Bedtime stories from Japan: Quadzilla and Dr. Crankenstien make a sunrise bombing run to Tomakomai.
(Aaron) I awoke in my smelly bivy to find myself sleeping next to a cigarette vending machine in a gritty neighborhood in Muroran; It was 5:15 am, freezing cold, and we had 4 hours to ride 70 k if were were going to catch our ferry. I pried Tris out of his sleeping bag, and by 5:40 we had packed up, broken our fast with bread, cheese, and vending machine coffee, and ridden back to the main road. It was so cold that for the first time on the trip I was riding in mittens. Our dérailleurs were frozen in our highest gear, but that was O.K. Because we had agreed to rally until we ran out of energy, electricity, or both.
I am happy to report that we rolled into the ferry terminal 4 hours and 70km latter, with tired legs and tired batteries, but our motors were still kicking. I had thumb cramps from holding the throttle down for the entire ride. Unfortunately we had missed the ferry by 25 minutes, but we were happy to have covered the distance so fast, and excited that our batteries had held up to 70k of constant high rpm use in the freezing cold with almost no solar power. We spent the day napping and looking for food (of course); darkness found us with our hands curled around warm cans of coffee, qued up for the all-night ferry to Hachinohe, out of yen in a burgeoning snow storm (some things never change).
2 years ago