• So far in our Tokyo and Kyoto experiences, there is practically no public WiFi. If you’re lucky and happen to be passing near a rare store with open WiFi, you can get on for a bit using the weak signal. I had read that the Japanese have been relying very much on cell phones for a while and thus have been slow to embrace WiFi for getting on the web, but the reality of how utterly rare it is (and also, how I’ve come to rely on it to get around as a modern-day tourist) didn’t sink in until I got here. From what we could figure out in a couple of stores, mobile phone or portable hotspot rentals are charged by the month but require a contract lasting anywhere from three months to two years. We have not figured out how to get around this. We were lucky to be able to get a wired connection at our hotel in Tokyo.

• I find it dissonant that, in a culture that is often fashion-conscious and tradition-oriented, facemasks are so ubiquitous. In Tokyo, about a fourth to a third of the people seemed to be wearing facemasks; in Kyoto, much less. I’ll be curious about the countryside once we start biking. Facemasks appear to be part of the national concern with cleanliness . Some studies suggest they may work, though I have to wonder how much of it is simply group identification: “I think of myself as the type of person who wears facemasks” (the same way that I act and think of myself as a Seattle eco-do-gooder). Particularly amusing facemask wearers are the occasional smoker or takeout-coffee-drinker.

• Speaking of smokers, it’s been a while since I’ve been in a culture where people smoke in eating establishments. In all fairness, smoking is not quite as prevalent as in some other places (such as France), and there seem to be some rules about where one can smoke on the sidewalks.

• So far, there have been more English signs than I expected (especially in Kyoto). Some of the translations are humorous, but the message (usually) gets across. On the flip side, a surprising number of people (well, store workers and shop-keepers, I should say) know little or no English.

• Biking on the left side of the road will take some getting used to. Right now it’s a very conscious process confusion to look and walk where I’m supposed to.

The delights:

• Fresh sushi and riceballs and all sorts of hot, cold, and mysterious packaged foods in convenience stores everywhere! It’s true! And the fresh food is quite good!

• People have been very friendly and helpful and used to dealing with tourists, even if they themselves don’t speak English

• The best advice I got was to study katakana, the Japanese syllabary that is used for imported foreign words. I can recognize the symbols (what else would you do on the long plane flight but cram a foreign alphabet?) and am thrilled every time I can not only sound out a word, but also figure out what the similar-sounding English equivalent is. It would be cool if by the end of the trip I could be reading katakana rapidly, because at the moment….well, I’m not.

• The bullet train is fast. And punctual.

• People are on their cellphones constantly, mostly texting and browsing. They text as they walk, they text as they ride the subway, they text as they wait—but I haven’t seen texting and driving. Not everyone has their head in their phone, but certainly the majority of people I’ve seen in Tokyo. In Kyoto, this is a less prevalent.

The earthquake and nuclear disaster affected some things in Tokyo: many museums are closed; there is very little non-sparkling mineral water in stores; and the city is obviously not as lit up as it normally is (if things get back to normal by the time we fly back, I’d love to compare!). That’s pretty much it, aside from the fact that tourism is down nationally. Our hosts in Kyoto had almost everyone cancel, even though nothing here is disrupted, from what I’ve seen and read.

Next: assembling our bikes, which were just delivered, and preparing to pedal!

The one catch is that the the ground underneath and around the trail is, uhm, heavily polluted with the heavy metals and other poisons used to extract silver from the mines. No wandering off the trail and certainly no eating picked apples!

At the end of this trail, we got on the Northern Pacific Trail and biked all the way to Montana and back. Upon finishing this multi-day bike tour and getting back to our starting point, Plummer, we drove back to Spokane to spend time at our favorite fire lookout.

Picture coming soon…

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It was interesting biking with a new crowd; the ride felt somewhere in between our usual weekend bike trips and the large organized rides we’ve been doing this summer. Folks were relaxed and looking out for everyone in the group, but certainly more hard-core into the cycling world than Knox or I. They seemed more interested in organized events like triathlons than the bike-touring we do, so I appreciated getting a different perspective on the sport.

