Archive for the 'Bike' Category

Fastest Biker in Kochi, Part III

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 10, 2008 in Bike and Lessons. 3 Comments

So, at this point, I’m still the fastest biker in Kochi.

I was wondering where the challenges lay.

I didn’t have to wonder much longer. We stopped to regroup and prepare for the most difficult stretch of the day - a six-mile climb of 2,400 feet to the top of Tengu’s Plateau. We could see our goal, which was an incredibly steep, skyscraping plain off in the distance with a road etched into the side of the jagged cliff underneath it.

The sight was phenomenal and other-worldly. I should have taken a picture and will next time. I watched a microscopic, white car disappear over the plain in the distance and geared up for the ascent of my life.

I had never attempted a climb of this magnitude even on the old bike with easier climbing gears. The closest would be a sudden, thousand-foot rise over a three-mile road just north of Kochi City that I had done several times.

Recalling all of the advice I had received about climbing on a road bike, I set out to keep momentum going and pedal hard. It didn’t work, and I failed fantastically. I was pooped after getting through the first 12% grade incline within the second mile.

On the old bike, I could always make one last pedal before simply letting my feet fall off the pedals and to the ground. This time, however, I forgot to clip out again and collapsed in a heap, wheezing, spitting, and cursing the Tengu, wondering what I had done to deserve such punishment.

Aside: A tengu is some kind of mountain demon with a red face and an extremely long nose. It has several meanings in ancient history and religion, but many people I’ve asked agree that it’s an evil spirit that only does bad stuff to bad people.

I waited for the familiar purple and yellow rings in front of my eyes to go away and attempted to hop back on for more pain, but clipping in uphill proved to be a frustrating endeavor. I finally got it done, but was off the bike again in two or three minutes, defeated by yet another steep slope.

There was no way I could get back on at that point, so I began to walk the bike up to the next flat point, the existence of which I doubted.

Walking in cleated shoes that are not designed for walking is not fun, and I was extremely flustered by the slow place and the slipping around as I dragged my body uphill. It was more difficult than walking on cement in metal baseball cleats, and my old baseball buddies and the scars on the insides of my ankles will tell you that I was horrible at doing that.

I tried twice more to get moving on the bicycle but did not have the aerobic capacity to keep anything going. A few riders passed me, pedaling painstakingly slowly but, alas, still moving toward the goal.

What they were doing looked masochistic, a way to draw out the awful pain and make it last as long as possible. I thought then that if someone had come by and given me a choice between pedaling all the way up that thing without stopping or dying, I would have gotten on my knees and said, “Make it quick.”

However, the other bikers were experienced and I thought it wiser to imitate them than to sit and wait for the support van, so I got back on the horse and did as the Romans were doing.

It worked! It was much harder on my legs, but my lungs no longer felt like blazing hot bricks and I could actually look around and enjoy the scenes of an early fall in the Shikoku Mountains.

Not until I reached the 4,500-foot summit did the Bike Shops take me aside and tell me that biking was an aerobic activity. I really didn’t think of it that way, because on the old bike I had always been out of breath with muscles aflame trying to keep up with the group.

I see the merits on both sides, keeping momentum versus consistent respiration. If you’re intimate with a certain mountain or hill, you know where it makes sense to push it and blow through a rise and where it’s smarter to hold back and trudge up slowly.

Tengu’s Plateau had no such variation as far as I saw, it was just damn hard the whole way through. I took note of how well the aerobic approach worked and will try it again in the future.

I sat on the ground at the peak, looking around at the white clouds and barren, sloping plain before me. The karsts I had seen in pictures were all covered with beautiful, wild green grass that made the white and gray boulders stand out and shine in the sun, but it seemed that we had missed that time of year. The ground was brown and the rocks dull.

Still, the highest point on Shikoku is 6,000 feet and we couldn’t see that mountain for all of the clouds, so it felt like we were on the top of the world. It was deathly quiet, and a lonely wind crawled past our ears as we zipped up our windbreakers and changed into winter gloves.

We still had 15 miles to go to get to the riverside lodge where we would spend the night. My butt had frozen up and it hurt just to sit on the saddle, let alone pedal. Fortunately it was all downhill from the plateau, but the pain was excruciating and deep. Now I know exactly where the muscles connect to the hip bone, they were screaming at me the whole way down the mountain.

In the middle, there was an unlit, curved tunnel 350 yards long. We went through one by one and stopped in the middle, experiencing total darkness. My turn came, and I felt very small and alone in the absence of light. I remembered to clip out, though, that was good.

In that short time, I let my mind wander to an assortment of topics and forgot which way was out. My body hadn’t moved, so I was pointing in the right direction, but I couldn’t remember how much I had already turned to the right or how far away from the walls I was. There may not have been any walls for all I knew, perhaps that tunnel was where holes to China, missing socks, and Alex Winter ended up.

Complete darkness is fun when you’re in a cave and the guide has just turned off the flashlight, or when you’re groping your way around inside the base of a Buddha statue, enclosed in a space barely large enough to stand up straight, let alone kick your toe around looking for the next stairstep.

