I don’t want a pickle…
I don’t want a pickle,
I just wanna ride on my motorcycle…
This has been a crap riding season. With my light rebuild eating into the early spring rides, then the early onset of typhoon season followed by the rainy season, then more typhoons….
It’s driving me crazy!!! So today, even with typhoon #11 (Also called Halong) right off the prefecture, I said, “Fuck it!!” and went for a ride on my favorite local twisties.
It turned out to be a great, stress relieving ride. However, there were enough leaves, branches and crap blown onto the road to make me a bit more tense than usual. (I find that I’m kinda hypersensitive about the unknowns just around the curve when I’m not at the track. Give me a track and that all goes away!)
Anyway, that kind of fucked me up on a couple of the technical portions of the ride coming down the mountain – as you riders know, descent is a bit of a different ride compared to ascent. I found myself tensing up on the bars and in my shoulders, which actually eliminates any flick you may need to use to get around shit. Everything fell into place by the end of the ride though and I nailed the hard turns at the end. That’s important because you want to end on a good note.
This time, I actually stopped and took a pic from the top of the 3rd ridge I go over on this route. It’s right at the Japanese Self Defense force practice range in the north of the prefecture. Too bad it wasn’t a video because the clouds were blazing across the sky with the typhoon winds. I took a panoramic, so click on the pic for the bigger version.
In this picture, I’m coming from the far left where the typhoon is closest and going towards the left of the small green hill just to the left of the road. Remember, this is a wide spot at the top of a ridge, so I just finished an uphill climb and am about to hit the most technical part on a downhill run. This is also a great place for 4-wheeling if you live in the area. You just need to make sure the SDF aren’t practicing when you go in. (I was crawling over a bunch of boulders in my Jimny (Suzuki Samurai) once when a squad of marines stood up in full gear less than 100 yards in front of me! Talk about a serious case of get me the hell outta here!)
Anyway, I digress. The one good thing about the weather – it has been nice and cool for the most part. Usually at this time of the year, I find myself sweating while taking a cold shower because it’s so hot. Putting on all your gear for a ride gets to be a challenge when it’s so hot. Not so today. Other than a slightly high humidity, it was perfect riding weather.
