Ushimado trip #1 (Okayama Prefecture)
18-20 March 2024: A three-day ride into the foothills behind Okayama led by a friend in the area, in which I brought a road bike to a country tour and … found out. A tale of hot springs and cold weather.
After selling off the cars in 2023, I began dabbling in bike touring, to explore the countryside in retirement, to take my mind off life’s many losses, and to generally avoid going to seed. That was just me, but in conversations with Tokyo colleague and Jurism supporter Jonathan Lewis, it emerged that his family had moved to Okayama, and that he was an avid cyclist. We began corresponding about doing a tour together, and in March of 2024, it come together. The trip was wild, I wasn’t prepared for the stresses we’d encounter, I learned a lot, and I’m looking forward to our next challenge together.
First, about bike selection. We knew that the course Jonathan had planned would include some steep climbs, so bottom-end gearing would be an issue. I had (and have) four bikes in the stable, and at the time of the ride they were set up like this:
- Surly Big Dummy: A long-tail cargo bike with enormous panniers in the rear, a cargo platform in front, and front pannier racks as well. Drivetrain is a single 32T chainring in front with a max 46T gear on the cassette on 165mm cranks. With 26" tires, that yields a max gain ratio on the Sheldon Brown Gear Calculator of 1.4.
- Surly Cross-Check: Not an off-the-shelf bike, but the parts from a Bridgestone step-through shopping bike installed on a Cross-Check frame with minimal changes. Critically, the 3-speed Shimano Nexus hub and 27" wheels were still in place. The drivetrain on this bike has since been replaced and I can’t give exact numbers, but the max gain ratio with a large sprocket on the rear hub would have been about 2.4 with a 19T rear cog, give or take.
- Dioss Road Bike: A classic road bike with friction shifters on the down-tube. I had recently had the rear stays spread to install a modern hub with a wider-ratio 28T cassette. Given a 42T front chainring at the low end, 165mm cranks and narrow tubular tires, the Sheldon Brown gain ratio works out to about 3.0.
- Dahon K3: A very compact folding bike, easy to pack as ordinary luggage on train trips, and handy for local mobility. With 14" wheels, 170mm crank arms, a 53T front chainring and max 17T gear in the rear, the lowest gear ratio is about 2.9.
My initial camping trips (to Hamamatsu and Shiga prefectures) were done on the Surly Big Dummy. Although a heavy bike, it offered the lowest gearing of the lot. This wouldn’t be a camping trip, though, and the sheer size of it removed it as an option: the plan was to carry my kit south in the Lewis’ snub-nose van, and then haul it back on the Shinkansen at the end of the ride. The K3 was also out, simply because a minimalist folding bike would not be viable for such a long ride. That made it a choice between the Cross-Check and the Dioss, neither of which was a particularly good fit.
If I had done the gear ratio calculations shown above, I would have seen that the bottom end on the Cross-Check actually offered slightly more advantage than the Dioss, which despite the drivetrain upgrade was still basically a racing bike configured for no more than moderate hills. I didn’t run the numbers, though; and given the tiny difference between the two, that was probably just as well. I had been leaning toward the Cross-Check, but after talking over the choice with Jonathan, we decided that the road bike, by far the lighter of the two, and offering more fine-grained gearing, was the better choice. And that was the right call, as far as it went.
The Dioss accepts a clip-on Rixen Kaul bag (shown in the photos below); but given cold weather and the possibility of rain, I needed a little more storage. A couple of days before departure, I picked up a runner’s backpack to give myself an extra liter of water and pockets to stow a wind breaker and some other extras. I also picked up a 55-liter duffle bag by Patagonia, to stash my kit when the bike was packed for Shinkansen travel.
Jonathan arrived at the house on March 16th, we went over my gear and packing arrangements, had a good meal and a good night’s sleep, and headed down to Okayama the following day, where we would overnight.
Here is the route, with a graph of elevations.
- GPX data: Ushimado ↣ Yunogo Resort Town
And here we are in front of the Lewis residence, immediately before setting off on our odyssey. The snap was taken by Jonathan’s wife.
The first segment of continuous riding took us through the hardest climb of the day, where it became clear that Frank was going to be walking his bike up the steeper hills. Setting aside the fitness of its rider, the gearing on the road bike just wasn’t suitable for mountain roads. Jonathan, on an Escape RX2 by Giant with mountain-bike gearing, and he with much more experience of the local terrain, would generally ride to the top and wait patiently for me to catch up.