Not as fun when you have to guess which way is forward and gyrate some wheels to establish balance. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel appeared, but it had a very definite end to it and I was still bathed in darkness. It was such an odd, nightmarish feeling to see the light source and where the light rays stopped but to be outside of that area.

The national highway inexplicably ceased to be paved and we tumbled and bounced over rocks and gravel for about half a mile before reaching the lodge, where we enjoyed Korean food, cheap Korean beer and Kochi sake, and stories from long ago until we fell asleep, completely exhausted.

We awoke early the following morning to a misty rain that would stay with us all the way back into the city. I was anxious to get home and jump in the tub, and I shot out in front of the group before being told again to slow down.

I didn’t quite get it until a few miles later when we faced a long, but gradual uphill slope. The biker behind me whispered in my ear, “Mac, take it a little slower on the hills, eh?”

The oldest member of the group that day, a 58-year-old retired veterinarian with a huge face, shouted out a phrase in Japanese that has multiple uses, one of which is “please take care of this for me.”

I’ve stopped translating the phrase and don’t ever have to think about it to know what it means in each situation, so I understood what the vet meant as soon as he said it.

I also finally understood the team aspect of cycling and our trip. We stuck together to share the wind, the grind, and the experience. It was important for everyone to stay together, and all I had been thinking about the whole time was myself.

I then thought back on all the times someone had stayed behind to tell me where to turn, or turned and gone back early with me when I simply could not keep up or make it one more leg at the breakneck speed of the racers. Scarce were times that I returned to Kochi City alone.

I owe the riders in KCTC a lot. I feel a great sense of accomplishment having toughed it out for a year with inferior equipment and less experience, but I didn’t beat those obstacles alone. I got encouragement and guidance from every single member and I will pay it forward.

So, while I really wanted to stretch my wings (and hop in the tub as soon as possible), I joined the group and rode merrily with them back to Kochi. It was fantastic and I am looking forward to riding with them again and again. There will be plenty of other times to sprint and max out.

————————–

Where had I gotten off thinking that the challenge in cycling was gone? I’m glad that I was brought down to Earth quickly on that one. I still feel like I can go until the pavement stops, and I’m anxious to expand my radius over the winter, but I know there is still so much to learn and I’m wide open to it.

On top of the lessons in humility, I had seen several guys in their fifties ace the hellish trek up Tengu Plateau. Talk about inspiration. I hope that I’m still able to do that in thirty years.

I thought I was the fastest biker in Kochi.

Fastest Biker in Kochi, Part II

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 8, 2008 in Bike and Lessons. 1 Comment

I am the fastest biker in Kochi.

The time finally came to officially try out my new horse with KCTC. I came out with the bicycle a couple of Sundays ago, still not fully committed to buying it and fixing it up. Rain and an out-of-town bike race left me standing at the Bike Shop alone.

I visited the Bike Shop three or four times during the week to buy parts and ask advice on the used bike that I decided to buy. Rice Man helped me put it together and fixed the mistakes I had made trying to do things on my own.

Mrs. Bike Shop put in a special order for clip-in shoes for me (”Mac, your feet are impossibly huge . . .”), and they arrived at the Bike Shop Saturday morning. I had but one day to break them in before the big two-day trip to the Shikoku Karst on the Kochi-Ehime border.

Aside: I’m still not sure exactly what a karst is. Seems to be strangely-formed land with lots of rocks strewn about, and apparently the campus of UC Santa Cruz is a mini-karst.

The Bike Shops still hadn’t touched the bike other than the diagnostic exam that Mr. Bike Shop had done earlier, but they did hand me a screwdriver and a giant Allen wrench to install the new pedals and clips.

I tried the bike out with one shoe on and instantly noticed the difference of having my feet attached to the pedals. When I hopped on the old bike and pedaled, I was only applying force forward and down on the pedals, but with clip-ins, my legs were working throughout the entire circle. I put on both shoes and tried them out, and the bike nearly took off from underneath me!

I took on a couple of familiar hills and passes on the way to a favorite beach an hour away by the old bike. It took 45 minutes on the new one with about the same amount of effort. I loved how easy it was to maintain momentum, how fast I flew when I pedaled harder, and the more aerodynamic position of my body on the frame.

The members of KCTC broke into applause when I wheeled up the next morning, and exploded with laughter as I fell to the ground, forgetting to clip out and separate my feet from the pedals. I had a huge smile on my face and was waving at them like a dope, effectively erasing the WARNING: YOU ARE STILL CONNECTED TO THE VEHICLE message in my brain.

Imagine trying in earnest to get out of the car with your seat belt fastened. Or trying to stand up and walk after someone has tied your shoelaces together. It looks kind of like that.

About 25 of us departed for the Karst, taking the same national highway that we used to get to the Festival of Fools in February. We passed over into Ehime Prefecture and stopped at a riverside rest area about 45 miles out of Kochi City.

I had yet to break a sweat. We had climbed to about 2,000 feet at the highest point, but the slope seemed amazingly gentle on my new bike, which is about a third the weight of the old one. I spent most of the time toward the very front of the group and got to lead on most of the uphill sections.

