Day 11: Fukuyama - Honai, 202 km

I really like this picture of Jody because he seems so at ease. Even though we had Internet access most nights, we didn't often have wireless access, which meant Jody didn't have too many chances to play with his darling Android while we were on C2C. This is one of the few times when he could just kick it and surf.

This is the log house where we spent the night of Day 10. Even though the place is located about 30 kilometers from downtown Fukuyama, our host Kenji was kind enough to pick us and our bikes up in his truck. He also drove us back to town on the morning of Day 11, which was great. The only downside to the wonderful hospitality was that this was perhaps our latest start of the entire ride, since we had to go by Kenji's schedule, not ours. Here it is, 7:56 a.m., and we still have a ways to go before we get started riding.

Over an hour later, at 9:01, we were finally back at the train station in Fukuyama where Kenji picked us up the night before. On the drive into town, Kenji actually offered to drive us closer to our Day 11 destination, but we refused the invitation, telling him that it wasn't kosher for us to get any forward progress that didn't involve us riding our bikes. No one was there to issue a red card, but we were more than happy to police ourselves.


















More than 30 minutes later we still hadn't gotten very far. We're now on the front side of the train station, fueling up on calories. As you can see, Jody is drinking an appropriately named coffee: Boss. The weather was so great for a change that we were happy to just chill and soak up some rays before hitting the road. We also knew the end was near, since we were getting ready to leave our second island, Honshu, and head to our third, Shikoku, which meant we were more relaxed than normal.

Forty minutes after we finally got going from Fukyuama, we were forced to exit Route 2 (no bikes allowed) and head back onto smaller roads. That was a stroke of luck, for two reasons. For one, from the point where we exited we were easily able to make our way over to the bridges that led to Shikoku. For two, we again ran into the guy pictured here, Yuki, who we had actually met the day before at a different convenience store somewhere near Okayama. (He and a friend of his were on their way to Kurashiki, which was not quite as far as our destination.) Small world, huh? Anyway, I love this picture, because it appears that I'm giving an overly excited fan my autograph, whereas all I'm really doing is writing down some information for Yuki.

This picture isn't all that special, but it serves as proof that I'm a good teacher. You see, I taught Jody how to ask someone to take his picture and, as you can tell by this photo, when he tried it out it worked! Throughout C2C, Jody was a really great sport about practicing the daily Japanese words and phrases I taught him.

Here's a picture of Jody (taken at 10:56) crossing the first of 7 bridges that took us from Honshu to Shikoku. The entire route, known as the "Shimanami Kaido" goes on for nearly 45 miles and took us about four hours to cover. The ride was slow going for several reasons. For one, the weather was as magnificent as the views, so we rode slowly to soak it all in. For two, we took countless pictures. (As a matter of fact, as we started crossing over the first bridge, Jody commented that we were probably going to take more pictures that day alone than we had in all the previous days of C2C. Well, that was true for him, but not for me.) Also, the windy climbs up to and back down from the many bridges killed a lot of time. Finally, the roads in between the islands mostly run alongside the water, so the route is anything but direct. We both consider the bridge route one of the absolute highlights of C2C and recommend it to all cyclists.













As soon as we made it across the first bridge, it was time to pay our first toll. We weren't sure where to pay, but the toll collector pointed the way.















The first toll was the cheapest of the day at a whopping ¥10 each. Despite the low, low price, we hardly had any small change and were too cheap(?) to pay ¥50, so we deposited a total of about ¥13. Luckily, we were neither arrested nor struck by bad karma, probably since we meant well!

The route we were on is very popular with cyclists, and, since it was a holiday, there were plenty of people around to keep us company. Follow the thick, blue line, Jody!

The beautiful road on the way to Bridge #2.

 Me with Bridge #2 behind me.















 Crossing Bridge #2, at 11:34

Bridge #3 in the books, at 12:11.

Getting closer to Bridge #4.













Thar she blows! (12:38)













Crossing Bridge #5, at 1:14.

Crossing Bridge #6, at 1:31.














Another view of Bridge #6.
















