used it to become the most physically fit that I ever was. By the time I took three months off for the second cycling trip, I was in my prime. I challenged myself by cycling routes that I'd never even have consided before. The second trip to the North of Hokkaido was definitely my best physical achievement. I was never 'not fat', but I was definitely fit.

Between the second and the third trip something changed. I started becoming a different person again. It became hard to think of cycling in the same way as before. After the first trip I had never experienced life in that way before, and there was nothing better to me. The second trip continued on that feeling, but at the same time my life back in the UK was starting to come together.

My moment of 'cracking' came during a smaller trip, a few years after the big trip north. I had taken a two-week holiday from my job to do a shorter cycle from Hiroshima to Kyushu, to repeat a few of my favorite bits from past cycling trips, and to fill in a bit of coastline I hadn't cycled yet. I was cycling along the coastline with a perfect blue sky, not too warm, not too cold. It was a nice, wide, road, with a cycling area to the side and not too much traffic. Mountains on one side, and some small islands visible along the Japanese inland sea. It should have been perfect. I should have been enjoying myself beyond belief. But all I could think of was: "Why am I not enjoying this?"

I didn't understand the feeling, or where it came from. I stopped by a convenience store, bought some food and sat on a seawall for quite some time, feeling unhappy and trying to make sense of my emotions. Whenever I think about my trips nowadays, it is that moment that stands out for me as the turning point, the point where I realized I was becoming someone else. I didn't understand or accept it at the time, and it vexed me for years. It kind of still does. I still want to be the person I was back when I undertook that first cycling trip, but I can't. I can never go back to that. My life experience won't let me.

That trip was in Autumn. The next spring, I quit my job and went cycling again, to do it properly this time. I figured that the previous trip left a bad feeling because I had a job to get back to. It's hard to reproduce the feeling of freedom if you're only on a two-week break, so so I thought at the time. The third 'I quit my job and I'm going cycling' trip went from Kyushu back to Tokyo. It started at the point where I left with a bad feeling the previous autumn, and I felt vindicated when I made it back to Tokyo along the northern coast. I still had it.

But my exit from my job was a soft exit, with the opportunity to come back, which I did. Soon I was living the same life as before the cycling trip, which is why in the long term I think about this third trip differently than the previous two. Every cycling trip I see my options in life decreasing. Every trip I get older, more settled down. And that's not a bad thing at all. I'm quite happy with the direction my life is going. I'm creating options in one area, but as a consequence, options in another area are disappearing. Cycling trips remind me of a freedom I can't ever have back, and that's why I started feeling bad when I think about cycling trips. More and more it feels like escaping from life rather than creating opportunities in life.

There's one more trip left before I can finally say that I've cycled all of the coast of Japan, and I'm dreading it more and more every year. I've chosen my life in the UK, so I won't get the sense of freedom I got from the first trip. I'm getting older every year, and I'm definitely past my physical prime, though I reckon I'll have no real trouble as long as I don't injure myself. I'm pretty good at not injuring myself. Lastly, the bit of the coast I didn't do yet is the coldest, longest, most desolate, un-Japanese part of all of Japan: the east and north coasts of Hokkaido. Long stretches of nothingness with cold temperatures and strong winds. None of it is what I like about Japan, and it feels like a chore to do it at this point.

2020 seemed like the perfect 'I quit my job and I'm going cycling' year. Exactly ten years after the first trip. A perfect opportunity to evaluate what I was then and what I am now. But the truth is: I do that all the time. It's not like I turn my brain off for ten years and then wake up and wonder where I am. I chose to come here and I was conscious for all of it, no excuses. I'm no longer the same person I was ten years ago, and the person I am now has different priorities. I wouldn't have grown as a person if that statement turned out not to be true.

The legendary fourth trip will have to wait a little longer. I've not given up, but I need to create the right opportunity for it. Life goals allowing, I intend to make this happen in the next five years.

Let's see what will happen in the next decade. 2020, bring it on.

Posted in Cycling , Thoughts

Closing thoughts

Posted on 2017-03-16 11:04 by rv

(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.

Posted in Cycling , Thoughts

Impulsiveness

Posted on 2017-03-15 11:52 by rv

(Written on the morning of the 12th, set to autopublish on the 15th)

The truth is, after the cold but refreshing downhill from the last post, either before or after I went to the temple, I forget, I got a strange idea in my head and I couldn't let it go. It just kept sitting there and wouldn't move, and forced me to think about it. In my mind I imagined the steps I would need to take and the consequences it would have if it went either right or wrong. In the end, I figured it was worth doing a little investigating in real life to see if it was possible. After all, I still had plenty of time left in the day.

I decided to see if I could change my flight and go home early.

Why? Mainly because I wasn't really enjoying myself any more. I've got the "cycling in Japan" theme nailed. I can look at a map now and know exactly what kind of road I'll encounter. When I enter a new town I'll know exactly where the station is, where the hotels are, where the conbinis are, without even looking at a map. Everything is just hugely predictable, and, finally, unchallenging. I just am no longer getting out of these cycling trips what I was getting all those years ago when I first started.

Besides that main reason, two additional reasons that caused me to feel this way are that 1. this trip was pre-planned, and 2. it is genuinely cold and unpleasant outside if you're sweating like mad, which makes the random wandering-around kind of a non-thing for me. If your clothes are wet with sweat and there's a cold wind chilling you down then you don't feel like casually cycling around to see what's out there, you just want to get to a warm place as soon as possible. The pre-planned bit meant that I already knew exactly where I was going, and I knew that yesterday was both the most difficult and the most beautiful route of the trip, so the challenge kind of disappeared after that.

