The very last Trip

This post is in the pipe for quite some while. When I travelled to Japan in mid July to organize the move with my family to Germany, I could negotiate half a day off for cycling.

Which in turn would be the very last ride for a while. The Cervelo bike was already in good use in Bremen (by me, I don't want to say that it was stolen already and somebody was putting it finally into good use), but Bad Boy was still there. So I forced the staff from the moving service to unpack my bike; unfortunately I advised them wrongly and they unpacked the green Giant of my son. "Can't you ride on this one?" "No. Impossible of course." So they had to unpack Bad Boy as well. They were pretty angry and as a revenge I can expect that they will send the container with our stuff to Angola with a mark on it "For the local warlords".

The weather didn't look so promising but it was hot and I was ready to ride, whatever the weather would be. I opted for ... Yabitsu, naturally. I didn't wanted to check out some new obscure passes and having only half a day time, Yabitsu is easy to reach, easy to climb and easy to ride down and take the train home again.

The road along the Tsurumigawa, the Onekan, Tank Road, Tsukui lake North road, everything was more or less as I had it in memory. Thank God, the German re-education camp didn't had that impact ... yet. I made a short break at the shores of lake Miyagase, before starting the climb up to Yabitsu. The place was deserted on this weekday and even riding up there was hardly any traffic, not to mention cyclists.

After living in 2D North Germany for quite a while now and having to rely on Bad Boy, I wasn't so confident about my climbing abilities, but all went well. One of my favourite points on the road up is pretty much in the beginning when, after riding through the forrest, the view widens up and one can see the river on the left side for quite a stretch.

Somehow it was not as hard as I had expected. I thought that the climbs would be steeper, in particular the one from the tea house leading to the fountain.

On top of Yabitsu I made a short rest and took some pictures. There are also some stone Jizos which I have never recognized before.
So that was that. It has been hard to part from cycling in Japan and the very last trip added further to the general feeling of loosing somnething precious.

Carefully I rode down to Hadano as the last time I did this with Bad Boy, I slipped in one of the corners and developed som pretty nasty road rash.

Back at home I put my things into the container, the family on a plane and headed back to Bremen. I was greeted with a pretty nice sundown at the river Weser close to downtown Bremen.

I also bought a new bike. No, the motivation is not, that I need to become better and stronger and this can only be supported by a 6 kg carbon fiber 5.000 $ plus bike. It is something completely different. More to come.

Thanks to David and Jerome for having dinner with me at Golden Burning.