BEE Japan

Rumoi to Bibai

In the short time that we have already been traveling, we`ve quickly discovered that at any given moment, it is not unusual to find Colin crouched in some corner of a campground, rider house, or apartment, with the mini-laptop in front of him, tapping and clicking and pointing and dragging and zooming and who-knows-what-else. Thanks to our team leader`s tech savvy, we have a great website that is regularly updated with photos and blog posts, a GPS tracker that follows our movements and records our distance, and an extremely well-mapped route with detailed information about every day`s ride (among other things). We`re all very appreciative of these things, as our families and friends can stay well-informed of our progress, and we can know at the beginning of each day how far we`ll be riding, whether we`ll be going through tunnels, passing through towns, cycling beside the sea – and whether we`ll be facing any big hills. Through a special website called AlpsLab, we can look at our route and see a graph of the elevation changes and percent grade of the roads we`re planning to travel.

So, when Thursday`s route plan from Rumoi to Bibai was checked out on AlpsLab, the graph produced an image of a rather long and drawn-out climb. For 17 kilometers, all we could picture was pain, agony, and travail as we slogged up an unending hill. This mammoth incline would be the real test of our mettle and would determine with what kind of fear and trepidation we should be thinking about the epic crossing of the Japanese Alps awaiting us in Nagano (if we chose to disregard Daniella`s advice about worrying twice, that is).

We spent an hour on Wednesday evening strategizing about how to divide up into riding groups, how we all wanted to go our own speeds, how some of us might like to be like Lance on the Col du Galibier and power up the climb while feeling the burn, while others preferred to spin in the lowest gear and take in every tiny detail of the scenery on the way up. We made some tentative decisions about how we would take on the looming giant and then went off to dream fearsome dreams of the hill that never ends (it just goes on and on, my friends…).

When Thursday morning dawned, we looked at each other with hesitant ganbare (good luck, work hard, do your best, you`ll make it) grins, and, as we rolled slowly down the streets and out of town, with a row of formidable mountains gray against the sky in front of us, we prepared for the worst.

…

Five hours later, at our lunchtime meeting point in Takikawa, we gathered in a circle of sweaty, grimy bodies and debriefed.

“Where was the hill?” Fan said.

“Are you sure that was it?” Amiena asked.

“I think I missed something.”
“Are we really on the other side?”
“Big climb? Huh?”

And so it went. We had worried about something that wasn`t worth worrying about at all (next time we won`t disregard Daniella). Or perhaps our anticipation had turned a small challenge into a big one, and, geared up for the giant, we found a little pain in the legs and strain on the pedals rather inconsequential.

That evening, soaking in a delightful onsen overlooking Bibai, we congratulated ourselves on our ability to make mountains out of molehills — and then to conquer those massive mountains with such strength that they seemed like, well, molehills.