18 March 2008

Tour de Kyushu [ Day 1] : Hataka - Fukuoka - Dazaifu

My flight was gonna leave at 6.25 am - so  i thought i give it enough time at leave my house 5 am .. i calculated 30 minutes for my ride to Haneda Airport, which would just be straight down Kampachi dori. It turned out to be much longer than i thought (of course !!!) ^ my speedometer showing 17 km when the terminal came into sight - but then i had like 30 minutes left (enough ?) .. with 1,5 km left to go the unexpected happened ... a puncture ... i had no words left - i just had to laugh ;) ... there were 15 minutes left when i turned up at the check in counter - i knew it was too late - but i had to try ;) the clerk then asked me if it was OK if i took the next plane instead ... as if she was apologizing for this inconvenience ... an hour later i sat on the plane headed for fukuoka.




after reassembling my bike i took off to do as much sightseeing as possible starting with the Hataka - side before continuing on to the
Fukuoka - side. Within the next 4 hours i had seen most of the sights, so i decided to head down to Dazaifu - an traditional town about 15 km south. I had no real clue how to get there until i finally found a map in one of them convenience stores, which seemed to be everywhere. The traffic was heavy and the temperatures pretty high (for a march afternoon), which caused my head to ache. Anyways, I finally made it to this pretty little town, which seemed to accommodate more sights than the Hataka and Fukuoka together.

When I got off the bike my computer read 75 km - not bad considering that i pretty much stayed in the same city (area). Tomorrow, I am planning to go to Nagasaki, which will be pure cycling, with only 2 planned sightseeing stops - in Takeo and Arita. Lets see how far I get.




No comments: