Day 4 Japan Bikepacking tour. Amakusa to Aso Volcano
Good morning, J. Let’s go. I uh had a good sleep today or this morning. I woke up at 6, which is two or 3 hours later than I normally do. This is where we stayed in this uh what do you call this? Like a dorm. Oh, Tim, sorry, man. Inappropriate dorm style. No, get this. Let’s get the the X-ray. Yeah, this behind. You got to pay extra for this. That’s for only fans. Yo, but they’re like these dorm style rooms. There was a very We spent hours and hours and hours trying to find a place to stay in uh it was right in front of us and we finally settled upon this place. There’s kind of like a shared accommodation thing downstairs, but it really doesn’t make a difference because we got the place to ourselves. Uh, so it’s great. Slept like a baby. Smell test after a day of wet, sticky riding of the wool. Okay, now I’m trying to be unbiased here. Smell the armpit. There’s a little bit in the armpit. Is there because you know, but the rest of the shirt. Check it out. You okay? Smell it. It all has a little smell. It smells like it’s been worn and the armpit is worse. Your braid. But not bad. But it’s better than my shirt. Surprisingly surprisingly good considering. Yes. Wow. I would say remember you smelled your gray one after your ride and you said it was it 8 out of 10. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That’s a win for wool. And I will say this too for wool. I really appreciated yesterday it got wet. It got wet. It got rained on, but it really wasn’t a factor at all. No. Um I don’t know that I like the wool as much on hot days though. Yeah, it it feels itchier like when it’s really hot. And maybe it’s just cuz it’s black and it and it’s really takes on the heat. And I’m not saying that it’s not breathable cuz it is, but it just feels I don’t know. There’s It feels different. It does. We’re going to continue with the testing. We’re I’m also doing I’m also I was just going to say I’m also doing an underwear thing. Tim Jim gave me these wool underwear. It’s Is there always that rip in there? That’s for quick access. I don’t think so. But uh I think Yeah, that’s the one thing about wool is that it’s it’s delicate. But I I I’m going to say that of all the underwear I’ve worn when I’ve ridden, I’ve thought the least about these ones, which is a good thing. I’ve never noticed them. They’ve never been a factor, which is I can’t say that about any other underwear I’ve ever worn. I always like, “Oh, yeah, there it is.” You know, and it kind of bunches up. And this has not been the case. So, again, I want to I want to talk [ __ ] about W. Why? Why you I Because it just seems so pretentious. It’s like so expensive. You know what I mean? Cuz it works. But it works. Okay. Good. I’m glad you can own that. There is a durability there is a durability factor clearly. Um but if you can afford it, you know, which certainly we can. Uh, you know, it’s it should be an option. So wives out there, if you’re looking for something nice, a nice gift for your husband for Christmas, something you really want to treat him with, you’re like, I just don’t know. And he’s a cyclist, especially if he’s a cycle tourist, bike packer, uh but wool, wool might be a good bet. And hit hit me up. Uh make sure you look in the fine print. You might be eligible for the pro program. Oh, yeah. If you’re a nurse, doctor, teacher, police officer, get 50% off. Yeah, icebreaker.com. I’ve talked about already how much Japanese love vending machines. Could you imagine loving vending machines so much that you actually have one in your own garage? Wild. It’s got pretty good selection, too, actually. Coffees, drinks, soda. Yeah, not bad. No beer, though. You know, it’s funny. I I was sitting here admiring this guy’s garage where we were staying and uh it didn’t even it didn’t even occur to me because as a Canadian, you’re just so used to seeing it in a garage. But he’s got a red and white Titan up there and it’s a righty. I I have no idea what the story is on that, but that’s really interesting. Some bike maintenance required before we head out today. Yesterday we all the rain and then the coastal ride really took a beating on all of our drivetrains. This guy’s got a nice garage that he’s allowed us to use and given us some supplies. Just about ready to hit the road. What’s that, Tim? I was just say, can you document some of this cool like there’s like some Americana and all these artifacts? I love that stuff. He’s really got a thing for American culture. Denim and surf. Yeah, it is pretty neat. It’s a There’s a real mix of Americana. Yeah. And surf culture and hot dogs. What a hot dog, bro. Timmy should see if he’ll let you pack that sign with you. Have to eat three. Tim, they were absolutely floored because William ate or William Tim ate two hot dogs today and they were tied the record. I asked for another one. They’re