entry nº 13 // 20171028

sure am glad i have a bike, here, in japan. game changer. getting a bike was a game changer when i was, what, six years old? and likewise now. lots of things don’t really change, when it comes down to it. you’re probably thinking, “wow, kevin, exciting that you finally got a bike over there!” but in fact, i actually bought it in like, december of last year? very low quality road bike made somewhere in southeast asia. it’s a “totem” brand and i believe the model is “fitness”? or, it says “fitness” on the side of the bike, for some reason. look, i got it on the internet, and it was inexpensive for what it is, okay? a couple days after it showed up, and after i excitedly put it together and started riding it, i managed to suck the [poorly set up and aligned by me] rear derailleur into the wheel and totally wreck the thing. so from there out it became this like multi-week chore to get the thing repaired etc. etc. and so by the time i had it back on the road, it was solidly january and so i was left w/ only a scant few bike-having weeks before heading back to the states for the summer. welp! 

anyway, got back here to fukuoka and that bad boy was just waiting for me at the apartment, ready to go. sure is great to have a bike! and what i feel very good about, in particular, is that i brought back my clipless shoes + pedals, bike hat, bike shorts, and hip pouch with me this time around. somehow those few familiar, well-worn accessories really make me feel more myself here, both on the bike and off. i guess there’s some important lesson in there about moving far away to a foreign country and finding little quotidian ways to retain your sense of identity, which you fumble to keep from getting swept away in the unrelenting currents of a place where the ability to express yourself and your on a basic level involves a good deal of mental exertion? 

what does it all mean though? it means not sitting on the train for a long time anytime i have to go anywhere, that’s what. part of me misses having that train ride to watch people, space out, read, and study, but it can’t really compare to the self-propelled freedom of weaving my way through the city and the mental state that puts me in. tons and tons of bikes out here, and if you ride downtown there’s a chunk of the busiest part where bike parking isn’t allowed on the street. “oh fuck,” you’re thinking, but don’t despair: there’s plenty of underground bike+scooter parking available. big ol’ multi-level automobile-parking-garage-style affairs, where you walk your bike down a ramp to get inside, pick up a ticket from the machine on the way in, and park your bike on these big sliding metal stands (sliding so you can shuffle the bikes to either side out of the way to make room to get yours in or out). on the way back out, after inserting your ticket in the machine and paying (usually a dollar or so), you walk your bike up the ramp/stairway combo, except on the way up the ramp actually has a conveyor belt in it that automatically turns on and helps carry your bike up to the top. pretty sweet. 

what’s even better, though, is going away from downtown fukuoka, which, if you live where i live, means heading west. i’ve been going for late-afternoon rides almost every day these past few weeks out into itoshima, a beautiful rural expanse of oceanside hills and farmland and cool cafes and surf bum enclaves that stretches out to the west of here. it’s just so fucking gorgeous i can’t believe it, and i tend to find myself quietly saying some version of that sentence out loud to myself every time i go out there. it’s really great to have ridden only a couple of minutes away from where you live in the city, and suddenly be surrounded by farmland everywhere, cows, rows of greenhouses, the whole nine yards. it’s just right there. lately the farmers have been burning [what i think are] the leftovers from the recent rice harvest in the afternoons, and so the whole area gets this beautiful autumn burning-wood-and-dried-vegetation smell, and man it just really puts you in the spirit. 

lots of hills out there, though. yikes! “holy shit” is another sentence i often find myself saying out loud to myself while i’m mashing my way up those bad boys. the first ride i went for out that way, shortly after getting back here to japan (and immediately after having spent entire the summer getting progressively fatter and less athletic) i totally had to quit on this one hill. it was my first time on that particular route, and i reached the point i thought was the top – totally out of breath, heart rate feeling just, like, wrong (like when they’re trying to get the spaceship up to warp speed or whatever and everything is just kind of rattling around and you’re thinking maybe it’s all just going to come apart, right then and there?), no amount of gasping and sucking air seeming to satisfy my body’s requirements at the moment – and then i came around the bend, and all the sudden the road starts to rise up even more steeply than before, continuing on around the corner for lord knows how long. i thought +/ said to myself, “aw, fuck it,” turned right around, and enjoyed the most fun, breezy downhill all the way out to the coast before continuing on back home. 

kept going back though! b/c of that indomitable human spirit or whatever maybe? thing is, in terms of like real “road cycling” these hills are probably no big deal at all, certainly would have been no big deal to, say, rasmussen in the 2005 tour, or whatever. but no spotted jerseys for me this season, i can tell you that – though i do feel less and less like i’m actually going to die each time i get to the top. best thing is, too, the view once at the top is totally worth it, as is bombing down the other side of the hill at max speed. i’ve spent my successive rides exploring the little roads beyond that thread their way through the valleys , which always seem to involve plenty more steep uphills along the way, but which also make me feel like i’m in a ghibli movie half of the time, too, old houses tucked away in the trees, small shrines off to the side of the road, old+forgotten stone monuments here and there, canals running this way and that, like the fantastic is about to intrude on real life, waiting in the wings just off to the side, just beyond the visible.