Shelter from the Storm

Jenn, busy packing to get us out of Osaka.  Don't work too hard, now!

Willpower, like money and energy, is a finite resource.  It gets used up fairly steadily while bike touring, but little inconveniences and incidents eat it up faster.  The rate at which we recover willpower is still entirely unknown to us.  On the day that our ferry was due to leave Osaka port -- conveniently only a few kilometers from the friend's apartment where we were crashing, inconveniently accessible to bikes only by a bridge 20 kilometers away -- the rain was barreling down.  The weather report forecast no end to the rain, at least not anytime in the next few days.  As we had just finished a week of rest, we still had plenty of willpower, so we cheerfully strapped on our rain gear and hit the road, figuring that our new raincoats would protect us from the elements.  Five minutes later, we were thoroughly soaked.  The raincoats were excellent for keeping water in as well as out, meaning that every raindrop that rolled down our sleeves, every ounce of sweat we produced was trapped in there with us and soaked us through.  We hadn't even made it to Osaka port before we were out of willpower entirely.  We managed to roll our bikes onto the ferry without incident (though unfortunately, not without paying twenty bucks a pop), and we squished our way into our steerage-class cabin by dinnertime.  An un-fun day, to be sure, and one that used up all the willpower we'd banked during our week off, but at least we made it.

The next morning, we had just disembarked onto the sunny beaches of Kyushu when the rain hit again, harder this time.  Just the thirty meter journey from the boat to the terminal soaked through our rain gear, and it showed no sign of abating.  Ten minutes down the road and the streets were beginning to flood.  "Oh, damn!" we thought, sarcastic even to ourselves, "guess we'll have to take a rain day at this nearby hotel!"  Honestly, we could have pedaled through it: maybe found a place to wait out the storm, then hit the road after it dried out a bit.  But that would have required more willpower than just getting a hotel room, and somehow, the thing that made the most sense also happened to be the thing that we wanted to do the most.  Funny how that works.

The first rain day wasn't so bad.  We dried our clothes, then, on realizing that they smelled like butt, washed them in the hotel coin laundry.  We dried out our raincoats and panniers, draping something over every object in the room.  We blogged, we drank beers, we watched the rain until it stopped in mid-afternoon, at which point we began hoping it would start again and justify our splurging on this tiny-ass hotel room.

The next day, the rain was coming down just as hard.  We watched TV and remembered how dumb Japanese TV can be.  We tripped over our raincoats and panniers, stubbornly refusing to take them down in case we needed to leave in a hurry.  We conducted taste tests of the local convenience store's more bizarre offerings:

Because we didn't deserve happiness, that's why.

By day three, we determined that we couldn't justify spending money on another hotel room and decided to set out, rain or shine, and the weather report wasn't forecasting "shine."  The ride through the mountains to the bridge connecting Kyushu to the mainland got us thoroughly soaked once again.  It's funny how quickly our resolve drains when "a little rain" becomes "having to spend the night in a little canvas room with all of our damp, mildewy possessions."  It's even funnier that spending a couple nights in a hotel does little to recharge that elusive willpower.  Without willpower, it becomes extremely easy to find excuses to do what we already want to do.  Laziness, in short, finds a way.  Hotel time again.

The undersea bridge connecting two prefectures.  Don't let the picture fool you, it was actually kind of smelly and unimpressive.

Now we were resolved to make it all the way to Pasar, come hell or high water (to pick a foreboding image completely at random).  Last year, when we were finishing our first three-month tour in Japan, the ride from Pasar to Shimonoseki took us five days.  We were in our best fighting shape and freshly rested after two weeks on the farm, whereas now we were damp, dispirited and in poor shape after a year of sedentary living.  So surely, we decided, this time we could do it in four.  After all, two hundred kilometers...why, even at our sluggish pace, that could easily be done in four fifty-kilometer days, at least so long as there were no complications relating to weather, health, bike repairs, etc., and what were the odds of that happening?  Four incident-free days, that's all we would need!

After all, what does a Kansan have to fear from storms?

