Next Time / A lot of my memories are me thinking a lighter bike would have been really cool—to rip up Mount Fuji
or across the Shimanami Kaido, a 44-mile dedicated bike route connecting eight islands. But I’d also try more advanced
bikepacking, bringing nutrition so we could go up to four days without services, and get even more remote.
We tried to see as much of the country as we could, which meant a lot of pedaling and debating about whether we
were going to stop. My next trip would be more focused on regions, doing a loop in an area for a better feel instead of
a straight shot across it. And, of course, I’d have to stop to see Humi.
Japan taught me that I want to experience things by bicycle that I’d never expect to see, and meet people I’d never
meet otherwise. This is the kind of riding I want to do for the rest of my life. Tok ushima Prefect ure / The riding on the east end of Shikoku Island, specifically Tokushima Prefecture, was amaz-
ing, remote, and rugged. On day nine, our ride to the night’s onsen, we basically just started going uphill until we were
riding above low-hanging clouds. The paved lane, the impressively named Tsurugisan Super Forest Road, was barely wide
enough for a truck, and rich, shining green wilderness leaned in on both sides. Finally, the road plateaued and turned
to a gravel doubletrack before our 10-mile descent to the hot springs.
The next day we returned to Tsurugisan to keep traveling west. We started in the rain and it never let up. Again we
climbed into the clouds and rode a magnificent ridgeline with huge chunks of rocks from the mountain littering the road.
We could barely see 10 feet in front of us. It was spooky and cold and windy and beautiful and terrifying all at once.
When we reached the top of Mount Tsurugi, we sheltered in a tunnel for a few moments to regroup and made the
kind of jokes one makes while wet, frozen, cold, and starving: “Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a warm restaurant
just down the road from us?” No more than two minutes out of the tunnel did we find a mostly abandoned mountain
town with a single restaurant open. We piled inside for cups of piping hot tea and bowls of noodles and tall beers. We
ended up sleeping in an empty room in a shrine above town to stay warm and dry that evening.64 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 1 | 2020