Once you have a scary incident like that, you really take it to heart. In most cases learning
something essential in life requires physical pain. Since that incident on the bike, no matter how tired
I might be I always keep my head up and my eyes on the road ahead.
Naturally all this attention taxes my overworked muscles, but even in this August heat I’m not
sweating. Actually, I probably am, but the strong headwind makes it evaporate. Instead, I’m thirsty. If
I leave it too long I’ll get dehydrated, and if that happens my mind will get all blurry. I never go
cycling without a water bottle. As I’m cycling along, I take the bottle from its rack, gulp down some
water, and return it. I’ve trained myself to do this series of actions smoothly, automatically, always
making sure to face forward.
When I first began I had no idea what I was doing, so I asked a person who knows a lot about bike
racing to coach me. On holidays the two of us would load our bikes in a station wagon and set out for
Oi Pier. Delivery trucks don’t come to the pier on holidays, and the wide road that goes past all the
warehouses makes a fantastic cycling course. A lot of cyclists gather there. The two of us would
decide how many circuits we’d make, in how long, and set off. He accompanied me on long-distance
rides—the kind I got into an accident on—as well.
Cycling training alone is, truthfully, pretty tough. Long runs done to prepare for marathons are
definitely lonely, but hanging on to the handlebars of a bike all by yourself and pedaling on and on is a
much more solitary undertaking. It’s the same movements repeated over and over. You go up slopes,
on level ground, and down slopes. Sometimes the wind’s with you, sometimes against you. You switch
gears as needed, change your position, check your speed, pedal harder, let up a bit, check your speed,
drink water, change gears, change your position...Sometimes it strikes me as an intricate form of
torture. In his book the triathlete Dave Scott wrote that of all the sports man has invented, cycling has
got to be the most unpleasant of all. I totally agree.
Still, in the few months before the triathlon, no matter how illogical it may be, this is what I must do.
Desperately humming the riff from “18 Til I Die,” sometimes cursing the world, I push down on the
pedals, pull up on them, forcing my legs to remember the right rhythm. A hot wind from the
Pacific rushes past, grazing my cheeks and making them sting.
My time at Harvard was over at the end of June, which meant the end of my stay in Cambridge.
(Farewell, Sam Adams draft beer! Good-bye, Dunkin’ Donuts!) I gathered all my luggage together and
returned to Japan at the beginning of July. What were the main things I did while in Cambridge?
Basically, I confess, I bought a ton of LPs. In the Boston area there are still a lot of high-quality used
record stores. When I had the time I also checked out record stores in New York and Maine. Seventy
percent of the records I bought were jazz, the rest classical, plus a few rock records. I’m a very (or
perhaps I should say extremely) enthusiastic record collector. Shipping all these records back to Japan
was no mean feat.
I’m not really sure how many records I have in my home right now. I’ve never counted them, and
it’s too scary to try. Ever since I was fifteen I’ve bought a huge number of records, and gotten rid of a