It had become so easy to move; I felt loose and free, my body working so much efficiently than before. It was simply awesome, and it stunned me into silence that everyone else noticed.

“Mac, you’re so quiet today! Where’s the energy?”

“Yeah, what’d you do with all of that horsepower?”

“Look at him, it’s like he’s all grown up!”

In truth, I did feel like I had graduated, like I had moved onto something bigger, better, and more important. It just didn’t seem like the time to joke around or speak lightly because the experience was so striking and profound for me. I had never been farther away from base and I wasn’t even out of breath!

As we began the real climb on the next part of our trip, I wondered about my new limits. I thought that I could ride until the road ended somewhere, that I must be so fast that soon enough I’d have to join a racing team and turn pro.

I had considered the old challenges of Kochi to be the hardest of the hard and wondered what could possibly challenge me going forward.

I am the fastest biker in Kochi . . .

Took the Plunge

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 6, 2008 in Bike. 4 Comments

After a year of toiling on The Club of bicycles and months of fretting over what step to take next, I finally purchased a used road bicycle that is as good as new to me!

Despite how much I enjoyed my role as the clown and caboose of KCTC, I wanted to feel what it was like to fly with the big boys. I needed a road bike. No amount of upgrades was going to get it done on my trusty, but bulky, pedaling machine.

The Bike Shops suggested buying a brand new bicycle from them, which would have run me about a month’s pay all told. That’s a huge leap into an unknown world, and I didn’t and still don’t even know if I want to be a part of it enough to warrant spending that much money.

I couldn’t get a trial ride from them as they insisted they didn’t have any bikes in my size in stock. One person in KCTC is taller than me and has longer legs, and he got to test out a few bikes. I pointed that out to the Bike Shops, but I think my foreignness held too strong in their perception of my size.

This happens a lot in Japan. I am by no means the biggest person in town, nor am I the biggest person that anyone has ever seen. I will say that it is very uncommon to see a Japanese person who has my combination of height and girth, but many men eclipse me in one area or the other. I am not the tallest or heaviest person on staff at my school, nor would I be if I put on a school uniform and ran with the students.

However, on first meeting people and almost every time the topic of sizing comes up, the words “Mac, you’re huge” are not far behind. There is a tone of bewilderment and exasperation in their voices, such that it becomes, “Mac, you’re impossibly huge and I’m sure I’ve never seen anything in your size.”

“White foreigner” almost certainly equals “big, huge ape” in Japanese common sense. This perception is convenient sometimes and often works in my favor, but annoys me just as often. If I had to quantify it, I’d say it adds a couple inches, ten to fifteen pounds, and a handful of decibels to what is actually there when I interact with a Japanese person that I don’t know well. It would probably make an olfactometer go crazy, too.

Long story short, I couldn’t test ride something on which I was being asked to spend hundreds of thousands of yen. That didn’t sit well with me and added loads of time to the decision-making process. I was in the Bike Shop at least once a week asking about this and that as well as emailing biker friends and scouring the Internet for deals.

I knew that the Bike Shops wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t buy from them, and on top of that that they would not work on whatever bike I bought from somewhere else. I had seen them shun a girl who used to enjoy riding with KCTC over buying a bike online, and other riders have whispered about getting substandard effort from Mr. Bike Shop on non-Bike Shop bicycles.

They did their best to describe the experience of riding a road bike to me, and that was all I had to go on from everyone else I asked as well.

At the end of September, I decided that remaining loyal to the Bike Shops was worth the money and hassle that I would have saved acquiring the bike some other way. I called Mrs. Bike Shop and asked her to put in an order for one of the new line of Trek 2.1 bicycles.

She was away from the Shop and couldn’t remember the exact colors in the catalog, nor could I. She wanted to make certain that I got the right one, so she told me to call again a few days later when she had the magazine in front of her.

Forgetting the colors turned out to be an extremely lucky oversight for me and an equally unfortunate development for the Bike Shops.

The very next day after the phone call, a fellow from Kochi Technical College came to my high school and gave a short introductory course for the IT majors who were thinking about going to Kochi Tech. He was the Technological English lecturer, a tall, skinny American from Connecticut who had lived in Kochi for the past five years.

I had heard his name from a few Chinese students that I know at Kochi Tech, and I remembered that one of them said that he was a crazy biker. Sure enough, the first slide in his presentation showed him on a mountain bike with mud all over his body and face. He seemed nice enough, so I asked him about cycling after the presentation.

It just so happened that he was an inch shorter than me with legs about the same length, and that his wife had been telling him to get rid of an old road bike that he kept in their shed. He had bought a sleek, new racer the previous year and was hanging onto the old one for its sentimental value.

He invited me to come out for a ride with him, so I finally got to take the test ride that I had so craved while agonizing over the decision.

He took me up into mountains that were new territory for me, all the way up to a road and a peak that I didn’t know existed. I had considered exploring that area before, but the map made it look like there were no roads there. There was good reason for that.

Gradients of 15% and 16% on both the uphill and downhill runs were one reason. On a road (as opposed to a dirt trail), that means either pedaling so hard that you can’t see or think straight, or hurtling downhill so fast that you’d better be wearing brown bike shorts to save yourself some embarrassment at the bottom.

