Cycling to Hiroshima (Day 1: To Hakone)

Sometime last summer Ryan and I came up with the idea of cycling to Hiroshima. I’m not sure why we chose Hiroshima, maybe because it’s such an important city… maybe because it’s on the other side of Japan… or maybe just because we wanted to get to Miyajima by bike.

After some time thinking, we decided to start the trip in late September. To be perfectly honest, Ryan and I are amateur cyclers. So we really had no idea what we were getting into. We made one other long cycling trip in the summer, but nothing like a cycling trip to Hiroshima!

On our trip we decided to stay in a tent. So we bought a small, two-person tent. As all of you know, Ryan is a big guy, and the tent just barely fit him! It was so funny seeing Ryan try to fit into that small tent! And he had to sleep next to my feet! Poor guy!

The first day we set out for Yokohama. Our plan was to cycle 100-150km/day. That would give us plenty of time to make it to Hiroshima in 2 weeks!

So at about 11A.M. off we went!… for about 15 minutes! We got to the store to buy a bungee cord for Ryan’s bike, and I realized I forgot my spare bike tube! Ahh! It was our first mistake, but luckily it was only 15 minutes into our trip! So we went back to my apartment, got my spare bike tube, and started our trip again.

We took route 14 into Tokyo which was a piece of cake! From there we turned toward Yokohama. By Kawasaki, both Ryan and I were still in high spirits! So on we cycled toward Yokohama. In Yokohama the sun was still out so we decided to push on.

It was about Yokohama that Ryan and I realized what would be our staple food for the trip: convenience stores!

At every convenience store we drank cola, ate ice cream and snickers bars… anything with sugar to help us fuel our bodies.

As the sun started going down fatigued started to hit Ryan and I. And about 20km outside Yokohama, a Japanese cycler suddenly passed us. But he wasn’t a sport cycler like us, he was just an average businessman… riding as fast as he could! Ha ha! (Ha ha! = 笑!） We had been riding all day, over 100km, and he passed us riding so quickly! We felt cheated! So Ryan and I decided we weren’t going to be beaten! We summoned all of our energy, rode our hardest, and passed the other cycler! It was our biggest achievement so far, because we were so tired… but we pushed on!

Close to 7PM, we were dead tired! But wait… we saw a sign for Hakone! We thought it would be a great way to end our first day. So we kept going…

But the closer we got to Hakone, the stronger the wind got! Eventually it was blowing so hard that we were crawling along at a snail’s pace. But we didn’t give up and finally made it to Hakone!

We thought a great way to relax would be to go to a world famous Hakone onsen… but they were all closed!

Our second choice was to sit down and relax at a nice family restaurant… but there are no family restaurants in Hakone!

What could we do? We decided to buy some convenience store food, sit on the sidewalk and eat. But after eating we had nothing to do! So we decided to set up our tent. Running through the middle of Hakone is a big river. We thought next to that river would be a great place to set up our tent… but because of a recent typhoon (two weeks before!) the area next to the river was closed!