Day 13 - Mountain adventure!

7/9

Like the superstition surrounding the number 13, my 13th day became quite the mess.

My day started out with some early sightseeing. I went to a temple in the city, the biggest one actually. And there I saw a ceremony being conducted by the head priestess. I was about to leave when one of the staff came over and convinced me to stay 10 more minutes to see the statue on display behind a curtain.

A woman came over and we talked about the ceremony and religion in general. She said that the head priestess would bless us after the ceremony and so I waited and received her blessing. Quite the experience right from the morning and here everything was perfect and I knew nothing of the horrors I would face later.

In order to get to Nikko, I had to go over a couple of mountains. This, I thought, would be difficult, but not impossible. So I ventured on. The cities are horrible to bike in and it's easy to get lost. And before I reached the base of the mountain it was already 13:00.

Going through the smaller villages, the outskirts of Nagano was tough as well. It was already going uphill. But with the time I was making I could easily get to the summit before sundown...

That was to say if nothing was to happen. The village ended 27 km before the last stretch to the mountain. So for the next 27 km I struggled through the heat. The sweat was flowing left and right and I thought I would die of thirst before I would reach the summit. After a couple of hours I had emptied water and food and I had made very little progress. 

I had to pull my bike many places and I decided not to ride it at all after a little while. Then I noticed that my back tire was kind of flat... I figured it must be because the weight is shifted back and the air is pressed out. Now, even if I did get to the part that went downhill, I wouldn't be able to ride before I had pumped the tire.

Here I began to think of what to do next. I could go back, but wasting too much time climbing only to go down seemed... annoying. So I continued.

The low hanging skies made it impossible to see more than 50 meters ahead, and the sun was about to set. The cars had stopped passing by. Now the next that would happen was that my tire became totally flat. Like punctured flat. It was the same tire I had used in Hokkaido and patched up in Hakodate so I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later.

I had now walked 17 km up hill and before that biked around 25. The climb was a constant 6-9% and now I could only see what was within 10 meters of me. I decided to leave my bike. I wanted to make it to the resort place and then go pick up my bike in the morning.

I got myself a broken piece of a long pipe to defend myself and went on for two km.
I then saw lighting... my stuff would not withstand a heavy shower and the only thing I brought with me was my phone. Oh and I tried calling everyone and everything I knew of, but I couldn't. I actually can't make a phone call and was asked by the machine to find a payphone. A payphone. In the mountains. Hmm, I could only see the irony in my situation by now. And the phone number on the signs were out of order too. Great.

After walking two km I heard a car. It was headed in the same direction so I waved it over. Three people, obviously coming from a party, probably in Nagano, was heading back to their workplace in the resort. Lucky! I drove with them and although the guy was driving like he tried to outrun a landslide, we managed to get the last 8 km to the hotel.

The two other people, a woman who was very drunk and a Chinese girl broke the rules and took me to the dorm where they live. I wouldn't know what to do if they hadn't come along.

In the morning, 4:30, I ran 8.2 km to my bike, changed the tire and checked my stuff. Although wet everything seemed fine. Thanks whoever, God or Buddha,  I don't know how sad I would be to lose iPad and ipod.. oh, yeah it was raining a lot the whole time.

I'm sitting in the hotel right now figuring out what to do. I want to go to Tokyo now instead of Nikko. In Nikko I'll face more mountains, and I'll be more delayed so Tokyo is the better plan. Today will be impossible for me to depart because of the rain. But tomorrow it is.

This might make people back home very worried about me, and I know I promised to be careful, but you cannot fear fire if you haven't burned yourself at least once. Lesson learned and from now on I'll take the less scenic route (read no mountains).

Distance: 50 +
Time: I don't even know, if I had to guess I would say 6 hours.
Condition: glad to be dry
Quote: I'll just turn this corner aaaand.... look, we're still going up the mountain. Dammit.