We polished off the mountain in a couple hours and some change, although I was sure at least three times during the downhill stretch that my final words would be either “Holy mackerel!” or “Oh shit!” I’ve got to work on making something more meaningful come out when faced with a chance of death, something like the secret to my delicious French toast or the cure for the common cold.

In all seriousness, I didn’t know that it was possible to go that fast on a bicycle. Lecturer said that he had reached 50 MPH on that mountain in the past. I was spooked because of the sheer speed and also because I didn’t have a very good grip on the brakes as Lecturer’s hands belonged in a different position on the handlebars than did mine.

I logged the harrowing experience and decided that I wanted some more. Lecturer graciously lent me the bike for a few more test rides and I determined which parts I would need to replace. Eventually, I bought the bike for substantially less than the brand new one.

True to the rumors, Mr. Bike Shop would hardly touch the used bike. I brought it by the Shop for a diagnostic, and he looked at it over the glasses perched on his nose with the Japanese equivalent of a “harrumph!” He detailed parts that needed to be replaced, and I dutifully bought each and every one from the Shop.

However, I was left on my own to make the repairs. I consider myself a pretty clever guy with good small motor skills, but I lack common sense when it comes to putting things together and understanding what makes them work. I am a lock to break something that only an idiot would break, cut or glue something in the incorrect place, or put something on backwards.

My luck continued. A middle-aged guy in my neighborhood passes by every now and then on a variety of bicycles and electric scooters, and he always heaves a hearty hello in my direction. I thought he was just a cheerful gentleman, but it turns out that he knew who I was and used to ride with KCTC.

I was embarrassed to find that it was he who phoned ahead and told Mrs. Bike Shop about the Jari and Doro incident, and that he had even been one of the six dudes in the tub at the mountain hot spring in the winter.

He runs a wholesale rice shop down the street from my apartment and is a certified bicycle nut. If it has two wheels, he’s on it. I’d wager that he has more bikes than anyone in town outside the Bike Shops. They hang from the ceiling and peek out from behind 40-pound bushels of rice in his crowded little warehouse, and I think he spends more time playing with bike parts and riding around the neighborhood than he does selling rice.

I took the used bike by Rice Man’s place before I bought it, and his eyes lit up like birthday candles when I told him about it. He stopped me mid-sentence and said, “Mac, if you don’t buy this thing, then I will! Just think of what I could do with this part, with that part . . .” He was all but drooling over it!

He graciously supervised my installation of new handlebars, shifter and brake cables, tires, and pedals, even jumping in and lending a hand when I was about to mess something up. He moved so quickly and with so much energy and urgency, and he grunted and exhaled noisily along with twists of the Allen wrench and screwdriver.

And so it is done. I have joined the rest of the pack and taken another step in the biking world. I am so thankful for the experience and that I was able to meet two amazing men, find a bike within my budget, and still demonstrate some loyalty to the Bike Shops at the same time.

Here she is.

Biking Blind

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 27, 2008 in Bike. 0 Comments

You’re doing fine! Just take a rest. Most guys are rolling around in the dirt and throwing up at this point!

I could hear these words coming from a longtime family friend, but I couldn’t see them, or anything else in front of me, for that matter. It was the first time in my life I’d ever done anything so intensely that I went blind.

Do you want a ride home? I can bring the car if you want, really, it’s no big deal.

I think I said I just needed ten minutes to rest. I’m not really sure what I said, or if it made any sense. Thoughts of what I would do to prepare for a life without sight raced through my head faster than I had climbed the dirt hill in the back country of Orange County.

I had expected to reach the top and enjoy the browns and dull greens of rolling hills on that crisp December day during a trip home. Instead, I wondered if I would ever see again.

I was out of breath and my heart was pounding in my head. The world went black soon after I clipped out of the mountain bike that I was riding for the first time. I groped around, stumbled to a bench, and put my elbows on my knees, sure that I was looking straight ahead.

Nothing. Just black. I opened my eyes wider and looked left to right. No valley. No cacti. No ribbon of road in the distance. Just black.

I could hear everything going on around me and feel the bench beneath me, the man next to me, and my own hot breath escaping out of my tired lungs and the cool air invading soon after.

I tried desperately to remember the last thing I saw, as if to create a memento to tell people about when I would have to answer the inevitable questions about my new condition. Even that image would not appear in my mind.

Finally, after about five minutes, I began to see the shape of the landscape and the figures of three other people around me, able to interpret their depth and proximity to me but still no colors. Just black.

Ha ha, wow! You just went ZOOMING up the mountain, man! You really should have paced yourself!

He had been singing a different tune all the way up the hill, getting me to turn on full steam and plunge ahead. I’m not sure if “encouraged” or “duped” is the correct word to use.

You’ve got 24-year-old arms and legs, why don’t you use them? Go on, go ahead!

I’m a sucker for challenges because I still think life is a contest, especially if I’m already dripping in sweat or in a uniform of some sort. This is why I retired.

Eventually, sight and sanity returned and we continued on the rugged trail. I succumbed to the awesome forces of nature and gravity many more times before we made it back to sweet, flat land.

