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.......