Nearly a week has passed since our last post – we’ve been bad bloggers! Not that we have nothing to say, just too busy to say it.
And, um…ok, we also have nothing to say.
We’ve been extremely busy at work recently, while continuing to enjoy our remaining free time riding and going to the gym. I even found a new yoga studio just down the road from me (I’ve been once, and it’s pretty nice, though small).
We went for a great ride yesterday morning – the first and last ride of the weekend. We took our Rigs up to “the fireroad”, one of our favourite places to ride. The fireroad runs from Gotemba to Mishima along a ridge, horizontally between us and Hakone. It is not a main road at all; in fact, it’s not even much of a backroad. People going anywhere between Gotemba and Mishima (Susono is about mid-way) use any number of other, more direct and non-mountainous roads (the 246, the 394, etc). The fireroad has nothing to offer – no convenience stores, no gas stations, no towns, no homes, and a whole lot of curves. It’s very scenic, but it’s also the very long way around – so we very rarely see a car on this road.
To get there, we ride up the mountain until our “up the mountain” road meets with the fireroad; the ride up takes between 38 and 43 minutes usually, depending on our fitness that day. When we get to the top, we have the option of going left (toward Gotemba) or right (toward Mishima). With either choice, there are a lot of very fun options for coming back down to Susono, some of which are tricky trails complete with roots, rocks, slippery clay and over-large spiders.
Our ride yesterday was made more exciting by the bear warning sign that we rode past – the sign is new and looks temporary, so someone must have seen a bear around the area recently. The sign warned people to make noise, listen to their radios, and talk to each other a lot, and to contact the Susono City Hall if they saw a bear. Naturally, Brian and I remained whisper quiet on our single speeds, hoping for a sight of any wildlife at all. We were disappointed in such hopes, but we’ll venture into “bear country” again – maybe on a night ride this time!
2 comments:
When I think of bears I can honestly say I never think of Japan at the same time. What other large, exciting wildlife do you have over there?
Be sure you have some form of identificaton with you ... preferably on your bike, not your person. Why? So that whoever finds your lonely, deserted bikes beside the road one day long in the future will know who they belonged to ... before the bear ate 'em!
:-)
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