I had had so much fun in my first three months with KCTC that I took this fellow up on his offer to take me mountain biking, figuring it would be at least as fun as the road. He graciously provided me with a bicycle and proper clothes, shoes, and water, and we went out with two of his pals from the neighborhood.

Getting used to the clip-in pedals and shoes was enough for a few spills before we even got to the rough road. Going the right way on the street (they go the wrong way in Japan) and bounding right over curbs and obstacles on the bike weirded me out at first, but that all turned into fun by the end of the day.

Mountain biking is completely different from riding on the road, but I began to recognize the elements on the mountain bike that are present on my current bike, a hybrid. It was exciting to go barreling down dirt hills, focusing on the area immediately in front of me, grappling with gravity, and screaming from the sheer pleasure it brought me.

Downing beers at the end and waking up sore for the next two days wasn’t so bad, either!

I enjoy the road because I can broaden my focus, think about distant physical and mental goals, and masticate other thoughts while my body takes care of the task at hand. I’ve found some answers to life’s questions while the legs just keep pedaling.

My world got a little bigger on the last Saturday of 2007, and I plan to go give mountain biking another shot while I’m home for Christmas this year. Hopefully I’ll be able to see it all this time.

Jari and Doro

Published by Bob Sanchez on September 26, 2008 in Bike. 1 Comment

My first visit to a Japanese hospital came courtesy of an outing with the bike club. It happened during my first month with the club, on a gray Sunday in October.

We were out with the older folks on a relatively flat course next to a gorgeous river, and since I actually got to spend some time ahead of people (imagine that!), I took the opportunity to practice communicating upcoming hazards by mouth and hand.

KCTC members inform those behind them of cars, potholes, high curbs, and other obstacles by yelling out the name of the object or by sticking a hand behind them and pointing downward on the dangerous side. As simple as it is, I think it’s very cool to communicate this way and feel like a part of the club when we do.

So I was trying to be the responsible one, pointing out all of the hazards on the winding backroad that we were taking that day. At one point about 20 miles from home there was a huge pothole that was difficult to see. I had to swerve to get out of the way, and I pointed at it so that the riders behind me would see it.

Little did I know that I was also showing them a huge patch of gravel on the outside of a very sharp turn around an old house. I had taken my eyes off the road for a split-second to point at the pothole, and before I knew it, I was on my back and the bike and I were sliding through the gritty material and right off the road!

My clothes were ripped up and there were scrapes all down the left side of my body, but the worst one was a gash on my forearm just above my elbow. It was about four inches long, a quarter-inch wide, and at least a half-inch deep. Stones and sand were embedded in the cut and I thought I might get my first look at one of my own bones. I wish I had taken a picture.

I rinsed it out with my water bottle and jumped back on the bike. When we reached the next resting point, Mrs. Bike Shop pulled up and said, “Hey, Mac, I heard you fell down. What happene-OH MY GOSH!!! You’ve got to get that stitched up. Someone gimme a water bottle!”

Luckily, Mrs. Bike Shop used to be a nurse and always carries a first-aid kit tucked away somewhere in her body suit. She was right, it needed to be disinfected and stitched. I broke from the group and rode home to shower and get ready to go to the emergency room.

Mrs. Bike Shop knew of a hospital that is open on Sundays showed me how to get there, and even came in to see the doctor with me.

First, I had to make a member card at the front desk, and then they informed me that any treatment would cost double because it was Sunday. Before I could ask why or prod any further, Mrs. Bike Shop interjected and said that I would be glad to receive treatment, pushing me toward the waiting room.

The waiting room was clean and small, and nobody else was there, so I got called into the treatment area very quickly. There were only three partitions for doctors with collapsible walls and curtains separating them - I was at a “clinic,” not a full-fledged hospital. Interestingly, you go to this same sort of place when you have a cold or the flu.

The doctor came in and we did the “Japanese, OK?” dance and got started. He twisted my arm behind me and began poking and prodding, asking if this or that hurt. So far, so good, emergency care is emergency care, right?

Nouns and adjectives that don’t pop up every day can be tough for me to understand quickly, and the doctor kept talking about taking something out of my arm - jari and doro.

Since the cut was on the back of my elbow, I couldn’t see it while he was looking at it and frantically tried to figure out what the heck jari and doro were. Nerves? Tissue? Some kind of body part? I didn’t think so and certainly hoped not.

The doctor kept saying, “Well, I can’t do anything until we get this jari and doro out of there,” and Mrs. Bike Shop couldn’t define the words for me when I asked.

I think she understood the look on my face, which probably said something like, “this guy doesn’t touch me until I know what he’s taking out of my body!”

The doctor finally pulled out some mirrors and showed me what he was looking at when he pried the cut open - there was a bunch of gravel and mud inside the cut that we hadn’t gotten to at the scene.

In a semi-emergency situation, how would you define gravel and mud in English to someone who didn’t know the meanings of the words? Simple and common nouns, but not everyday words.