like I don’t know if they were in shocked or impressed. It was hard to tell. It was somewhere between disgust and surprised. They were like Hey. All right, we’re loaded up. We’re headed out of here. Tim took about a half an hour to take care of business before we left, which was exhausting. Oh, my bike is so quiet. It’s pedaling so smooth now. Wow. It’s like a totally different bike after all that cleaning. [Music] like night and day. Wow, that’s wonderful. And there’s a family mart. Perfect. I’m going to get myself a fammy chicken for breakfast. That’s kind of becoming the the go-to meal on the road now. The fammy chicken uh maple syrup whole thing. The the fammy chicken sando. Fami Chicken Maple Sando. I think that’s what we called it. It’s kind of becoming the the standard. It’s full of calories. It’s delicious. And it’s like I don’t know, $3.50 for two. No, it’d be $5 for two. We’ll uh have to make sure to get some water, too, because it’s hot as [ __ ] already. It’s It’s hot and it’s going to be a scorcher today. 31 and and incredibly humid. Love it. Okay, you want an update? Shark. Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you in the dark. We’re cleaning our drivetrains. This is Colin, his daily struggle with the tech monsters. It’s not easy. The tech monsters get them. But, uh, our route today Oh, this isn’t going to be great, but I’ll go like this. Hold on, bro. There. Stay. All right. So, it’s 10:39. Look at that temp. 35. Now, that’s at my device. That’s not the air. That’s real feel. We’ve gone 8k. We have 34 to go. Mainly like this. A little bit of ups and downs. I think we’re going generally. We go over a really big bridge today. And we go to Msumi station, right guys? Msumi. Msumi station. and take a train to Kumo Kumono do Kumamoto Kumamoto do and then which is the second biggest city in Kyushu and then we uh yeah we’ll fill you in on the live stream. We’re just trying to get it going. We’re alive. We’re live. We’re alive. Get your cocktails ready. Well, we’re back on the road. Another beautiful day. Like really nice. That’s the giant octopus god. Huh. Interesting. Uh we’re going to be pulling off of this road in a little bit and getting even a little more back road coastline ride. It’s warm. We just had a mechanical. So, this is probably the worst way for a chain to go off behind. That’s how you break slow. I heard some clunking, but I don’t think he put too much. I didn’t get ramy with it. If you if you this happens and you try and like pedal really hard, you can break all these inside spokes. But I think he’s We might have to just pull the wheel out. We’ll see. We’ll see. I’m trying to find my gloves. Why don’t you use that towel? What’s that? Is that me? Oh, it’s my daughter. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. [ __ ] Good timing. Grab his helmet. He’s like walking. Hello. Oh, here they are. We got a [ __ ] signal here. Let’s tell Maddie we’ll call her back. She’s Yeah, it’s not even working. Okay, watch your leg for a sec. Sorry, Maddie, if you’re watching this. No offense. We’re just in the middle of a my gloves. A shituation as Mr. Lehey would say. Okay, I put both derailers slack. You know, when the gloves go on, it’s serious. Dr. Fisher, your patient is in trouble. Brad, you do traffic. Huh? You do traffic control. What do you think, man? Do we take the wheel off? I think first Hold the bike, Brad. It’s tight. So, first, it’s coming. Yeah. I can see the baby’s head. Okay. Put it on top there. Top one. No, I need a little more slack still. Oh, there’s nothing to work with. I can see the baby. It’s crowning. Baby’s out. Uh, okay. But luckily you have friction so we can get through it. Well, dude, like we’ve been riding kind of long. Just cause a problem. Now you got the bike, Brad. See guys, this is what happens on the road. You just deal with it. three resourceful guys with uh varying skill sets and uh I don’t know a keen sense of adventure. It’s all it is and blind faith. And blind faith will work it out. We’re just on this beautiful interior road now. There’s cliffs and there’s an interstate nearby, so the road is pretty dead. But it’s awesome riding. Awesome riding. Legs feel good. Just had a mechanical, but better solved. Just having a great time. Shout out my family for letting me do this. Love you guys. Oh, that wind feels so nice. Oh, man. That breeze felt wonderful coming down that hill. Another big climb. out of the way. Woo! Boy, [Applause] best part about coming down these hills is it’s a chance to cool off a little bit. It’s a welcome breeze. Look at that down there. The water looks beautiful. It’s like emerald. Yeah. Or want me to try it? We’ll try it. Oh boy. Got to hang tight. No pressure here at all. You got to remember that my bags are sticking out a lot. And uh I’m on I’m about a foot off the edge off the road. My panyas are only a few inches from the side