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?
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