This is the first day of my trip. Mishima is a small town on the other side of Mt.Hakone. This means that you must climb Hakone. 13.5K to the top. The one thing I like about Hakone is that there are many interesting things to see while you are suffering up the climb. Bringing a camera is a must. I started this climb feeling good. But then quickly realized that i was trying to climb to hard. As you ca n see in the picture the road is all switch backs. Up to 10% grade. The red part of the road is an anti-slip compound. At the half way point is when the weight of all my gear started to really bother me. It was very hard to keeping the bike going. It took me about 1hour 30 minutes to get to the top. (without my gear my best time is 53minutes). It was pretty much getting dark when i got to the top so I only spent 5 minutes at lake Ashinoko.
I made it to my mother in laws house in 4 hours 45 minutes....and had a steak dinner! My mother in law fried two steaks for me. One was from Austrailia and the other steak was Japanese beef. The Austrailian steak was tuff but the Japanese steak was really nice and tender. It was almost as if she was giving me a taste test. She kept telling me...`the Japanese steak is best right`.......and she was right!
I hope (but doubt) that that was the toughest part of the ride. It's tough to hear that you couldn't keep food down, but I'm sure that you slept well.
ReplyDeleteExcellent picture at the lake!
I ended up all right. I just went to hard that day. Im actually getting used to the everyday riding now.
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