October 27, 2024
Day 33: Sakai to Takarazuka
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Sorry, I pressed a couple of wrong buttons, and before you know it, my ride ended and I had to start a new one. I'm not really in a position to splice them together at the moment. Maybe in a few weeks.
We enjoyed a lovely breakfast with Emi, Koji, Emiko, and Tomoko, and then we had to say goodbye. We had just spent 40 hours within one household. It felt strange to be on the road again.
It had rained overnight, but we were fortunate to have mostly dry skies for our morning "commute". It was also warm enough to require no extra gear other than a windbreaker, and even that felt optional. The traffic was fairly heavy, as expected, and progress was pretty slow.
We mentally divided the ride into three sections. The first and longest section (20km) would bring us to the Osaka City Sewerage Museum, where we hoped to see cool manhole covers and win prizes. The second section (10km) would bring us to the Mukogawa Cycling Road. The third (also 10km) would get us to our destination for the day. We discussed taking a break before the museum, but Emi had fed us so well that second breakfast didn't appeal to us. I know, blasphemy, right?
The big crisis of the day was that we had left our helmets hanging off our handlebars, and as a result, they got rained on, and as a result of that, our in-helmet radios didn't work very well until the afternoon. The timing couldn't have been worse, because we needed to communicate navigation instructions and traffic surprises all morning. We just kept "rebooting" our helmets and hoping for the best.
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We worked hard to get to the museum. It was modern and flashy and very kid friendly. They had a game we had read about, where you get a paper with foil circles that you emboss at various stations. Fill the paper and win a manhole cover trading card. Kind of silly, but we're kind of silly ourselves.
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After visiting the museum we still weren't hungry, but we bought lunch at a nearby Family Mart and ate it unenthusiastically. The route led us down a few alleys and one-way streets before dumping us on a main road that eventually got us to the cycle road.
The road was beautiful and peaceful. Just what we deserved after all that city riding.
We reached our hotel in Takarazuka at 2:30, giving us plenty of time to relax before our dinner with Yuta. We did explore the train station area a little bit. This is a very clean, vibrant, and pretty town. We feel very comfortable here.
Our first choice for our rendezvous with Yuta, an okonamiyaki place, was closed today, so we found an Indian place nearby. It was awesome. It was also awesome to catch up with Yuta, and to learn more about him and his family. He was our first contact in Japan, and we're honored to have been able to meet him again, hopefully not for the last time.
Tomorrow it's off to Himeji. The consensus among everyone we've asked is that by heading north and avoiding the busy coastal roads, we'll have a much better ride. It may rain tomorrow afternoon. It threatens to rain pretty frequently, and only sometimes happens. If it does rain, I don't think it'll slow us down much, if at all.
Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 1,979 km (1,229 miles)
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Enjoying reading about the travels, and I hope it stays dry for you!
3 weeks ago
3 weeks ago