Noto Bike Trip 2

We biked around the Noto peninsula in the spring of 2011 and had a pretty good time [Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5] but there was some debate over whether we had really finished the job when we took the bus back the final leg instead of biking door-to-door.  Another foreign teacher here / friend of ours decided he wanted to do the Noto 400 course (race that does pretty much what we did, but faster) and asked if we'd be willing to do it all again early in September, before classes started up again.  Ana would already be back at work and didn't exactly feel a burning need to settle matters between us and a landmass anyway, which is probably fair, but I took up the gauntlet.  This time, the target was a door-to-door bike ride and ideally to accomplish the whole thing in four days instead of five.  To that end, we spent a lot of time riding rather than taking pictures, but those we have can be seen on Flickr. 

Stopping to put on waterproof shells ~45 minutes after leaving home

 Remembering that the wind was a major factor the first time around the Noto, I resolved to create a more aerodynamic touring configuration for my bicycle.  My hiking bag is big enough to hold the tent, sleeping bag, and crash pad and comes with the bonus of already having a waterproof covering available.  I kludged a better support for it out of plywood, nails, and zip ties and fastened said abomination to the panniers' frame.  It was ugly when visible, but the bag pretty much covered it and in that configuration I thought it looked pretty good, plus the bulk of the bag was almost entirely behind me.  I didn't exactly wind tunnel test the effects, but I think it reduced drag substantially, and only tried to fall off the bicycle once, when I went over a big bump and two zip ties snapped (I had spares).  Bungee cords also played a prominent role. Overall, I was quite pleased with it despite (or perhaps partly because of) its Frankensteinian nature.  Everything for quick access I kept in the smaller bag on my back.

Anyway, after the maniacal cackling subsided, it was time to hit the road.  The weather report was generally pretty positive, with no more than a 30% chance of precipitation on any day of the trip.  Weather reports in Japan are really more of a prediction of what won't happen than what will, in my experience, and it started raining before we'd even left the city limits on the first day, but this was a prepared-for experience and as we kept going on day 1 it started and stopped raining several times. 

 

 We accomplished the previous Day 1's efforts in about 3.5 hours, arriving the "campsite" around 10:30AM.

Our plan to make the trip take four days instead of five consisted of basically doing two days' worth of riding on the first day, and getting close to or reaching Wajima.  Those reading the previous blog entries and doing some arithmetic will note that when Ana and I did it Wajima took us more than 90 miles of riding to get there.  This time, through gallantly not getting lost very often and taking a better route out of the city we made it to Wajima after about 80 miles at something like 7:30 at night, after twelve and a half hours on the road.  We ate at the same yakuniku place as before and I got recognized by the staff despite only having visited once, four months earlier (I guess they don't get many gaijin).  That was apparently enough to get a free round of pretty decent steak bits, which was nice.  We hit the same onsen afterward and camped in pretty much the same place as before, but on a closed-off area of pavement instead of on top of the pricker bushes.  Total mileage was 82.2 for the day and I suspect that will stand as my record for some time.

 We were more than a little hungry at this point and dinner tasted really, really satisfying.  I honestly didn't think we'd really make Wajima in one day - it is quite a ride.

The night was rain on and off for a while and then the tap got stuck "on" and it stayed raining for the next ~24 hours without much respite.  Day 2 was going to be damp.  We soldiered into it somewhat gingerly, feeling a little beat up from the day before.  We made more stops for breaks and didn't push too hard, which was OK because we didn't have to make nearly as many miles.

 We made a few tourist-type stops, but didn't spend nearly as much time seeing things and taking pictures as the previous trip in May.  Here are the famous stepped rice paddies we photographed being planted in May, now full of rice.

 We ate lunch in Otani, a very, very small town.  I'm not sure I've ever been happier to see a bowl of soba in front of me - after several hours of biking while being rained on hot lunch was divine.  

 The way through the mountains was pretty primeval in the mist, and the turbines hummed in the background.

After lunch and with no sign of the rain letting up we decided to take an interior road across the Noto from Otani to Suzu instead of rounding the point as Ana and I had done in the spring.  It cut about ten miles off the day's riding, a good idea, and showed me a part of the peninsula I'd not seen before.  It could also not be called less than exciting, as the road went pretty much vertically up for an hour or so, then descended rapidly and with curves.  Between the enormous downhills and the rain I was really flogging my brakes and had to adjust them two or three times as large percentages of my pads got worn away by the abrasive brake-dust slurry that formed on my wheels.  There were also some pretty amazing bridges across very deep valleys that we crossed on the way down, but I'm not sure I could have stopped for a picture if I'd tried, so there aren't any pictures from that part.

Ineffective brakes not having proved fatal, we arrived at a positively civilized 2:30 or so at the Nihonkai Club and proceeded to eat a lot more than they expected us to, while sampling their fine home-brewed beverages.  Having arrived and sated our hunger so early and extensively, we felt able to continue riding onward afterward.  It was still raining, and I got talked into sleeping in a hotel in a nice dry air-conditioned room with modern plumbing instead of pitching the tent in some weeds on the side of the road.  At about $70, the hotel was the single most costly part of the trip and was completely worth it.  They had a pretty nice outdoor onsen, and since we were literally 40% of the guests at the hotel (we counted breakfast trays - there were 5), there was not much competition for space. 

 The included breakfast was about as Japanese as they come.  Cold roast fish, cold tofu with ginger, cold chopped daikon salad, cold pickles, and a cold raw egg yolk (Ana's note - this was most likely onsen tamago, an egg cooked in the hot spring which is just warm enough to soft-cook the white of the egg while leaving the yolk untouched) in cold broth.  The miso soup and rice, at least, were warm.  To be fair, I ate everything on this plate and thought most of it was pretty good.

When we first woke up, the sun had been shining, but by the time we hit the road it was raining again, and rained on and off all day, with decreasing frequency.  The weather was actually kind of nuts on day 3, with multiple instances of getting rained on while the sun was also shining on us.  The sunscreen could not stand up to this and I picked up some mild burns.

 

The wind was once again not very kind while headed south along the coastlines, but either it was weaker than before or my streamlining efforts worked well, because it was not nearly as bad as it had been in the spring.  Perhaps a combination of both?  This portion of the trip is fairly scenic and the hills are rolling rather than sheer, so it was a pretty nice ride in any respect.  We took an extra coastal road that Ana and I had skipped, adding back in most of the mileage we had subtracted the day before, and seeing additional nice scenery.

 We made Nanao while it was still light out (picture from following morning) and got fish and chips from the Fish and Chips restaurant mentioned in the previous Noto blog series.  It had stopped raining in the late afternoon, so we had some time to air out the tent and sleeping bags, and this made for pleasant camping.

 Helmet on to protect the unwary from gnarly helmet hair

 The fourth and final day we biked the leg that Ana and I had previously skipped, and found that it was by far the easiest part of doing the Noto, with lots of really flat terrain and only gentle, rolling hills.  The weather was nice and we tore through the miles at high speed to arrive home shortly after lunchtime, after total overall travel of 217.7 miles.  Ana made me tacos for dinner, and  I'm pretty sure it can now be said that I've biked the Noto in full.  Good times.  Stay tuned for even more blog entries because we are on a ROLL and keep adding more things to the schedule.