By lunchtime, we reached our first meal destination, Okonomiyaki Kiraku (お好み焼き木楽), at the junction of Road 374 (which we would continue to trace northward) and Road 484 (which we would return to on the second day in our push westward). I was too tired to appreciate it on the day (as reflected in the photo below), but the name of the restaurant is a nice pun. When written as 気楽, kiraku means “relaxed” or “at ease”; and swapping in the homonym 木 (ki meaning wood) for 気 (ki meaning feeling or spirit) highlights the restaurant’s special feature: a wood-burning Franklin stove, shown in the photo. Many thanks to Jonathan for pegging this waypoint, the warm fire was timely and welcome!
When we set off after lunch, I forgot to secure my riding gloves, which were balanced on the bag behind the saddle. A kilometer or so down the road, I realized my mistake, and one of the gloves had gone missing. Jonathan waited patiently (again!) while I zipped back toward the restaurant. Fortunately the glove was in the middle of the path, quickly found, and here I am peddling back from the errand to continue the ride.
We arrived in good time at the Chikutei (竹亭) hot spring hotel in the town of Yunogo (湯郷). We of course enjoyed a long hot soak in the hotel’s public bath, and in the evening we dined at an Indian restaurant in the neighborhood. We chatted about this and that over the meal; and I remember that as we sat down, Jonathan said something like “We could look at tomorrow’s route, but I’d rather talk about other things.” I thought he meant to imply that some hard work lay ahead of us; and the chart of elevations below suggests that that reading may indeed have been correct.
This next would be the longest segment of our tour, and it would present additional unexpected challenges apart from the climbs.
- GPX data: Yunogo Resort Town ↣ Yakage Resort Towh
The second day began with a civilized breakfast, after which we packed up our gear and found a suitable backdrop in the parking lot for a morning selfie. And off we went.
After backtracking to the okonomiyaki junction, our route continued over country roads. In these mountainous areas, the less-travelled roadways suffer from the crazing that can affect asphalt subjected to extreme weather. That made for a rough surface, and plenty of vibration on the road bike with its high-pressure tubular tires that would eventually take its toll. There was a change of riding environment when we arrived at a junction with a major thoroughfare travelled by large trucks and plenty of them. There was a nice coffee shop at the junction, we were making decent time, and Jonathan had work correspondence to handle, so we took a breather to warm up over hot coffee while enjoying a view of the Tajiko River.
Among the Showa-era knick-knacks arranged for display in the entryway of the cafe was a box of cotton masks, which caught my eye. Masking up during allergy season, or when you have a cold, or when you are cold, has been a thing in Japan for yonks, and there’s the proof.
We left the major thoroughfare soon enough and were once again on mountain roads. I was slower over the course than Jonathan, and at times he would pause to let me catch up. This shot taken as we passed a small estuary must have been one of those times.
We had a long steep climb about halfway through the day’s distance, another of several segments that Jonathan rode up while I brought up the rear pushing the road bike, sometimes resting to catch my breath. This cleared the worst of the hard climbs of the day, and led on to a nice view of the valley below, so we stopped for congratulatory selfies.
Our high point vista was very near the Okayama Airport as the crow flies. A mountain ridge obscured the airport itself, but we were in its flight path (I snapped this plane as a reminder to check for the airport on the map when I got around to writing this up).
On the exhilarating descent into the valley below, I was bothered by a ticking noise on the bike. Pausing the drivetrain had no effect, touching the brakes had no effect, and there weren’t any loose items on the carrier. At the bottom of the hill I stopped to look into the cause, and found I’d been pretty lucky. Several spokes in the front wheel had broken, and had been clattering against the fork. The wheel itself was on the verge of collapsing if any more spokes gave way.
We were a good long way from services, and had only a small menu of options. Jonathan offered to call for his wife to drive out and pick me up. Meanwhile I busied myself with removing the broken spokes, and making adjustments with a spoke wrench to get the wheel into a (barely) ridable condition. We had a long gradual downhill run along a river ahead, leading to the town of Sōja (総社). We managed to make the distance, taking it slow and using only the rear brake to avoid putting strain on the front wheel.
A scene from our cautious downhill roll that’s firmly fixed in memory, but for which I have no photographs, is a crane that lifted off from a riverside rice paddy as we cruised by, flew ahead and landed, then heaved aloft again as we drew near, and continued down the river with us until we reached the end of the rice fields. While I might have been feeling a little delerium from the challenges of the day, it seemed to me that the bird liked that our chosen pace was close to its own.
When we arrived in town, we stopped at a convenience store to stock up on drinks and have a snack, and I began calling around to bicycle shops. One was unable to help; a racing shop that looked promising was closed; and a third shop offered to take a look.
The mechanic at the shop was extremely helpful, and we set to work on the repair. At this point, Jonathan was growing concerned about the time, as we didn’t want to be riding in mixed traffic after dark. He set a 16:30 deadline for completing the repair, and left us to it. We got the wheel back on the bike just at half past the hour, and were again ready to roll.