Not two blocks down the road, and it was clear that Jenn's brakes were shot.  Back to the hotel we went, this time just to use the Internet, for sure, no backsies.  By the time we discovered a sport bike shop in Shimonoseki, Jenn's chain was knocked out of alignment and, worse yet, the little plastic thingy broke off of my bell.  We laughed at the hubris we displayed that morning; there's no such thing as an incident-free day.  If there were, then we could easily go sixty, seventy kilometers every day.  But every, every day on the road, I have indigestion or our bikes are finicky or we get lost or bitten by a strange bug that we assume is poisonous so we have to make sure we're not dying oh god.  Or something.  The universe is magical in its creativity.  Whatever array of somethings happens to us, each one saps some of our tragically limited willpower, and that makes us much likelier to stop early or pay for a hotel room.  Four incident-free days?  We might as well have wished for a pair of unicorns to ride to Pasar.

The first day out of Shimonoseki, the first day where we didn't have to fight the weather, and already we were frustrated with our bikes, exhausted from fighting to make them rideable, and hungry. Plus, by the time we'd gotten them fixed, it was 3 p.m. and we were only five kilometers from where we started.  And yet another strike against us: after a week-long hiatus, on the first day back on the road every muscle and joint complains as though it were day one all over again.  "What, this again?" they cry.  "I thought we were done with this!"  Willpower was running at a deficit right out of the gate.

On our fifth day since Osaka and our third day of actual cycling, we were stopped outside a little country store for a light second breakfast when the proprietress, over the course of a pleasant conversation, let slip that a big ol' typhoon was bearing down on us.  Sometime, anyway, Friday, Saturday, she wasn't sure.  At the next convenience store, we double-checked with the Japan Meteorological Agency.  Sure enough, half the map of Japan was lit up bright red with typhoon, heavy rain, thunderstorm, and flood warnings.  Weather.com kept mum about typhoons, but did predict at least an 80% chance of thunderstorms for the foreseeable future.  News outlets around the world popped up in Google: one site let us know 6 Reasons We Should Be Excited About This Year's Pacific Storm Season.  Another site reassured us that the typhoon we were about to experience was recently downgraded from a "Super-Typhoon" to just a...regular...typhoon.

Fun fact: did you know that typhoons are the same as hurricanes, with the key difference that hurricanes happen in the Atlantic and typhoons in the Pacific?  Neither did I!  In fact, I never quite bothered to look that up for sure.  But it sounds right, doesn't it?  Anyway, um, AAAAAAAAAAHH-

A brief poetic respite from our troubles.

We pedaled like mad to Nagato City, a crummy little truck stop of a town.  All we needed was a bed and an Internet connection to plan our strategy for the next few days.  The first hotel we tried, sadly, had twin beds and no Internet, and also dorm-style bathrooms containing cockroaches the size of college students.  The next was the same story, except it also had no beds.  We did at last locate a business hotel with all of the amenities we required, but it was 95 bucks a night and run by three-time Grumpiest Man of the Year award winner.  When we were about to cave and pay for a steak dinner for Grumps (as we affectionately called him), he began to suggest other hotels in town where we might be more comfortable. The rain clouds gathering once more, we tried Nagato's last hotel, Taishokan, which turned out to be a shiny new place that featured a gourmet restaurant, elegantly decorated rooms, and copious internet. Naturally, it cost $Too Much (though only 5 bucks more than Grumpy Inn), but walking in, dripping wet with rain or sweat or both and seeing the smile of the face of the friendly, welcoming receptionist, we knew we'd just have to grit our teeth and get through this ordeal somehow.

This one was decorated in the rugged Shotgun Shack Style, unlike the usual hotels where we stay, which are decorated in the Good Enough Style.

It was time to plan our strategy.  We were still 100 kilometers from Pasar, a distance that could be covered in two days, but not two days of fighting mountains (which we vaguely remembered were ahead) and typhoons.  There was little ahead of us save the occasional beachside campsite, and neither of us particularly wanted our last words to be, "Aw, c'mon, I'm sure it'll be fine."

