cycling holidays and the after effects

so much has happened since i got back from my cycling trip to Lake Biwa that i havent had a chance to write about it.

almost everyday i have been out of the office, and when i am in there is too mcuh to do!

so i will go back to the start and go through the last few weeks systematically now i have a few minute sto spare.

on thursday night (27th april) i bundled up all all our bikes and shoved them in the back of my friends car. he wanted them a day early just to make sure it all fit.

on friday (28th april) at around 6pm they came to pick me up from my apartment and we were off on our long car journey through tokyo to nagoya. i was designated navigator, which was good because i got the front seat and more room. the boys in the back seat were a bit squished in with all of our luggage. most mine seeing i had too bikes taking up a lot of the boot. luckily we were in a statin wagon.

we stopped at the driver's girlfriends house in tokyo to drop off mant bottles of tequila for a mexican party she was having later in the week (alcohol is cheap at the yamaya near my house so people always stock up when they come to visit me) and then after another brief stop at adrive in startbucks, we were on the freeway and away.

nagoya is a long way from tokyo. it was also golden week so the traffic was not at its best behaviour. but guido, my friend who was driving was a wannabe ferrari racing team member and got us to nagoya by 1am. people said it couldnt be done, but he proved them all wrong. i was thinking twice about being in the front seat at some times worrying about how fast we were going, but he had it under control

we finally found tom's hotel at around 1.30am and i was in bed by 2am. tom was not so happy to see me at that hour as you could understand. we all had to be up at 6am to get to the golf in time for him to start work the next morning.

on saturady and sunday (29th, 30th april) guido, lee and matt, the guys who i drove down with came to watch the golf. i actually didnt go on sunday because i wanted to look around nagoya. i got there just as they were getting to the 17th hole. bit of a waste going all the way out there but i got a nice lunch in the club house :)

nagoya is a great town. all layed out in a grid like melbourne. very easy to get around and the area of town we were staying in was full of great shops and bars and resturaunts.

on sunday arvo after the golf we jumped on a shinkansen, with all our luggage and bikes, to start our holiday in kyoto.

finidng the hotel in kyoto was a bit of a other. actually getting the bikes back in to once piece at kyoto station was more trouble. you have to pack your bikes into a special bag when you go on the train. sometimes they make you pay extra, but we had managed to sneak onto the shinkansen without anyone noticing. lucky.

found the hotel and after a nice long onsen, it was time for bed.

monday morning (1st may) we were ready to start our holiday properly. we used our bikes to ride all over the city. probably about 50 kms in all. saw lots of temples, shrines, and even made it out to the "samurai movie world" on the outskirts of town. it was suitible daggy, but kind of funny.

tuesday (2nd may) we spent the morning at a history museum and then we rode up over the mountain to get our first view of the biggest lake in japan, lake biwa. that night we back tracked a bit to a town called kusatsu to visit a golfing friend of tom's and his family and had a great meal at a small family run bar/resturant. ask tom about how he came to be called "tommy gorilla"

wednesday (3rd may) we rode over 70km up the west side of the lake to a town called imazu. it was a very warm day and the weather was perfect. the day before had been a bit rainy.

on the way we met a number of interesting characters and one scary one. we had stopped by a shrine to check out the festivities (being golden week there are many festivals) and the guys there setting up the fetsival shared some icecreams and sake with us. on the way out, another even drunker person yelled out at us but we ignored him as we wanted to get on our way. about 10kms down the road, the drunk guy drove by us! swerving all over the road. he was yelling something out at us and trying to hand us something. finally we managed to loose him but we were worried for the next 30 mins if he might come back again.

in imazu we checked into a cute little inn right on the banks of the lake. it was a sleepy littel town but had a real old japan feel. not much to do at night but we found a place to eat luckily.

on thursday (may 4th) tom had hurt his knee somehow and we decided to take a boat across the centre of the lake to get around some steep hills in the north. after a lot of negotiating with the boat captain, we got the bikes on the boat for only 700 yen extra. the boat stopped at a small island which had an amazing temple on it and the boat company looked after our bike while we did some sightseeing.

the boat finally dropped us off at a town called nagahama. i have never seen so many people in one place at a time! it was crazy. i guess being golden week could explain it a bit, but it was still crazy. we were lucky to find a place to stay in teh end. i called almost 20 placed until i found one that was available. another nice little japanese style inn.

this town was even cuter than the last one. very traditional and lots of interesting covered arcades and laneways. we wandered around all day just taking in the sights.

on friday (5th may) we had planned to go to a town called hikone. but after we started to ride, it turned out that hikone was only 15 kms away! we got there very early in the day and there wasnt really enough to fill in the day and make it worth staying there. they had a great castle and a nice little town, but not much else.

so we decided after lunch to keep on riding. we had booked accom in ogaki for saturday night so we decided to see how far we got on our way there. in the end we got the whole way! the so called mountain between hikone and ogaki was not so moutainous after all.

this worked out well because it was set to rain on sunday when we had booked a game of golf with the ueda's. so we played golf with them on saturday instead. i had sent our golf bags down by courier the day before i left for nagoya. after golf we ate yakinuku and were very full and content.

sunday was the last day and it rained and rained. we packed up the bikes to send home and had lunch with the ueda's again. they took us to this strange mountain bbq place. you hire out little huts to cook your bbq in.

i finally got home to mito at around 10pm after having to stand up on the shinkansen the whole way home. golden week strikes again. i should have booked but i wouldnt have known what time to. ueda-san is very unpredicible and even though i said i wanted to be on teh 3.30 train, it wasnt until 5,30 that i got anywhere near a train station.

it was a great trip, not as much riding as i would have planned. we didnt get to ride all the way round the lake, but i think we did about 3/4 of it (230km all up over 5 days). a good excuse to go back again.