Before we left Portland, we were underwhelmed at the St. Honoré Boulangerie, delighted in the visual and olfactory pleasures at the rose garden, and visited the well-stocked yet slightly pricey River City Bicycles.

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While it’s fun to do a bona fide self-supported bike tour, sometimes it’s just awesome to do credit card touring: you bike long and hard, stud that you are, and then relax in a luxurious bath before heading out to a posh restaurant and falling asleep on fluffly pillows.

OK, this weekend’s bike tour from Marysville to Bellingham wasn’t quite that fancy, but it was fun and relaxing nonetheless. Highlights of the trip included the stop at Slough Foods in Edison, the scenic if less than ideal biking on Chuckanut Drive, communing with the deers on Whatcom Drive, and the very pleasant riding on the Centennial Trail. The lowlight of the trip, without a doubt, was running over an indecisive chipmunk that decided it really didn’t really want to cross the road after all.

Knox has a more detailed write-up of our adventure.

The ride back was about 70 miles and surprisingly tiring for all of us. The path itself was fine, so it must have been the staying up late instead of catching up on sleep that did us in….

Knox has a write-up of the weekend.

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This weekend, Knox and I rode the Seattle to Portland Classic. Doing it at least once is de rigeur if you call yourself a biker in the Northwest. In fact, it was the one big ride I wanted to do this year; all the other ones we just added in our cabin-fever enthusiasm this past winter.

I enjoyed the ride very much. For the most part, it wasn’t terribly scenic, though we had magnificent views of Mt. Rainier as we rode towards Renton, and traversed some pretty farm country in southern Washington. There were thousands of riders, in all varieties: the super-fast cyclists, of course, as well as families with kids, folks with physical disabilities, and occasional riders who were struggling in pain the whole way.

In a ride of this size, one didn’t really have a chance to pretend to be riding alone, but people were well-mannered for the most part. I had to chuckle, though, about the various archetypes that manifested themselves:

• those with the need for speed, passing constantly on the left with nary a heads up or a gap between themselves and the slower bikers

• the wanna-be bike teams, often a collection of the above, riding back-tire-to-front-tire, as though this were a race where drafting mattered or made much of a difference

• the social butterflies riding two or three abreast in spite of the rules, taking up the whole wide shoulder and making it hard to pass

• the super-conscientious bike-citizens, gesticulating wildly now with their left hand, now with their right, at every single minor bump, pothole, and grating on the road

• the citizen’s posse, a collection of the above, who would emit a chorus of “stopping” “STOPping” “stooopping” “stopping!!” followed by “going!” “Going!” “GOOO-ING” “going!” at every stop sign. The imp in me was very tempted to see whether I could start a chorus of my own by infiltrating them and yelling out “farting!”

Cascade’s support was really good, I thought: the food was ample and delicious (the best PB&J I’ve had, and some delicious turkey wraps). There were long lines for food and water at several of the rest stops, though; I wonder whether there’s a way to organize that better.

We’re thinking that the next time we bike to Portland, we’ll do it on our own, but I was glad to get this ride under my belt. It was the first time I biked two centuries in two consecutive days!

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Yesterday, I completed the Tour de Blast ride, going from the town of Toutle up Mt. St. Helens to the Johnston Ridge Obervatory, which has an amazing view of the blast zone (alas, low-lying clouds prevented me from catching that view first hand, though you can see an older pic here).

The 82-mile round-trip ride was hard by any measure. The hills had a maximum grade of 6%—not as steep as hills we’ve conquered in, say, Newfoundland— but they were long. To make matters worse, I was not in good form yesterday. Whether I was too tired, fueled wrong, or catching something, the first couple of miles, which were flat, were surprisingly difficult. With frequent rest stops, many snacks, and a focus on the road in front of me, though, I was able to pick up the pace and make it to the top and back.

I felt vindicated in my decision to carry a pannier with my two jackets and warm hat, since the cloudy day meant that my body temperature went from sweating hot when pedaling uphill to shiveringly cold when coasting down. Though I was prepared with (and made use of) my own snacks, the organized rest stops were well-stocked with food—and one even had a much-appreciated bonfire!.

