Packing the Bike

for those that inquired on how i packed the ritchey breakaway for my trip, see the pictures for my packing sequence. note that the luggage pictured is an airline legal sized (62 linear inch) case (26x26x10) is smaller than the ritchey bag that comes with the bike. i also tie up each piece with twine to limit the movement of bike pieces. i also placed biking clothes inside zip lock bags and placed in between the bike pieces to minimize movement.

home sweet home

Above is the approximate ride path from day 2 through 5 (takamatsu to hiroshima).
finally made it home. on the last day in hiroshima, it was drizzling like the day before. i had to figure out how to navigate from itsukaichi station to kansai airport by train. luckily tomoko was going in to downtown hiroshima for an appointment, she drove me the hiroshima station and that save me a train transfer with 7 minutes to change train. locals have no problem transfering at hiroshima station within a few minutes but for me, i was afraid to not making the transfer in time and miss my flight. with tomoko driving me, that saved me a transfer.

shinkansen is the name of japan's bullet train. i always enjoy riding it. i don't know why but with the train moving 150 mph, it just feels good. the ride from hiroshima station to shinosaka was about an hour and a half. after transfering in shinosaka to another train that heads to the kansai airport, i finally reached the airport.....a few hrs early. i didn't mind getting to the airport early as i didn't want to miss my flight.

the tsa really screwed me. my new bike case latch was broken when i looked at it after reaching home. apparently these knucklehead high school drop outs couldn't figure out how to open the bike case latch and they decided to cut it. the thing is, the bike box wasn't even locked. left me a note in the box that says it was inspected and that tsa approved lock was required....blah blah blah. idiots, i have no lock on the case, these drop outs just couldn't figure out how of open a latch. i haven't rebuilt the bike yet as i was tired but im hoping they didn't damage my bike repacking my luggage after inspection. oh yeah, my camera is broken and don't have pics to show the damaged case. it started out with memory card damage that erased the first four days of my biking trip. then i forgot to start my gps unit for part of the ride thus i can't get an accurate count of miles ridden. now the camera's broken. oh well, despite all this, i had a wonderful time riding in japan. now i just have to get the jet lag over with.......

onomichi to hiroshima (tuesday)

riding to hiroshima was a challenge as we don't have good maps. the fastest and direct route would be to take highway 2 but traffic was a major concern. we decided to take the coastal route and cut across onto highway 2 to avoid some traffic. this was suppose to be just a little bit further compared to the highway 2 route. well, we missed the turn and instead went coastal almost the entire way. if u take a look at the onomichi to hiroshima on google map, you would see highway 2 takes u there maybe 55 miles, but the coastal route took us 80 miles. our only working gps unit was my garmin bike computer. it would only show way point distance..which is the staight line distance from where we were at to the destination, when we were getting close, it showed we were 8 miles away. we were excited and started to pedal hard. that 8 miles turned into 30+ miles as we wind our way along the coast. worst of all, we finally got to our destination (maho's parents) and no one was home. apparently maho went shopping with her mom. steve called her up and she said why don't u ride to your auntie's place. we picked up our tired bodies and rode there.

in hindsight, i would pack much lighter if i'm to do the next touring ride like this one. with lighter pack, i would feel more comfortable riding the skinny road tires instead of the cross tires. the cross tires did provide more cushioning on rough roads, but unless i plan on doing dirt ride more, i would use the road slicks. also, need to figure out what padding i need for the handlebar for the next long ride as my hands got really tired riding distance. overall, my legs and lungs handled the ride no problem, it's the physical discomfort like sore neck that bothered me the most.

as for the bike, the ritchey break-away worked exceptionally well (thanks clem for setting it up). it handled and rode just like a well made road bike and i really like it. the compact crank saved me on numerous climbs and worth the 90 bucks i spent on it. steve's bike worked well also. we had no mechanical or flats, which was nice.

for the next week, we plan on riding south a little bit further. but today, it's the rest day with no biking.