of the bridge. Oh man, I can’t I don’t even want to turn my head and look at the view. Maybe I will. Let’s stop. How about that? Oh, got to decide. Not making any friends that way, but also not risking his his neck, which I appreciate, too. Beautiful spot. But uh Oh [ __ ] [ __ ] ledge here. Guess I should have taken the road, eh? Thanks, man. Hey, what’s that? We’ve decided we’ve decided that I’m going to be the guinea pig here. Another beautiful bridge here. Okay. Now, yeah. Try again. Yeah. Oh yeah. [Music] I do see a brake back there. Holy [ __ ] No room there after this white one. Keep going. Then I’ll wait a few more cars and we’ll try not to let people hate us. Oh boy. For the record, this blue mark does say cycling. It’s not like we’re riding somewhere we not allowed to be riding. In fact, they’re they promote this. There’s a cycling sign right there. However, anybody that calls this a cycling route is out of their goddamn minds. This is This is nuts. [Music] I mean, everybody’s pretty respectful. Nobody’s driving really fast, but it just you don’t feel comfortable. And I’m sure we’re not making friends. We did it. The decision has been made to go across the street. Perhaps thinking that the sidewalk will be better, but pardon me. Look on this side. Yeah, I mean it look it looks the same as always. I’d like to get over there. Yeah, I mean it but we might get over there and then it stops. You want to stay on this side? I don’t like it’s it’s [ __ ] Every time we get close to the city. Yeah. Yeah. tell me we’re close to a city without telling me we’re close to a city. It’s that that interstate definitely dumped you. Uh I don’t know. It might it might be fine on that side. I don’t know how the hell we’re going to get over there. No, I’m going to go first. You’re going to So, we’re going to stick to the left. I mean, there’s blue lines. Like, we’ll just do what we did on the bridge. I know. We got blue lines. So this space separate. Okay. How far? Like how far apart? Like 30 seconds. Yeah. [Applause] All right. I’ll go after this. Uh Brad, you go next. I’ll pull up the rear. It’s that color of the water is just incredible. It’s very inviting. But what’s not inviting is having sand and salt and grit in your taint when you want to put on some miles. It’s hard enough doing it without the sand and grit. Tell you what, water’s not inviting is that stuff. That’s sewage. Brad is looking for shade. Oh, looks like he found some. It’s Yeah, it’s probably getting tiring listening to us talk about how warm it is. You really feel it when you go inside into the air conditioning and then you come out and it just hits you like a wall of bam. There’s a law in Japan, they’re very strict about it, that any labeling you put on a package has to match identically with what the item actually looks like. And they get sued if it doesn’t. And it’s crazy how exact everything looks. Like size, whatever size is on the package, it has to be that size. If it shows a peanut like right there, it has to have a peanut right there. It’s like a waffle ice cream chocolate. It’s pretty good. [Music] to buy ice cream. We are like noame brand travelers. I’m telling you the 7-Eleven brand stuff hits the consist of Yeah. 7-Eleven. It’s kind of like it’s like going to Costco, you get Kirkland, you know it’s going to be good and it’s going to be good value. 7-Eleven here is it’s hard to beat. What was the best wine we had since Mhm. 7-Eleven wine? The 7-Eleven wine? I forgot about that. Probably because I had too much wine. We got eight more K to go. I know this is going to come as a surprise to everybody, but we’re waiting on Tim. There he is. What’d you get? I had to see how the smoothie machine worked. Oh, she show she I’m like she took me over there and she showed me how to work the machine. So, what do you do? So, you buy the cup and it’s got like frozen fruit in it. Huh. And then you uh put in the machine, press the button. Pretty self-explanatory. It adds water and syrup. Oh. Or protein. I don’t know what’s in it. Can you decide what goes into it? Mhm. Well, they’re pre-made, but there’s a strawberry, banana, mixed fruit, mango. She’s showing me how to do this. Scan the barcode. I guess it’s called gives you instructions. Okay. Okay. In. Wait. Size. Oh, the lid’s off. Okay. Did you take the lid off? Start. Start. Nice. Oh, that’s water. Oh, water and syrup. Oh, yeah. We don’t have these in Canada. That’s how it That’s how it works here at 7-Eleven in Japan. Back on the road after a pit stop. You can tell that tell that we’re getting close to the city because it’s getting [ __ ] busy. Nice to have this shoulder and this separation though. This helps. Okay, this is serious. Brad’s got taint issues. That seat is going right where it shouldn’t be going. See, I got two of this. Is this our second roadside repair today? Third your We did yours. I mean, my spokes. What