A shout-out here to the staff at Famuzu Cycle, your help in sorting this out was deeply appreciated!
After the repair, we pushed on to our destination, the historic town of Yakage, which was obviously a welcome site and earned itself a photograph.
After checking in at a small hotel, we dined at a nearby okonomiyaki place. When served directly off a large table grill, okonomiyaki is up there with wood-fired stoves and hot spring baths in the warming-up-in-freezing weather rankings.
After dinner, I went to a public onsen bath in the neighborhood, which I found after repeatedly wandering up and down the street in a yukata slightly too small for me, until I finally figured out how to read a map. (It’s a good thing that Jonathan was in charge of navigation during the trip.)
Day three was to be capstone and reward, retracing along the coastal plain the distance covered over mountainous terrain on days one and two. As an extra treat, the plan was to stop midway at City Light Stadium to take in a fixture between Fagiano Okayama and Mito HollyHock (Jonathan is a Fagiano supporter) before the final run back to the Lewis’ home on the hill.
Okayama would win the match 1-0 on a penalty kick before halftime by striker Gleyson Garcia de Oliviera; but in the event we would not be there to take in the action.
- GPX data: Yakage Resort Town ↣ Ushimado
While the route was flat and fast, the weather turned hard against us. A wind swept in from the west, welcome as a tailwind, but bringing with it storm clouds and freezing temperatures. The rain came down and didn’t stop, turning to sleet at one point, to hail at another. We shared what kit we had between ourselves in an effort to stave off the cold, but at a farmland intersection midway, I believe around Sozume (惣爪), Jonathan paused to consider whether, in view of our looming risk of hypothermia, we should continue forward or to return to Sōja (the town where my front wheel had been repaired, and which we’d just passed through again on our return journey). We opted to continue, but skipping the soccer match.
So we pressed on, stopping once at a Mos Burger to escape the biting cold outdoors, to wring out gloves and socks, to communicate with home about the state of play, and to have a tastey meal with something hot to drink. We then pushed on past the stadium before stopping again at a Starbucks, to warm ourselves and take in more hot drinks before what would be the final push back to the house in Ushimado.
Fate was not done with us. On a road well out in the countryside, still roughly ten kilometers from goal, my rear tire went flat. The road bike has tubular tires, an old-fashioned lightweight design that’s stitched together at the bead, then glued on to the rim channel with a special-purpose cement. I had a spare tire with me, and it was quick work to pull off the old tire and set the spare in place.
Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. The spare was a brand new tire, never treated with adhesive, and although it stayed on the rim well enough to ride, because it was on the drive wheel, it tended to migrate around the rim, forming a bulge at the valve stem that threatened to rip open the tire. I stopped several times to deflate, reset, and reinflate the tire in the hope that it would “take hold,” but to no avail. Ultimately, at a roadside public toilet and rest area, I threw in the towel and quit, leaving Jonathan to ride the remaining five kilometers or more to home, and return by car to pick me up with the remains of my bike.
(The first photo of the fanciful Ushimado public toilet folly below was not taken by us, but is from the website of Yamakyo Real Estate.)
The evening of our return I was not a happy camper, rattled from the cold, buzzing on adrenaline, disappointed at not going the distance, and striving despite myself to blame someone for what amounted to a few small rookie mistakes in the equipment brought to the task and some bad luck with the weather. I bathed and went immediately to bed without supper, and of course when the sun rose on us the next morning, it was a brand new day.
For two days we busied ourselves with walks in the neighborhood, tinkering on garden equipment, doing a proper repair of the rear tire on my bike (important for later!), and efforts in the kitchen. Jonathan’s son Sean, home on a break from school, made a delicious quiche on the first evening, and I took a stab at pizza on the second. Very early on the morning of the third day, we set out by car to Osaka, where Sean was to sit one of the university entrance exams, and I was to be dropped off for the shinkansen trip home. They parked in a drop-off spot outside Shin-Osaka station, and our parting was a little hasty, but I managed a snap of Jonathan with my luggage.
When I reached Nagoya station, it was pretty busy, and I balked at the thought of carting the bundled bicycle and fully loaded 55-liter duffle bag onto a crowded subway train—and then hefting it all through a transfer at Fushimi station. My next thought was to push the duffle bag into a station locker and ride the bike home (it was still raining, but it’s normally only about a 90-minute ride, and the route is very familiar). Unfortunately, the station lockers were all taken. The only remaining option was to shoulder the duffle bag as a backpack, and hope that the road bike would stand up to the added weight all the way home. The bike held up, and boy was it good to be home.
It was only after getting home and putting away the gear that I realized large chunks of my old Shimano riding shoes had gone missing. I later replaced the shoes; and in light of our experience on this tour, complemented them with a pair of rain covers that have served well since.
