"Baby, I was born ready...."

I biked to Haneda Airport....here's me at the finish line (though actually the half way point, had to bike home) and here are our bikes by the trail as we took a brief rest.



My dear Aunti, whenever asked if she's ready, always responds, "I was born ready," and that's a mentality that I tend to have. I'm always ready for an adventure. Yesterday this kicked me in the butt. A while ago my friend Drew mentioned that he thought it'd be fun to bike to Sendai sometime and camp along the way. I like biking and I like camping so I thought it sounded like a great idea and promptly told him this. Ever since then we've been dreaming of a fun bike ride and trying to rally a group of people to join the adventure.

Sendai is about 300km from where we live. This means that we need some serious training before we go and now that we both have decent bikes we thought we should give a longer bike ride a shot. So yesterday we had the bright idea of biking down a trail by the river to Haneda Airport. We took some snacks and beverages and hit the road at about 9am. Well Haneda Airport is quite the treck. Turns out it's about 50Km each way. Oh my word! I hurt! But the worst part was not being sore today...it was the ride home. We made it to Haneda just fine, and really the trip was pretty enjoyable, we saw some interesting things along the way like a baseball team of old Japanese men, a guy riding one of the bikes that has a really big front tire and a really little back one, and of course people practicing various instruments in the park. We even got a wave and a konichiwa from a the baseball coach of some young boys, all riding past on their bikes while we had stopped to eat lunch. But after 5 hours to Haneda we weren't exactly itching to hop back on our bikes and ride home. However we had no choice so we climbed back onto our bikes and began the long ride back.

The first hour or two wasn't terrible and we then stopped for a good dinner at Denny's. This was a Denny's like you've never been to. They may have had french toast, but other than that it was fully Japanese, haha. Rice, miso, udon...Anyway the hardest part of the ride, and the part where I thought to myself, "what the hell were you thinking?!" was after that when it was dark, about 6:30 and we still had a good three hours ahead of us. My rear hurt like you wouldn't believe...my bike's saddle is HARD! And my legs were feeling a bit fatigued. Really the worst of it was the time we had left ahead of us and my uncomfortable bike seat. I also now understand why cyclists wear the funny looking clothes. The spandex would have been nice and breathable and easy to move in, not to mention the behind usually has a little extra padding that I would have appreciated.

Anyway, we did make it back at about 10pm. Learned that there are some things you simply were not born ready to do. Taking a 100km bike ride without working your way up to it, is a very bad idea. Although I am thankful that by the grace of God, when I'm really stressed or tired things become very funny, so while my body has been hating me since about half way through the day yesterday, up until the moment I am writing this, there came a point yesterday where I just found everything funny. And really, it was a fun advenute at many points.

I am currently reevaluating the potental 300km bike ride that would also require 300km home and at least six days of what we did yesterday. Maybe once I recover I will be up for training for it. We'll see.