Mother Nature came through like a champ today, dumping bucket upon bucket (upon bucket upon bucket) of water on us.
We got our usual early start (we left our hotel at 8:00 this morning), but we easily could have left even earlier had the weather been better. See, we stared at the rain for a good 30 minutes before finally taking off. The funny thing is, the first block that we traveled was under an arcade, so we were able to put off the inevitable for a couple of extra minutes. There was even a red light at the first intersection we hit, which gave us a precious few more seconds of dryness.
From then on, though, it was wet, wetter, and wettestest.
I'm telling you, the rain was coming down hard for most of the day, the roads were overflowing with water, and we got splashed on countless times by passing cars.
We also almost got run off the road by one ridiculously biker-unfriendly driver. That was the closest call I've ever had while biking. The guy's truck was literally 3 mm from by right arm. Scary.
Anyway, I'm writing to you tonight from our host Miriam's place in Ikuno, in Hyogo-ken, which means we made it yet again to our destination.
We had a miserable, wet, cold, mentally draining day, but we survived. We survived by doing our best to ignore the elements and simply ride on
The good news is, tomorrow the weather should be much better, at least by around noon. You cannot imagine how happy we will be to see the sun, if and when we do. The past three days of riding have pretty much sucked!
Tomorrow we have a relatively big day ahead of us, but if we make it to our destination, we'll almost be able to smell Kyushu, the final of four islands that we plan to slay...
As for our health, well, Jody's hands are doing much better, but my right hand is still in bad shape. I'm able to type just fine, but I am useless with chopsticks. I simply can't grip very well with my right hand. Luckily, I don't have any pain, but I'd rather be 100%. As for my legs, well, the left one was giving me some trouble today, so I'm hoping it feels better tomorrow. Just about every day of riding I wonder if my legs will give out or not. So far so good.
One other "event" for today that springs to mind happened on the way here, at a convenience store. I stopped to ask for directions, basically to ensure we were headed in the right direction. (We have yet to get lost once!) When I told the clerk what our (not final) destination was, she replied, "Wow, that's far!"
I felt like smacking her over the head with a frying pan when she said that. The last thing you want to hear when you are tired, wet, and cold is that you have a lot of riding left. I knew there was no way we had far to go, so I told her, "No. We just rode here all the way from Hokkaido. Hokkaido is far. Asago is not far!" Nevertheless, she insisted that Asago was far away.
When I called Miriam and told her where we were, however, she seemed really surprised, in a good way. "Wow! You guys are really close!"
That was more like it! Music to my ears!
So obviously distance is relative, right?
OK folks, that's all the time I have for now. It's already 10:30 p.m. so it's past my bedtime.
Night night and talk to you soon!
Today's ride stats:
Distance: 107.54 miles (173.068 km)
Elapsed Time: 8:38:54
Time in Saddle: 6:53:47
Average Moving Speed: 15.6 mph
Maximum Speed: 32.2 mph
Calories Burned: 6227
Elevation Gain: 1677 ft*
Max Elevation: 1003 ft*
Average Temp: 69.4 F
*The Garmin failed to record accurate elevation on this ride, probably due to the fact that we were riding through a hurricane...
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