shimanami kaido- imabari to onomichi (monday)

the ride today is the most scenic ride ever for me. it is called the shinamami kaido, a favorite among many travelers and locals alike. it consisted of riding across 7 islands crossing the suspension bridges connecting them. we started from the left side of the map (see bridge crossings 1-7). we follow the recommended route as much as we can as lined in the map. the ride was about 50-60 miles depending on the routes ridden, but tiring as bike entrance to each bridge is few hundred feet up. getting up each bridge requires us to ride up winding climbs. today we started riding at 7:30am. heading there from hotel, we saw a couple on bikes carrying backpacks heading the same direction. we decided to follow them as we werent sure how to get to the starting bridge crossing. after a short conversation with them to confirm their travel plan, they led us to the first bridge.

the views from the bridges were magnificent. steve and i took lots of pictures but right before we cross the last bridge, the camera showed errors. it turned out that the sd card was bad. im so sad that i may have permanently lost all the pictures taken so far on this trip. on top of that, steve's gps software on his phone crashed....rendering us with no clear direction to hiroshima. the only maps we have are printed out google maps which shows major roads but not detailed street map, and my long/lat way points on my garmin bike gps.

although we have maps, navigating these islands still require us to ask for directions. at about the 4th or 5th islands, we caught up with the couple who earlier had led us to the first bridge. although they werent too familiar with these islands, at least they read the japanese street signs. we followed them till we reach the ferry at the last island. the guy rides a carbon road bike with nice components, the gal rode a common steel bike with a regular tennis shoes. we were amazed this gal could go that fast that long. at times we were struggling to keep up with them with our loaded bikes, but we did. anyways, we talked to them further and turned out thet crossed these islands the day before gong from onomichi to imabari, and today they went the other way. thought about taking a pic with them but memory card's gone bad earlier.

UPDATE: Paid 30 bucks for photo recovery software and was able to recover the photos in the damaged SD card.

niihama to imabari (sunday)

todays ride is short....only 26 or so miles. with barely any wind and temp in the high 60s and most important of all...wider road allowing safer ride compared to yesterday. the goal is to to find a place to stay before we cross a series of islands tomorrow. after checking about series of islands tomorrow. after checking about 6 places we finally found a place but i have to share room with steve. since we couldnt check in yet, we spend this afternoon walking a shopping mall and now at internet cafe. funny thing about this town is the streets are pretty empty because of golden week, but most hotels are full......couldnt figure out why. after checking in, we rode around town and check out placed for dinner.

takamatsu to kotohira to niihama (saturday)

this ride was the hardest ride so far. although only 60 miles, it took us 6 hrs with steve having the chills prior to reaching our hotel. the ride is almost all on 2 lane highway. you would think in this island there;s no traffic.. omg, it was scary because when cars and trucks (lots of them) are passing us, they had to cross over to the on-coming traffic. we ended up riding a lot of side walks with uneven pavement and ups and downs on the curb. this kind of riding really wore us down. we manange to climb few hills and steve didnt look too good on the last couple hours. we must have been doing like 5 mph the last few miles as i thought he was gonna pass out. we went to the hotel and after checked in, he crashed. knock on his door for dinner and he didnt even answer. went to chinese restaurant by myself and no one speaks chinese....imaging that. and so far, none of the restaurants i:ve gone to has english menu.

woke up the next day steve said he feels ok. we plan on riding 20-30 miles on the single lane highway again and hopefully being sunday, there wont be too many cars.

regarding my garmin. i inputted long/lat data on various stops on the ride on my device. it was useful as it show the direction and distance from the stop. the only problem is that it shows the linear distance and not the actual ride distance. along with steves pirated gps mapping and some printed out google maps, i was surprised we found all our hotels....eventually.

osaka to kobe then takamatsu (friday)

first day of ride got on on the wrong foot. steve was suppose to come to the hotel at 9 but he didnt show up until almost 12. he was only a couple of miles away but he got lost. we had to ride thru busy city streets to get to kobe. steve had to ask at a few people for directions and we made it to kobe ferry. ferry took 4 hrs and we got to takamatsu at 7:30. after asking few people on the streets, we finally made it to hotel. hotel was nice and i had a good nite sleep.