We met this father-and-son duo at a little market that we stopped at for some food. They were on their way to the first city in Shikoku, Imabari.

Crossing the three-part Bridge #7, the last bridge of the day, at 2:52. Shikoku, here we come! (This was the only bridge with a manned toll booth for bikers.)

Day 10 Pix: Ikuno - Fukuyama, 196 km

When we arrived in Ikuno, just about everything we were carrying along was (soaking) wet, so we spread it all out to dry. From our experience of riding through, or at least on the edge of, a typhoon, we learned that the only 100% waterproof item is human skin...

Here's Jody having a piece of toast for breakfast, along with some piping hot coffee.

Here's a shot of Jody saying goodbye to our gracious host Miriam, a fellow English teacher on the JET Program that I met in August in Tokyo. When we arrived in Ikuno at the end of Day 9, Miriam was still at school, so we met her there. When she busted out a huge bag of freshly baked cookies, neither of us could resist. We were probably only supposed to eat two or three each, but we were so tired, cold, wet, and hungry that we chowed down on all of the cookies like a pair of voracious dogs. Sorry, Miriam! By the way, the biggest climb of the day was just before the end of the ride and before the cookies arrived, Jody was a wreck. I think that was the only time on C2C that he was really exhausted, even if only temporarily. That just goes to show that Jody's human, after all! Well, semi-human, anyway.












Our Day 10 ride began with a short, 10-minute climb, which was then followed by approximately 25 miles of down, down, down as we headed closer and closer to the southern coastline of Honshu. You can see that Jody decided to put his arm warmers on that morning (I did, too), even though it was about 70 F that morning.

For a while, the road we were on went alongside a river. This was one of the few roads we biked on that really wasn't that crowded.

Since we had a pretty small breakfast, as we set out I asked Jody to stop at a convenience store so we could consume some calories. Naturally, he passed by countless convenience stores before finally stopping at this one, over an hour after we left Miriam's place. He chose this 7-11 on purpose, however, because I needed cash and was able to withdraw money at 7-11 ATMs. Still worried about his camera, Jody was testing it out. Also note that he is no longer wearing his arm warmers, since there really was no need for them.













As soon as we got very close to the coast, traffic picked up in a hurry.

I took this picture about an hour after we stopped at the 7-11. Normally, we didn't stop every hour for provisions, but we made this pit stop at a Lawson to make sure we were on the most direct road to our destination, since, at that point, we had made a sharp right turn and had started to head west along the coast. This apple pie was one of my favorite snacks of the ride, since it tasted great and provided me with a whopping 462 calories!

I didn't choose the best angle for this picture, so you can't tell that Jody is actually pumping up my rear tire for me, since it was a little low on air. He added some air to his tires, too. We probably should have added air to the tires a few days earlier, but we were a bit careless in that regard. Anyway, Jody's a real champ, helping me out like that!














Here's a look at Jody in "I'm a bad ass!" mode...

Road construction in Japan is about as common as rice. Here we are, waiting our turn to head down the one-way road that lies ahead of us.

Here's another shot of Jody with his favorite onigiri, this time in "sea chicken" form.

Do you remember that I had a broken spoke on Day 10? Well, here's my wheel being repaired. I first noticed it was broken at around 2 p.m. while we were traveling at a high rate of speed on a so-called "bypass" that we really weren't supposed to be on. From what I remember, when the road morphed from a major road to more of a highway, there were no signs posted prohibiting bicycles. Nevertheless, as we continued along, I looked down whenever I saw an on-ramp and certainly noticed that there were such signs posted then. Since the highway was the most-direct way to get to our destination, however, we planned to stay on it as long as possible. Unfortunately, my broken spoke put an end to that plan.

To be continued...

