Irohazaka! Or not...
I have a hankering to go up to Irohazaka again. I went there a year or so back, and it was quite the adventure. The next time I go, I hope that the weather is nice, because even though going up and down it in rain, and fog, and dark, was exciting and all, in general I think that twisty mountain roads are better in good weather.
Fortunately for cheapskates, I’ve found a way to go there that doesn’t require using the expressways (the non-expressway routes are also more fun because you can stop and see the sights, instead of just monotonically eating up miles). Here are my directions for how to get to Irohazaka: Find route 17, and go north on it. Turn right at route 120. Enjoy the (spectacular) view and the (awesome) twisties.
Alas, I can’t do this at the moment, even though I really want to: my bike is stuck at the dealer. It had a nasty attack of Italianness: the steering siezed up. I’d be fine if I were in Saskatchewan, but around these parts, you need to actually change your course every now and then. So now I’m waiting for a new handlebar bearing to arrive from Italy. On a boat.
This time I did remember that with my large main bike in the shop busy being broken and Italian and all, I still have a small auxiliary bike which is Japanese and therefore doesn’t break. Or so I thought.
The day after I took it to work after dropping the big bike off at the shop, I got home and I was wondering if maybe I should check the tyre pressure every now and thing, that being one of many things I completely ignore on that bike.
Well, one thing led to another and I found myself having to pop out to the store on the bike to pick up some roach traps and insecticide, after a rather large roach made its presence known (one of the red ones, which I think are a bit cuter than the black ones, but they’re still cockroaches). At which point I discovered that the rear tyre was flat.
The impressive thing was, the rubber itself was sturdy enough that even with me sitting on it, at air pressure of, well, the atmosphere, it still had enough structural integrity to actually sort of function as a tyre. Just a really spongy one with no traction at all.
The next morning, I grabbed my handy bicycle hand pump, switched its valve to Schraeder mode, and inflated the tyre. I waited a bit, and checked the tyre and it’d gotten soft all over again. So I decided to take the morning off work. I grabbed a bucket of water, reinflated the tyre and splashed the water over the tyre: yup, just as I’d feared, there was a puncture.
So I let the air run out of it again, and popped round to the corner store and bought myself a tube of superglue. With the air out of the tyre, I stuck a generous dollop of superglue on the puncture. And then another one. And another one just to make sure. Then I went inside and had a cup of tea.
After that, I checked to make sure the superglue had set, and then (still with the hand pump) blew up the tyre again to its recommended 25psi (rather less than the 65psi that my bicycle tyres recommend, which was nice).
Lo and behold, the superglue seemed to work! So I hopped onto the bike in search of a bike shop that was open. It was unfortunately a Wednesday, and for some reason, the vast majority of motorcycle shops in Japan close on Wednesdays (because, really, who buys motorcycles on Wednesdays?). I eventually found one, and explained my situation to the mechanic.
He said, “Ah, good thinking, you got some puncture-repair glue,” apparently mistaking my McGyverization for an official product. “I’ll try to mend it, but if that doesn’t work, you’ll need a new tyre,” he said.
As it turned out, I needed a new tyre. Apparently whatever I’d run over to get the puncture had gone in sideways or something, and it wasn’t possible to mend the tyre. Oh well. But at least the new tyre added an extra kilometer an hour or so to the top speed of the bike. And well, I’d already gone 10,000km on the old tyre anyway.
So now I have one working little slow bike that, well, if nothing else, gets me to work. And one broken big fast bike that, when it’s working, I look really cool on when I ride it. And I still want to go back to Irohazaka.