October 12, 2024
Day 17: Yabuki to Nikko
or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the mud
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This is a story with many twists and turns. A story of roads not taken and roads taken that shouldn't have been taken. A story of sweat and tears, grit, determination, and laughing in the face of adversity.
I set up the last two days as a sort of repositioning cruise. Saying a long goodbye to the semi-improvised Tohoku route and a big hello to the Length of Japan Tokyo-Fukuoka route. I cut out the mountain stages between Fukushima and Nikko, thereby saving us a day of riding and a lot of climbing. Why climb so much just to reach the Japanese Alps, where climbing abounds and is unavoidable?
The new route appeared to be a meandering mix of countryside and towns that we could duck into to enjoy some amenities, aka calories. It was all that, but it was some other things too.
Yesterday was the easy day that wasn't quite so easy. Today was the difficult day that was very very difficult. At least we had the weather on our side. Mostly.
Since I'm tired, I'll lean on my fine partner's photojournalism skills and let pictures tell the story. I'll add my 2 yen here and there.
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We both slept very well, and were up at the crack of dawn to get cracking on today's ride. A wondrous fog surrounded us. It was neither overly humid nor overly chilly. We were packed and on the road by 7:20.
At first, the fog concerns me. I think that drivers won't see us or we won't see them. A few people turn on their headlights or their running lights, but many do not. As I adjust, I feel more confident, and I ride easy knowing that the fog will burn off soon.
I missed a turn and doubled back to find that it was gravel. No thanks! But I didn't see an easy detour, so I said "what the heck?" and went for it. What a mistake!
It ended at a bridge that was both severely overgrown and blocked off with a single traffic cone. Time to turn around and deal with whatever a detour might look like.
The detour wasn't too bad. I was more upset about the lost time than the extra distance. With our navigation folly of the day out of the way, it was time to make some real progress.
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As luck would have it, we encountered our second gravel road. Same rules applied here: the detour looked too far out of the way to just dismiss the gravel out of hand. Besides, what if it opens up into a paved road? Wouldn't that be swell?
We succumbed to what I call the "sunk tire" fallacy. That better road surface could lie just ahead. You won't know until you truck through the muck. We trucked, then we walked, then we portaged everything over a low "electric fence" (I put this in quotes because as far as I can tell, it was solar powered, so hardly enough juice to tickle a bug, but I wasn't about to find out). On the map, the "road" continued into the woods, yet we saw only woods and little to no trail at all. We'd been bamboozled!
The trek back to pavement was considerably shorter due to a parallel gravel road that the map didn't even show. Too bad it didn't go anywhere but the awful excuse for a tractor road we had been on, or else we might have followed it to somewhere salvageable. Instead, we limped forward with mud in our mudguards and (figuratively) on our faces. And significantly behind schedule.
Things improved after the detour. We found a konbini in a nick of time. We used a plastic spoon to partially clean off our shoes and fenders. We rode through the city of Shirakawa, which had this excellent tunnel through Nanko Forest.
Wouldn't you know it? We soon found ourselves staring down the barrel of yet another gravel road. Once again, the alternatives looked less attractive than trying the gravel. You'd think we would have learned our lesson by now and just taken our lumps. But we sallied forth, and it turns out that the third time's the charm. It did get worse. Bad enough that we had to walk a portion of it. But instead of leading us to an electric fence or a wall of brush, it spit us out on a very respectable little road.
What followed was a long stretch of cruising downhill with a tailwind next to the scenic Kurogawa River. It was the most exhilarating experience we had all day, and maybe even all trip. A lot of it was on silky-smooth tarmac as well. We gained back some of the time we had lost earlier.
All good things must come to an end. As we left the river behind, the wind changed course and started to work against us. We were still making respectable time, though.
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As we reached the final 30km of our journey, we started seeing signs pointing to Nikko. I decided to follow them instead of the bike computer. The one time I trusted it, it led us to yet another gravel road. I put my foot down and said, "Not this time, you two-bit digital double-dealer!" and quickly backtracked to the main road. One thing I'm very excited about is that we'll be following a tried-and-true route from now on (even the Andersons rode it in 2007!), so hopefully there'll be no more gravel shenanigans.
The main road just got better and better. The sidewalk improved, so we used it. Then a frontage road appeared, which we also used. It was heavenly. At this rate, we would certainly make it to our hotel before nightfall.
As expected, the last few kilometers to Nikko were a steady grade of 4-5%. Also as expected, this really slowed us down. We were already tired from the overtime we were putting in today. Then it started to rain.
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I let the computer take us along the back streets of Nikko, then we reached a short bridge where all the cars and walking tourists created a bottleneck that left us dazed for a few minutes until we figured out how to go with the flow. Our hotel lay just ahead. The clerk was awesome, allowing us to park our soggy, muddy bikes in the lobby, and helping to lug our bags up two flights of stairs to our room. The elevator was broken. Our legs were jelly. It was not fun.
We struck out at two restaurants (both were hosting charter groups) before engaging the backup plan of noodles at Lawson. We added a tall boy of Sapporo to the mix to make it festive.
Are we ready for the mountains tomorrow? No, we are not! We really should see the sights here in Nikko, since we'll probably never return. But we've already miraculously booked a place near Katashina tomorrow, and I doubt this or any other hotel in Nikko has vacancies until Monday. Too bad. Guess we'll have to move along.
Today's ride: 112 km (70 miles)
Total: 1,195 km (742 miles)
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2 months ago