The forecast was alarmingly vague about when, precisely, the typhoon was due to hit.  The Internet gave us nothing but strangely gleeful posts about the damage and flooding throughout Japan, and that was just the rainstorm that we had just biked through.  The TV news was far, far worse: images of cars washed away in roads-become-rivers, families huddled in temporary housing, trees swallowed up by floods.  Worse, our literacy is at the level where we just understand enough to be really scared, words and phrases like "14 dead," "10,000 families," "20 million yen."  Our paranoia filled in the rest.

Searching "camping in a typhoon" yielded similarly grim warnings.  "Our children were looking forward to the trip, and I took days off from work … nothing’s going to happen anyway…" some official-looking Japanese website began (it's like they know us!).  "Nature is full of unimaginable hazards during bad weather. Please have the courage to cancel your trip and prevent your sweet memories from turning sour."  Hard to argue with that.

The next morning, the weather report had gotten darker.  In a rare moment of agreement, every forecast we could find predicted nothing but rain and lightning until Monday.  All the willpower in the world wouldn't keep us safe in the middle of a typhoon, Super or not.  With such ill omens and in such a comfortable hotel room, it was easy to decide that we would just stay in Nagato until Monday morning, when the typhoon had safely passed, then ride like hell to Pasar and arrive at the music festival a couple of days late.  A bit of a disappointment, we agreed, but better to spend too much money in a hotel than wind up dead in a typhoon.  We let our host, Aki, know about our delay, then settled into another long, boring day.

By late afternoon, after a few beers and several more episodes of "Law & Order," we received an unexpected missive from Aki.  "You cannot change schedule of events," he told us.  "Move to Pasar is good today, it is to come by JR (Japan Rail)."  Our hearts sank.  Checking the festival's information once again, it seemed that yes, we were scheduled to perform on Monday evening.  With heavy rain coming and a long way to go, it looked like we would have no choice but to attempt the impossible: try to bring our bicycles on a train.  As we'd already paid for the night, we stayed in the hotel, but our festivities took on a somber tone.

Somehow we made it through the hardship.

Yes, the legends speak of "bringing a bicycle on a train in Japan."  Everyone I've spoken to seems to know a guy who's done it. Sometimes it seems to require an official bicycle bag, which retail for 60 bucks or more. Sometimes it needs to be a folding bike, which kind of seems like cheating. A few sites swear up and down that, if you're lucky and the conductor isn't paying attention, you can just carry your bike right on the train. In the end, we decided to go with the most common prescription: take the wheels off, wrap the whole thing in a blue plastic sheet (known as, no kidding, buruu sheeto in Japanese) and carry the bikes through the gate, whistling nonchalantly.

Of course, carrying our bikes left us with no available arms to lug our many, many bags, so the next morning, as ominous clouds swirled in the sky, we sent our bags ahead by Japan's omnipresent Kuroneko Yamato delivery service. The clerks assured us that the bags would arrive the next day for sure, unless of course they were destroyed in the typhoon, in which case it might take two days.

Nailed it!

Then it was on to the train station to begin our grand plot. Dear reader, I wish you could have been there to see it. The ingenuity we displayed when we removed the wheels from our bikes, wrapped the frame in a cheap plastic sheet, and duct-taped the whole mess together just as the rain began to fall...truly, it was a sight to behold.

Awkwardly, I hefted the first of the enormous blue parcels and lumbered to the ticket window. "Two for Mihomisumi," I said, smiling. The ticket clerk looked over my shoulder at the huge, awkward, man-sized bundle in the middle of the train station: spiky metal pieces were poking out all sides, and the handlebars peeked out the top, indecent.

"Is that a bike?" he asked, and I thought very hard about saying "no." I nodded, my honest nature betraying me, and he emphatically told me that bikes were not allowed on JR trains under any circumstances. One of the wheels clunked to the ground, the bungees failing, and my heart sank. 

I pled my case, first with him, then the other employee of this simple country station.  I'm sure my poor Japanese made for quite a convincing case. "But it's important!" I protested. "I heard it's okay!" I told him, to which he (maybe) replied that only folding bikes were acceptable. "It's dangerous, there's a typhoon coming!"  He explained that the typhoon was going to miss Yamaguchi prefecture entirely. Behind him, the TV was now forecasting buckets of blood pouring from the sky.