I told him how freaked out I was by not understanding jari and doro, and the three of us had a good laugh about that. He went to work and the experience wasn’t much different than that of any American emergency room I’ve been to. Until I went home and the following checkups came.

Japanese doctors get paid by the visit, by and large, and they are not bashful about doing whatever they can to get you to come as often as possible. I walked out of the hospital with two days’ worth of gauze and bandages with instructions to return on Tuesday.

Return I did, and I went twice more after that before realizing that visiting every two or three days really wasn’t helping the wound heal any more; it was doing just fine by itself and I was a chump for paying 5,000 yen for bandages and an OK from the doctor.

I was going to pretend to be interested in the next visit and not show up, but then the doctor played his next card:

“Oh, it looks good, Mac. I think we might be able to take the stitches out between Thursday and next Sunday.”

Talk about a rock and a hard place - I had to decide between paying fifty bucks for more bandages and an “Oh, let’s wait until Sunday” on Thursday or preemptively waiting for Sunday and paying double to get some strings cut.

I cut the stitches myself on Saturday.

Or, I went back on Monday to get them cut.

I honestly can’t remember, because I’ve cut stitches by myself before to avoid ridiculous charges in the States, and I’ve also pulled the Monday trick when I need antibiotics here and the doctor arranges to have my prescription run out on a Saturday. I did one of the two in this situation.

It stinks that the system is set up that way, but everybody knows about it and plays the game, so I do, too. Add to that the automatic, unquestionable respect that the title of Doctor commands here, and you have a guy who hated going to the doctor in his home country . . . well, hating to go to the doctor in a foreign country.

I wouldn’t have gone to the hospital at all if not for Mrs. Bike Shop, and I owe her a lot for standing her ground and commanding me to go. It may have taken a few days and an infection for me to figure it out on my own.

The Bike Shops got a container full of homemade American-style French toast as thanks, but they had that coming to them anyway. I felt like I could trust them and this episode simply proved it.

Now I’ve got a cool scar that I forget about because I can’t see it. My students ask about it sometimes, and I’ll usually make up a story - in a mad dash for home plate, I slid so hard that I ripped up my uniform and my arm and it took the groundskeepers three days to fix the hole.

Something along those lines. Certainly something more exciting and less embarrassing than the truth.

The Big Snake Tree

Published by Bob Sanchez on May 12, 2008 in Bike. 0 Comments

We’ve just pulled out of a string of national holidays titled “Golden Week,” though “week” is a bit of a stretch. This is my second Golden Week in Japan, and I’m still not sure exactly how many holidays there are or the rationale behind assigning actual days off during the week.

It goes something like this:

April 29 used to be Green Day, but has been changed to Showa Day to commemorate the ruling period of the Showa Emperor (which happens to include World War II and my birth, among other important events).

May 3 is Constitution Memorial Day, in remembrance of the constitution that we made them sign 60 years ago and that officially made the Showa Emperor a figurehead.

May 4 was called People’s Holiday, but is now Green Day. Go figure.

May 5 is Children’s Day.

Some businesses are nice and give employees one or two whole weeks off. Public schools are nowhere near that, they go by the letter of the law. So we got a random Tuesday (April 29) and the following Monday and Tuesday (May 5 and 6). When I lived here a few years ago, the school gave us Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in one of the weeks. That was very stupid.

In any case, when you lump together a bunch of national holidays in a nation where people don’t take Saturdays off, it is inevitable that highways, trains, and planes will be jammed, hotels will be booked solid for a hundred miles around any major tourist attraction, and the prices will be jacked up to match.

Not fun when you suddenly find out that one of your guys is pitching in Hiroshima on the first day of said stack o’ holidays. No tourists there, of course. And I didn’t have to stand up next to an anxious smoker and a redhead with Tourette’s for the entire 3 and a half hour train ride there, either.

I’ve never been smashed into the back of a truck with 20 other people on a treacherous, week-long road to freedom, but it’s easier to imagine now.

Before the Hiroshima disaster, I had a Tuesday off. I awoke with no plans other than to jump on my bicycle and go somewhere. There are some steep mountains behind a beachside town where three English teaching acquaintances live, and I decided to sneak around the backside and barrel down in hopes that the back way had an easier climb.

I was right about the ascent, but the trip was much longer than I anticipated. I found the right roads and wound through tiny mountain communities and pine forests until I got to the end of one numbered road and the beginning of another.

The first road had signs counting down to 0 kilometers, so I thought that I would be in the beachside town by then. I was still looking up a hill when I got to zero, and the new numbered road had a sign in the distance that said “2.4 kilometers.”

That’s what I had hoped, anyway. It was indeed 24 and that was another hour-plus that I hadn’t counted on.

I made it home OK and didn’t ride again until yesterday, my first Sunday ride in weeks due to baseball travels and Golden Week. Everyone showed up and was in fine spirits except the Bike Shops. Mrs. Bike Shop’s mother had been taken to the hospital the night before and the two were concerned and decided not to ride.

We wished Grandma Bike Shop the best and rode off to the Big Snake Tree. Larry had seen an article in the paper about a special wisteria tree that only blooms for a couple of weeks each year. It was in full color at the base of a mountainside campground and we wanted to see it.