Days 7-9 Pix: Nagaoka - Toyama - Tsuruga - Ikuno

Here's Jody slowly getting ready to hit the road at 6:41 on the morning of Day 8. We got rained on for the greater part of Day 7, so there are no pictures of that ride, unfortunately. Even though we put a lot of our things in plastic bags, a lot of stuff still got wet, including Jody's camera. Although Jody initially thought his camera might have been damaged, it survived just fine. As you can see in the picture, at this hotel in Toyama we were allowed to take our bikes up to our room. When we weren't, we had to leave the bikes somewhere in the lobby or in a conference room, for instance. Oh, and that room pictured here was really big and had giant windows, which was really unusual.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the entire ride. It's 7:56 a.m. on Day 9 and you can see (perhaps) that it's pouring outside. You can also see that Jody isn't happy at all about what awaits him. Of course, I wasn't looking forward to being soaking wet for hours on end, either. Nevertheless, we both knew that we had no choice but to ride out the typhoon. We also knew that Day 9 was most likely going to be the final day of rain that we faced, so off we went.

Day 6 Pix: Tsuruoka - Nagaoka, 210 km

The night before, after we had ramen, we made our way over to a grocery store for more "supplies." Besides buying some bananas (the first fruit we had on the entire ride I believe), we bought some bread and peanut butter. We had done that on B2B, too, but this time Jody didn't make an outrageous tower of sandwiches. He did do something wacky (albeit creative!), though: He used the comb he found in our hotel's bathroom as a knife! There was really no need for that, since I had brought along my Swiss Army knife, but I think I must have had trouble finding it fast enough (which is laughable considering how little each of us took along), so Jody went with Plan B. All that was missing was some chocolate.

About 45 minutes after we set out, we were riding through some really pretty countryside on a really pretty day.

 Road art.














Here we are approaching one of the countless tunnels we rode through on C2C. None of the tunnels registered on Jody's Garmin, meaning you have to add roughly 2 kilometers to each day's ride to get a more accurate distance.

This shot looks directly out at the Sea of Japan. On this day the water was calm and beautiful, but a couple of days later, during the typhoon, it was rough and ugly. It's a shame we couldn't take any pictures on the rainy days that followed this one.

The great weather and fabulous views along the Sea of Japan put us in a good picture-taking mood. Jody captured this image of me smiling despite having to concentrate on the cars traveling alongside us in both directions. You really are at the mercy of hundreds of drivers when you're out on a ride like this, and we're both very thankful that we made it to the end unscathed. By the way, I normally wear gloves when I ride, but I ditched them to see if that would help my sore hands. I'm not sure if that move actually had any effect, but I enjoyed the change of pace.

Like I said, we were having fun taking pictures. This is one of the classic shots that Jody likes to take of the two of us. What's with all the sweat on your face, Jody?

So that's what Jody looks like from out in front...

and from the side.

At one point, while we were in the middle of nowhere and I was out of liquid, I spotted a vending machine and told (asked?) Jody to pull over. I couldn't have picked a better pit stop. It turns out the vending machine was on the property of some sort of food preparation facility (it wasn't a restaurant and I'm still not sure exactly what it was). At first, I spotted what looked like a kitchen, so I told Jody I was sure they would fill up our water bottles for free. What I didn't expect was for them to give us free ice cream! Day 6 was by far the hottest day of the ride, with the maximum temperature hitting 100.4 F, so the ice cream was a great relief! The ladies who gave us the sweet treat were also kind enough to open up the trunk of one of their vans so that we had a comfortable place to sit. Jody snagged the green tea ice cream so I was left with the vanilla, but I'm used to that treatment, being the domestique. In any case, this was truly one of the more special moments of the ride.

Here's a shot of the kitchen, with the ladies preparing a bunch of food.

The time is 1:01 p.m. and the temperature is somewhere in the 90s. Is this California? (We didn't always have such a wide shoulder to ride on, but we were thankful when we did.)

At 4:09 p.m. we were only 46 kilometers from our goal, meaning there was a pretty good chance we wouldn't have to ride in the dark. (As you can see, we were now on Route 8, after having ridden Route 5 in Hokkaido and Route 7 farther north in Honshu.)

Here's a nice picture of me, at 4:51 p.m., taking a swig from one of my water bottles.

This is the next-to-last picture that Jody took on Day 6, at 4:58 p.m., just before the light got to be too poor for picture taking. What's with the serious look on the face, yo?