So, at Sukiya I put the first part of my plan into action: check if I can actually change the date on my return flight. I managed to check on my mobile phone on the wifi from the conbini next door. I could indeed change my flight! I didn't change it just yet, though.

I am 200 kilometers away from the airport. I needed to check how I would get back there if I'm not cycling back. The train would take me back there in a day, but as I expected and confirmed after checking, it would take quite a few transfers, and either a very long time or a little trip on the Shinkansen. I've learned from experience that the last thing I want to do is haul an ultra-heavy bike bag around from train to train, walking from platform to platform, going up and down stairs, passing through heavily populated stations.. That is something that would make for a very miserable day for me, so I preferred to avoid that option.

My preferred option, which I've used once before on a previous trip, is to bag the bike and send it via the Yamato Kuroneko delivery service straight to the airport. Kuroneko, for me at least, is not a sure bet. I do not have absolute confidence that they'll accept my bike as bagged, that they'll deliver it to the airport on time, and that they'll deliver it at a reasonable price. Everything changes when it comes to bikes. No one knows how to deal with it. To be fair, I've never had negative experiences with Kuroneko, but if I mess this up I'll lose my bicycle, so I needed to be absolutely sure that it was possible.

So I held off on changing my flight and first cycled onwards to Kochi, where I found a Kuroneko facility. A clueless guy tried to help me but gave up almost immediately and passed me on to a very helpful lady, who provided me with all the details I needed. It was indeed possible, could be delivered within 3 days if I gave the bike bag to them today, and although she didn't say directly I inferred that she wouldn't charge me an insane amount of money.

This was around 16:00/16:30, and I still hadn't changed my flight. So I excused myself from the Kuroneko and immediately went to the nearby conbini to get wifi so I could change my flight. I had to present my bike them before closing time at 18:30 so I was suddenly very rushed. But of all the luck in the world, in a giant city, this conbini did not have wifi! So I cycled onwards towards the station and the center in the hopes of finding a conbini, warcycling to find wifi. Not too far away I managed to find a Joyfull family restaurant which had an open wifi, so I hopped onto my phone to change the reservation. I could still make it.

But then the website broke! The Cathay Pacific site was very mobile-friendly, very easy to use and walked me right to the final step of changing the dates on my return flight, but then it errored saying I didn't put dates for my departure flight. Well, no shit, I already took that flight, can't change it now. I hoped it was perhaps a mobile site issue, so I grabbed my laptop and, in the parking lot of a family restaurant, tried to change my booking on my laptop. Again, no luck.

This was a good point to give up. I could simply cycle back to my hotel, never see Kuroneko again and continue on with the rest of the trip. But I felt annoyed that the Cathay site wouldn't let me change my booking even though it clearly allowed it, so I called them up. Still from the family restaurant parking lot. With my laptop resting on my bike. I connected immediately and the guy I spoke to helped me in record time to change my booking with no issues whatsoever. Excellent customer service. I'm flying back on the 14th.

Then I cycled, quite hurriedly, back to the Kuroneko building, where I started to take my bicycle apart. I'm getting better at this every time, but the rushed-ness of the situation caused me to dirty myself quite a lot. I sprayed a lot of chainspray on that chain in the morning, and it was making marks everywhere. I didn't do nearly as good of a job bagging it as on the way in, but hey, whatever. I'm going home. The friendly lady was still there and accepted my bike without issue, and only charged me 4400 yen. I'm pretty sure that the last time I used them the price was at least double. She also didn't check the weight. Perhaps they changed their policy, or I was overcharged last time, or it's just that the distance is less this time. In any case, I'm not complaining.

The sense of relief I got when my bike was finally accepted was amazing. I had a very good walk along various canals on the way back to my hotel, finally realizing what I had done. This trip started out as an impulsive thought made reality in only a day, and now I had undone the entire trip, also on an impulsive thought, also in only a day. That's probably not a good thing. Then again, the best way to learn is by making mistakes. At least, that's how I rationalized it as I was walking the many kilometers to the incredibly sleazy love hotel I wrote about last time.

I wasn't done yet though. I still had to cancel all my reservations and book a hotel for the next two nights. I managed to change my existing booking for the airport hotel and even ended up a little bit cheaper. All other hotels had free cancellation except one, and that one was kind enough to waive the fee. I've mentioned before how booking.com is fantastic, but it really is worth saying again. Everything can be done through the website and I was done with the whole process in only a few minutes. Way better than calling up hotel after hotel to get it done.

As of the moment of writing I am still in the love hotel. The door made a noise at midnight which scared the crap out of me because I thought it was going to unlock the room and let some random couple come in, but everything was quiet throughout the night. I never did manage to find out how to turn the lights off, though. What an inconvenient place.

I'm about to check out and head over to the station, where I'll take all those trains back to the airport. My plan is to stop over at Osaka on the way and buy some new noise-cancelling earphones, because I lost the rubbery bit on one of the earphones on my old ones, and I think it's time for something better anyway. No plans for tomorrow yet, but I think I'll go on walkabout somewhere and take some random photos.

I think I'm done with cycling trips for a while. At least until I find adequate motivation to do another one.

Posted in Cycling , Thoughts

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