Tour de Kyushu

After nearly two weeks I'm back home! Ive done loads of fun stuff so its hard to start writing but I'll start with the beginning; the bike ride.

As written in my last post, the plan was to ride 300 kilometres from my city to Usuki in 3 days. We started on the thursday and I felt pretty good. I had to do the oath together with a colleague; it's a typically Japanese thing to do, but it is mainly to show the good intentions and the promise we will stick to traffic rules and the commitment to promote Hirado on the way. Japanese oaths look a bit like the famous nazi greeting, although most Japanese will probably never have made the association. I did it Dutch style with my hand on my chest.

The newspapers were there and after a few interviews we started at just after 8am. The first two stages were up and down but nothing too major for the bike I was on so it went pretty smoothly. Me and Iron were planning on riding the whole 300 kms and the other 3 bikes would be rotated between 10 other people. The third stage was pretty steep uphill and then downhill, but this first challenge was pretty exciting and because me and Iron Man had left almost 30 minutes behind the others we went up with 30 ks an hour and speeded down with over 50. We passed the others half way and managed to have a bit of a rest before the others arrived.

After that we rode across the plains of Saga prefecture. Fairly easy, just flat like in Holland, yet no cycling roads... and to have huge trucks drive a few inches next to you is quite scary, not to mention we had to cycle like that for over 70 kilometres. It was more exhausting then I thought and when we arrived in Fukuoka prefecture at our destination of the day the first thing I did was to take a warm bath. We all had a great night out as well, yet went to bed early.

The next day started early at 6am with a japanese breakfast in the hotel. When we put some extra air in my tire just before the start, it exploded. Hmm... Not a good start, but Iron Man had brought a few extra tires so we tried the next one. Again it exploded! The other 3 cyclists decided to go ahead and we stayed behind to fix the wheel. We stripped it down and replaced the inner protection layer that covers the iron wheel frame. That helped and when we had everything back in place we put air in the tired, and it stayed fine.

Again we had to race with a 30 minute late start, but as soon as we were out of the city we could gather speed and catch up with the others pretty quickly. After Hita City we really entered the mountain. The road was along the river in the valley, but because of the amount of (logging) trucks they had planned a shortcut. This however was staright over a mountain and the degree of the road was insane! I dont think I have sweated so much the past few years as that, but I managed to cycle up even though my head felt like it was going to explode just like my tire!

This kick-started my inner engine though I think and from that moment everything went really easily! Me and Iron Man zoomed through the valley and up the last big pass of over 800 metres high. I loved it and the scenery with the bright red and yellow autumn trees was stunning!
In Yufuin we celebrated the fact we managed to cross the mountains as this was the highest point! After hotel check in we celebrated with loads of food and drinks and had some more in the hotel. By 9pm I fell asleep only to wake up at 5.30am feeling great. You dont have to know me very well to know that that is not normal...! Went for a early walk down to the lake just as the darkness and fog started to clear. The warm hot spring water made the lake steam on this chilly morning but it was a beautiful sight.

After a great soak in the onsen and breakfast we prepared for our last day. It was mainly downhill and with speeds of up to 68 kilometres an hour on 1.5 cm wide tires we raced down the mountain! So good! The last stage I went all out and cycled my personal best average speed even though we had to cross one more last mountain. In fact I arrived three hours too early so we had to wait before we could do the last kilometre because they had arranged a welcome reception.

In Usuki we got a very warm welcome with lots of people along the street and there was a TV station and some newspapers waiting for us, in addition to the APU University Choir! I didnt really want it to end, but on the other hand it was good to be there and we got to enjoy the beautiful bamboo lantern festival in Usuki which was incredible! A great project, that I hope I can do again sometimes! I am seriously thinking about buying a road bike now, it was just too much fun to leave it at this!