Nearing tears, with visions of drowning dancing before our eyes, we tore apart the blue sheets and reassembled the bikes.  Desperate, we called Aki from a pay phone (yes, they still have those, apparently), and he pled our case with the station staff.  When I called him back in 15 minutes, he told me that he worked something out, and that I should go and speak with the station manager.  Now, I listened patiently to the manager explain the situation, and I'm at least 80% sure that he was saying that, yes, non-folding bicycles are allowed on JR trains, but only if they're in an actual bicycle bag.  Since we were obviously transporting our bikes in crappy, thrown-together plastic sheets, he said, that didn't count.

Now it was beyond a doubt that we were stuck in this awful little town.  We had no gear, having sent it all by Kuroneko, no way of getting our bikes on the train, and no way of getting to Pasar before the typhoon.  We would have to either risk death and the electric hands of a typhoon or spend a fortune on hotel rooms to wait out the storm and miss our performance at Pasar, the main reason we'd come back to Japan in the first place.  The station manager helpfully directed me to a nearby bike shop, where they did indeed carry bicycle bags, but only for 80 bucks apiece.  Also, they only had one in stock, and it was most likely far too small.  Also the bike shop guy called me a smelly hippie and took my lunch money.  Mneh.

Come on, universe, you don't have to be a dick about it.

We spent our last 100 yen calling Aki and lamenting our poor luck, hoping he might offer some kind of solution (all I could come up with by this point was "complain a lot and maybe drink a beer").  Sure enough, when he had it all explained to him, he immediately told us to stay where we were, and that someone from Pasar's staff named Shio would be coming with a truck.  The last train to Mihomisumi was at 7:19; Shio would arrive before that, we would load the bikes in his truck, then take the train the rest of the way.  We thanked him profusely -- a two-day ride for us was a two-hour ride in a car, surely not a small thing for a stranger to do for you.  Having already exhausted the station's potential for entertainment, we went around the corner for a quick bite of yakitori.  Please direct your attention to the television in the corner: it didn't really come out, but it was showing that the rain had now turned to boiling pitch.  Every minute of weather reportage we watched, we were more sure that we made the right decision (if you ignored the fact that it was sunny and warm in Nagato at the moment).

It grew darker and the sky grew clearer.  Now that we looking at the sky and not the weather report, we were increasingly certain that we had wasted our money on that hotel room, and that if we had just pedaled through it, we could be at Pasar by our own power by now.  We wondered what the folks at Pasar must think of us, a couple of lost little foreigners stranded by our own fear of the weather, unable to muster the willpower to make the last little distance to our destination because of something as unreliable as the weather forecast.  We hoped that Shio was an understanding sort, and that he wouldn't meet a couple of bike bums with scorn, especially for making him drive all day to help us out.

We gave Shio a call at 7:10, and a polite-sounding young man answered the phone.  He told us he wouldn't be arriving in time, and that we'd have to spend the night in Nagato again, most likely.  When he arrived, we saw that we shouldn't have worried, as he was clearly one of our people: a handmade rasta hat cocked to one side, little round Lennon glasses and a stringy Lenin beard.  We lifted our bikes into the back of Shio's little truck and he secured them with an impressive variety of knots and fasteners, and like that, he was gone.  We had nothing to worry about; all our gear was heading to Pasar, and in the morning we'd hop the first train to our destination.  Sure, we didn't make it all the way by pedal power, but we were going to get there safely, and that was the important thing.

Now we just had to spend yet another goddamn night in goddamn Nagato.

Afterword: the typhoon missed Pasar entirely.  Willpower, in this instance, had nothing to do with it; we had more than enough to get us there, but what we lacked this time was good judgement.  When we complained to one of our friends about spending all of that money and time, they explained that the media is just like that in Japan: they always sensationalize storms, trying to drive up ratings with scary footage from other, unrelated storms.  The lesson of this ordeal is, to be sure, "better safe than sorry," but just as important is the lesson, "don't believe everything you see on TV."