I had never been out without the Bike Shops before, and the tone was a lot different. Larry insisted that I ride in the middle of the group and not the back, which put a lot of pressure on me to pedal harder than I wanted to at the beginning of the ride. I usually plan on having enough energy left to get back home.

A vicious crosswind hampered us all the way up the Monobe River, and the guys joked about how much wind I blocked for them. I told them to say their prayers when they try to catch me on my new bike in the future. I like these opportunities to cut up and have a little fun in Japanese.

We turned off the main highway onto the exact same road that I had taken alone on Showa Day. I chuckled and told the other riders, and that got me a turn in the front. Me and my big mouth.

We got to the Big Snake Tree, which wasn’t spectacular, but wasn’t bad. It was a nice little spot with a rushing river thanks to the rain the day before. I had whizzed through there without a second thought just two weeks before, and I’m sure that I would’ve remembered the tree if it had been in bloom.

From there, we passed the 24 kilometers sign and battled tourist traffic all the way out of the valley, over the pass, and down the mountain. Quite a few times we whipped around corners to find two cars at an impasse, and we actually had to scream out at one driver to stop before he drove his car off the side of the cliff!

The final plunge into the coastal town resembled a big snake more than did the wisteria tree, and moist weather and cover of trees had aided the growth of moss on the road. One of our riders went down very hard around a hairpin turn and luckily came up with just a deep scrape on one leg.

Carefully, we continued, and a few more riders slipped and fell, but each subsequent slide was funnier than the last because we knew they were coming and were taking it very slowly. Nobody else hit the pavement, but a retired veterinarian with a huge face nearly wiped out a small shrine sandwiched between the road and the face of the mountain and let out a hilarious scream in so doing.

We gathered at the junction of Kochi’s PCH and took our last break before we would all start to take our own routes home. I leaned over to ask Pretty Guy what his odometer said and was shocked to learn that we had already eclipsed 65 miles. All told, we rode 80 miles to see a tree.

What surprised me even more was that I had done this by myself beforehand and didn’t know how far it was. Or how dangerous. Thank God that it was dry and that tree was sleeping when I went out the first time. I would not have handled the cars and the mossy downhill roads as well without my friends in KCTC.

The Legend of Mac: Quest for Castle Mountain

Published by Bob Sanchez on March 13, 2008 in Bike. 0 Comments

Sometimes life in Japan resembles Nintendo adventure games so much that it’s no wonder the games came from here.

Take for example my first days in Fukushima. All I knew was that Fukushima was an hour north of Tokyo on the Bullet Train, and that was going on the word of my boss-to-be (the same guy who brought me into the country without a proper visa. It took 90 minutes, by the way).

I was plopped down in a fine apartment in the Bakersfield of Japan, but I had taken a night train and it had been raining, so I awoke on my first day in town without the foggiest clue of where I was or what anything looked like.

Kind of like Link in the GameBoy version of the Legend of Zelda where he has to wake up the Wind Fish to make Marin’s dream come true.

The map in that game was a 256-square grid, and you couldn’t look at places you hadn’t been yet. If you tried to look at the map while you were at Marin’s house in the very beginning, you couldn’t see anything at all.

Waking up in Fukushima that day in 2005 was frighteningly similar. I pushed out square by square and got my bearings, and I had to work at it. Different language, little order to the placement of roads and buildings, no street names, randomly distributed rice fields on any inch of undeveloped land - it was in every way a strange new world.

One of the reasons I so enjoy bicycling around Kochi and traveling through Japan is the interesting geography. Japan is basically a bunch of steep mountains sticking up out of the ocean, and Kochi has some of the gnarliest land formations in the country.

My apartment and school are 4 miles away from the Pacific, but you wouldn’t know it for the 1,000 foot mountain range that runs parallel to the shore between us and the ocean. Kochi Bay comes in through a gap in the mountains less than 1,000 feet wide.

About 10 miles to the west, an even smaller opening creates a dragon-shaped bay that stretches 8 miles inland, but parallel to the shore so that the peninsula is literally mountains poking up out of the water. There is very, very little sand and minimal beach area, and the treacherous road that runs the length of the peninsula offers several views of the bay and the ocean simultaneously.

My descriptions don’t do justice to the amazing natural sights, and the numbers probably don’t mean much to anyone with less than a passing interest in geography. To LINK this back to the Legend of Zelda, it’s as if God wanted to cram all of these geographical features into a limited space - much the same way that artists and programmers had to make everything fit onto the limited memory of a game cartridge.

So you get cool stuff like an active, ash-spewing volcano in the middle of a bay next to a city of 600,000 people Or how about another stinkin’ volcano jutting up out of the ocean on one side and overlooking a lake on the other within a span of 5 miles?

While driving on a Kagoshima highway that doubled as a tsunami wall, I saw an island about a half-mile off the coast. A small, sandy boat launch stuck out between the road and the bay, and I pulled the car off the road to read the sign posted in the turnout.

It was talking about Chiringashima, the uninhabited, tree-shrouded island I saw before me. What I couldn’t see, because it was high tide, was a six-foot wide sandbar that leads out to the island only at low tide. Totally natural. How cool is that?

