In Miyazaki City, we stayed at yet another Toyoko Inn. This time we had to leave our bicycles in the lobby. I didn't mind at all, however, because the crime rate is so low here. Heck, if I remember correctly, I even left my (not exactly inexpensive) cycling shoes next to my bike overnight. Can you imagine leaving your bicycle or other valuable items in the lobby of a hotel where you are from? Probably not, right? Anyway, Jody got a kick out of a lot of things in Japan, including how they simply leave packages (and luggage) plopped on the floor in hotel lobbies, right next to the main entrance.
Here's another shot of Jody, at 7:17 a.m., this time in front of the hotel, just before we headed out for our final ride of C2C.
As soon as we left the hotel, we actually went straight to a restaurant for breakfast (for the first time on the trip!), so we didn't hit the road until just before 9 a.m. Whereas we were normally rather anxious to get going, this morning we really took our time. That plan almost backfired big time, as I'll explain shortly. Here you see Jody crossing a bridge that leads from downtown Miyazaki City to the southern part of town. The only (moderately) heavy traffic we had to deal with all day was early in the ride.
The farther south we went, the more beautiful the view got. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to capture all of the beauty on film. Also, unlike the previous couple of days, the weather wasn't so great, which took part of the excitement out of the ride. I guess by that time, we were simply looking forward to the ride finally being over, anyway, so it was pretty tough to just sit back in the saddle and enjoy ourselves. Whereas on the last day of B2B we had very little ground to cover before reaching our final destination, on C2C we had a full day of riding, which, in all honesty, is probably the only part of the route planning that I (ever so slightly) regret. Note to self: Make the last day of the next ride (A2A?) a short(er) one.
You can see that there really were very few cars out on the roads on this day, despite it being a Sunday. Even though there are mountains in the picture, most of the ride was either along the coast or on otherwise mostly flat roads. I say "most of the ride," because we were in for a big surprise at the end of the day. Well, two surprises, actually.
We were still riding down the coast at 10:36 a.m., and we had a long way to go.
We rode and rode and rode, finally making a pit-stop just after noon at this Family Mart (convenience store) in Kushima. For a while there, I thought Jody was in full Ironman mode, ready to ride all the way to the cape without stopping. Wouldn't that have been something!? By the way, unlike many people who park their cars outside convenience stores, we did not leave our engines running!
A couple of hours later, we finally saw a sign with our ultimate destination on it. Cape Sata, here we come! Unfortunately, the sign misled us into believing that the cape was just around the corner. Little did we know at the time that we still had nearly three hours of riding left...
No comments:
Post a Comment