While there were fewer people at this ride than in last week’s Flying Wheels, riders here tended to be more fit. As much as I fancy myself a biker these days, I was humbled by the number of folks who were speeding up the mountain at higher gears than I (and would be even if I had been more energetic). In fact, between our slow pace and pausing to take in the exhibit at the observatory at the top, we pretty much closed down the course. I’ve decided that I need to ramp up my training regimen to consist of more than just commuting to work; hills and endurance would have been good preparation for this ride.

All in all, this ride was quite fun. It was a good workout, good mental practice in focusing on the present to get through the long slog, and a good exercise in focusing on my own goals and not feeling needlesly competitive. It also made it very clear to me that I don’t want to do the RAMROD this year: at my current level of training and with my current life priorities, it would not be enjoyable. In fact, I want to get back to biking with a destination: more bike touring in my future, please!

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I just got back from biking my first century, the Flying Wheels, which is a preparation for the 2009 STP we’ll ride later this summer. The STP can be done either in a day or two; we’ll do the latter, which will involve two 80-odd mile days. People should be training for it now, and the Flying Wheels is billed as a milestone in one’s regimen. The FW century in particular is supposed to be your prep ride if you’re doing the STP in one day.

The day began inauspiciously with us getting to the start line later than planned and Knox leaning heavily towards doing the 65-mile course rather than the century. The real bummer came as we approached the start line: Knox noticed that one of his rear spokes was broken. That was it; no ride for him! He came back home and dropped the bike off at a repair shop.

Sad as I was to not be biking with Knox, this gave me the opportunity to go for the century and to bike it at my own pace. It was a lot of fun and so strikingly beautiful! I was annoyed by biking with hordes of people at first: it was hard to pass and hard to find my groove. As the ride wore on, however, the rider density decreased and the fellow participants inspired me to keep biking harder. In the Duvall-Snohomish-Duvall loop, which is part of only the century ride, there were some long stretches where I was biking by myself–exhilarating and contemplative, just as I like it.

The difficulty? It was challenging but doable. The first hill was the worst; whether that was the hill itself or my taking it on too fast because of feeling competitive at the start of the race, I couldn’t say. Everything after was manageable and not out of the ordinary—until the approach to Issaquah. The hills there were killing me: though not extremely steep, they were long and my strength was quite obviously ebbing. Based on this ride, I would say I was in good shape for about 80-odd miles, and then exhaustion started to kick in.

Now it’s time for a shower and a rub-down, and anticipation of next weekend’s Tour de Blast.

My bike hasn’t been getting a lot of love since I moved to Seattle. Bike commuting in the summer, mostly, but not many long rides. No touring.

To charge things up this year, I decided we should do the STP in the summer. And we will. But registering for that led to registering for the training ride, the Flying Wheels. That then led to registering the Tour de Blast. And Knox went so far as to sign up for the RAMROD (yikes!). As a result, we have a biking summer sketched out. We’ve never been into organized rides, so we’ll see how fun they are.

To prepare for these events, we’ve started going on longer bike rides after work–typically 30 to 40 miles, which is not really long in the world of touring. What we’re really jonesing to do is go on another bona fide bike tour, where you cover real distance over the span of days. That is unlikely to happen this summer, as I’m saving my vacation time for other trips. What we can do, however, is weekend mini-tours. And that’s exactly what we did this weekend, driving up to Wenatchee and doing a 76-mile bike tour to Lake Chelan and back.

Oh, it was glorious! Like water to parched lips, this ride reminded me of the sheer joy of feeling the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair, and the pedals underfoot as the world slowly changed around me! So good for the soul!

On the technical side, I was intrigued to confirm what I’ve been noticing this season: my riding style has definitely changed from what it was when I started biking five years ago. It used to be that I would try to ride fast all the time, sprinting up segments of hills and then stopping to pant before continuing up. Now, I seem to have a better pace, where I can gauge the right steady effort to get me to the top, and beyond, without needing to stop to catch my breath.

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