It reminded me of a level in WarioLand where you had to return to one of the beginning stages, which had changed dramatically because the tide had come in. The higher sea level gave Wario access to a secret door unreachable at low tide.

I often have these kinds of thoughts. Nerdy? Yes. Lame? Perhaps. But tell me that you would be prepared for facing down some video game situations in real life.

On to Castle Mountain. In search of the perfect Morning Ride, I decided to take a road that the Bike Shops recommended to me in the fall.

The main road, Highway 33, begins in Kochi City, goes up and around a group of mountains and a river gorge, and ends on the west side of town. Dozens of farming roads work their way up and down the mountains inside the loop, and I wanted to cut through the circle on the road that went up to the peak of Castle Mountain.

This kind of thing wouldn’t be too difficult with a Thomas Guide and a full tank of gas, but, as I mentioned before, Japan doesn’t name streets. There are highway numbers, but to my frustration, nobody seems to use them. If I stop and ask someone how to get to Highway 195, for example, I usually get a blank look and something like the following:

“This road goes up that-a-way, and that road goes over there.”

That suffices in this video game world. Navigating in the city isn’t too difficult as you have buildings and traffic lights to count, but get away from the concrete jungle and you have to start using riverbends, felled trees, Honesty Markets, and abandoned vehicles.

For the Castle Mountain bit, I looked at my big map of Kochi City and tried my best to visualize what the route would look like. I could see where I wanted to go in the overview map in the bottom corner, but the actual roads on the enlarged map were covered by the legend.

Unfazed, I set out at 6 a.m. the following morning with what I thought was a good picture of the adventure ahead. I made the correct turn off Highway 33 and made it up to Castle Mountain without any problems.

Getting down would be the tough part. Four- and five-point intersections greeted me like pitchforks, and while some roads were obviously dead-ends into someone’s cabbage patch, others tantalized with better pavement or a lighter slope. A few times, I actually had to stop and scratch my head to figure out what to do.

I made it back to Kochi, but I had gotten sucked into a loop within the big loop and ended up descending on the same road that brought me up.

I checked the detailed commercial map at school the next day and saw where I had made a wrong turn. I vowed to set out again and make it through to the other side.

The correct road got steep and nasty pretty quickly after Castle Mountain, which, by the way, turned out not to be the highest peak. I guessed at a few forks in the road and found the back side of Highway 33 on its winding trip back toward the west side of Kochi. Yahoo!

The seven-foot wide concrete road was strewn with pine needles and belied its status as a state highway. It looked like it got one car per hour tops.

A few miles later, I was confronted by a surprise junction - it was exactly the same shape as the one I had taken to get back to the highway. The smoother road made a sharp turn downhill while the rougher-looking option continued in the same general direction at the same altitude.

A rusted sign declared that Kochi City was downhill while Ino, the town to the west of Kochi, was straight ahead. I bought that and also figured that the well-paved road better suited a numbered highway, so I turned and started down the slope.

I arrived at an awfully familiar-looking crossroads, and with good reason: it was one of the head-scratchers from the climb up. I had just made another circle!

I laughed and shouted, “DAMMIT!” Fooled again. I wanted to climb the mountain once more and beat the maze, but my energy meter was critically low and time was running out. I hit SAVE and turned the game off to try another day.

Straight to the Bike Shop I went to solicit the advice of this game’s sages. I asked them why this particular area had to be such a puzzle, and why it was that I couldn’t stop thinking about figuring it out. They chuckled; this obviously wasn’t the first case of bike fever or Castle Mountain Syndrome that they’d seen.

Mrs. Bike Shop wrinkled her nose and said, “Mac, you’ve got to get a nose for Kochi. You have to stop at a fork in the road and be able to say, ‘Kochi is THIS way!’” She sniffed like a curious dog as she delivered her local wisdom.

I complained that even my sense of direction wasn’t working. I just couldn’t predict where the twisting mountain roads would go once I made a decision on one or the other.

“Well, if you do it my way, you only have to use your five senses,” she replied. I didn’t recognize the word for “five senses” right away and she saw it on my face.

I caught the meaning a fraction of a second before she started to ask this question:

“Do you guys have five senses, too?”

Mr. Bike Shop looked up from the cruiser he was assembling and his eyes met mine. We struggled to hold back the giggles, and Mrs. Bike Shop realized what she had just asked after two or three seconds.

“No, no, no! That’s not what I meant!”

But it was too late. I had to take a knee to properly hold my sides, and Mr. Bike Shop dropped his tools while guffawing loudly.

Three years ago, I was ready to punch the next Japanese who asked me if there were also McDonald’s in the U.S. or if I was physically capable of eating with chopsticks. Questions like that are still annoying to an extent, and while Mrs. Bike Shop’s question was formed with precisely the same kinds of words, the context was completely different.

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I am going to conquer that uncharted territory up around Castle Mountain. I’ll draw a better map, send it to the map company, and tell them to put their damn legend over the Pacific Ocean instead of over a very interesting network of farming roads.

But not today. It’s raining, and Mario doesn’t come out to play when it rains.