else did we do? We kind of tried to do my seat earlier. Oh, so third. I guess it won’t shock anyone in Brad’s family to know this bolt is quite stripped. Is this stripped? Yeah. So, it’s hard to tighten down. Oh, you mean it duty dirty, but [ __ ] It’s true. The hammer didn’t work. Hammer didn’t fit. I’m going to get that crowbar out of my P for you, Tim. [ __ ] I think what he did actually with his bolt was like he put it all in this. It wasn’t in straight and then he hit it. But it was like this ballpark. Yeah, it was. Oh. All right. Tunnel two. I actually chose this route specifically because it had these little railings and paths on the side of the tunnel. Some of them don’t and they’re not so much a time. Echo. [Music] Echo. Oh, we got the tunnel to ourselves now. Oh, no. Spoke too soon. Yep. Getting back to the coast now. That coastline is really nice. Look at that beautiful mountain island. You have a island. Oh, a little bit of shade. Woohoo. Shade for the wind. Wow. I never thought I’d be so happy to be on the side of a cliff. Wow. Yeah. Well, looks like we’ve reached Bridgelandia. Oo, that was a doozy. Look at that. We’re not going over the one on the left. We are going over the one on the right. Hoping that it’s got some shoulder for us. Well, knowing 30 seconds, if you’re following along at home, you’ll know that we don’t like getting run over. All right. Come on. Be on the left. No. No. What? No. Blue. What does that mean? Oh. Oh boy. Oh road. Initiate gap protocol. Initiating just [ __ ] everyone up. Wow. What a view. Wow. I’m going to pull over up here. All right. at the peak. Holy smokes. Good climb. Good climb. Good climb. She’s a big one, eh? Not big, but steep. But yeah, that car buzzed me. Yeah. Like this close. That was the first time though. I got to give these drivers credit. I gave them a thumbs down. Let Let them know I disapproved. Wow. Look behind us. [ __ ] Wow. I’m going to pull over here, Brad. Here. Okay. [Applause] That’s a long way down. Holy, that’s scary. All right, let’s carry on. I’m sure they don’t want us stopping on this bridge. There’s nobody here, so we’re okay. [Applause] [Applause] So, one of the things we haven’t talked about yet in this series is these bags. It’s called Reno bags. Uh Brad, why why do we use Reno bags? You have to have it in the Reno bags if you wish to take it on the train in Japan. That’s right. It’s going to be covered up. So, it’s no problem to take a bike, but it has to be I mean, they don’t care if it’s a garbage bag or whatever, but kind of fits with the whole kind of cleanliness and order thing. They want them put in a bag. And so, there was much debate about what we were going to do in terms of shipping our bikes over in boxes or simply using the Rhino Bang. uh had we not needed to jump on the train and planes and maybe buses, who knows, uh we would uh not have brought the wrinkle bags. But because we knew at different points along the way, we’re going to need to use these, we decided to lug them around with us. They’re not light. They’re not even that durable. They’re just not even that great. Uh but they work. They’re working so far for me. I didn’t break my bike down all the way. Uh because I’m just trying to keep it minimal tear down because we’re just putting on the train. We’re just going to kind of hope for the best. Uh yeah. And you carry your your your pet separately and you just you just make it work. Rinko bag available on drinkstrong.com. Drinkstrong.net. And uh not guaranteed to last more than one trip. not guaranteed to last more than 1 hour of use, but uh 304 $55 on Amazon or you go to Teemo, you probably get it for like 40. All right, well it’s time to play everybody’s favorite game again of break the bikes down. Okay, it was Tim’s turn for a tech issue. He snapped the uh seat post clamp on his bike when we were putting it back together. He overtightened it. Well, he didn’t over Yeah, he overtightened it, but in the wrong spot and it snapped it. So, we’re in the process. Tim’s actually across the street over there talking to a lady uh at Recycle Mark. They got some bikes and stuff. I just thought it’s late, so most shit’s closed. And so, we were like, let’s go there because it was a 30-second bike ride. Maybe they could help. Doesn’t look like he’s got what he’s looking for, though. So, we’re just waiting to get direction. See what the plan is. She’s closing shop. Tim might have to ride on his pedals all day tomorrow. We’ll duct tape it on there. Uh, it might delay us in the morning, I guess. We’ll see. Let’s see what he has to say. Here comes the man. What’s the verdict? No, nothing. That’s like a department store. Yes. Yes. Let’s go eat and then we’ll I’ll do some research. There was There was other options, man. They just weren’t open. Yeah, they weren’t open yet. [Music] [Music]
Three guys making a bike journey across Southern Japan.