The continuing adventures of a couple of American bikers
in the Land of the Rising Sun

As thrilled as I am that we can now go camping as a family on two bikes, I’ve really missed just riding with Yuri these past few years. So for our 11th wedding anniversary, we decided to leave the kids with friends and take a spin out in the mountains, just the two of us.

This was Yuri’s first trip on real mountain roads on her new bike without being loaded down with camping gear and a kid on the back, so it was her first chance to fully experience freedom on the new bike. And I just got my bike back from the shop after replacing damaged tappet rollers, dismantling and overhauling the heads and valves, replacing the battery and primary chain, and overhauling the carb, so my bike was also purring along with a steady confident power it hasn’t had in years.

It has rained every day for weeks, and up until the night before, the forecast had been calling for pouring rain all day, so we hadn’t really made any plans. But we woke up on our anniversary to find clear blue summer skies, so I made a call to a restaurant at the foot of Mt. Takao I had been meaning to visit, and then we just randomly headed up to the mountains in that general direction to see what would happen. We stumbled upon a pretty nice onsen resort called Akiyama in the hills above Uenohara and took a relaxing bath to clean off the sweat and exhaust fumes from the grueling trip through the congested Chuo Expressway.

We then had a pleasant ride through the mountains to Ukai Toriyama, a truly amazing restaurant designed to make you feel like you’ve slipped back in time to an idealized version of medieval Japan as you walk through the gardens to whichever isolated cottage contains your table. The architecture and design of this place is just exquisite, and every course of the meal was indescribably delicious.

Even the parking lot was beautiful.

Other than the hot, congested expressways, this was a pretty perfect day. Beautiful weather, great roads, good food, and good times with the woman I love.

I’m a lucky guy to have been able to spend eleven years married to such an amazing woman, and I look forward to decades of further adventures with her.

Since Yuri first got pregnant with Lin more than eight years ago, I’ve been dreaming of going on touring trips with the whole family on two bikes, and now we’re finally doing it!

This is only the second time Yuri’s had anyone on the back of her bike, much less loaded up with camping gear, and Mai’s never done a long ride before, so we picked a relatively close campsite in Susono, at the foot of Mt. Fuji.

So the ride itself wasn’t too exciting, but there was comparatively little traffic since it was the weekend after the Golden Week break, and the weather was great. The girls even got to surprise Yuri with a Mother’s Day gift of wildflower bouquets they gathered at the campground and a chocolate bar Lin bought the day before and hid in my saddlebag.

Even though this was mostly a practice run for later camping trips and rallies, we had an amazing time, the girls had lots of fun, and Yuri got a good chance to put her Sportster through its paces. Here’s to lots more to come!

Another great ride, even though we faced a few more obstacles than usual.

I got an email from Go the night before, saying that the security system on his Harley had drained his battery. He then charged it overnight and was able to join us for most of the ride, but that set the general theme.

On the morning of the ride, I was just about to head out when I got a call from Ami-chan, saying that she had made it partway to my neighborhood and stopped at a convenience store to find that her bike wouldn’t start. I grabbed my jumper cables and rode to the rescue, and at first it looked like a jump was all she needed, but then the bike died again, and it was clear that it wasn’t charging even at high rpms. We managed to juice it up enough to make it to my house, when all of a sudden gasoline started gushing out of my carburetor. It turns out I had damaged the fuel hose when I adjusted the carb float the week before.

So for a while there it looked like Ami’s bike had no electricity and needed a new regulator, and mine needed a new fuel hose, which you can’t buy at 7AM. We were beginning to resign ourselves to the idea we wouldn’t be able to make it, when I noticed that the regulator plug was hanging free on Ami’s bike. Some idiot mechanic had disconnected it to change the oil filter, so she was running without generation. I then found ways to jury-rig a fix for the fuel hose while we charged Ami’s battery, and we left a little less than two hours late. Knowing how slowly large groups move, we figured we might even be able to catch up, and we were right.

We met up with everyone at the entrance to the Izu Skyline, one of my favorite roads anywhere, and I set up my new secret weapon, the gorillapod flexible camera tripod.

For the rest of the trip, I experimented with various ways to mount the camera, and got the low-quality video I’ve embedded above. I think it shows some of the flavor of spring riding in Izu, though.

We stopped for a late lunch at Spice Dog in Shimoda for the best curry on the Izu peninsula.

It started to get cloudy, so rather than taking the usual route around the coast past Irozaki, we took a chance with a road none of us had tried before that turned out to be a fun ride over Jaishi (Snakerock) Pass. Unfortunately, none of the video I took there was usable, but the memory is plenty.

Then up to the campground for barbecue, booze, and brotherhood. (Of course, this being Izu, the campsite also has an onsen bath to relax and wash off the road dust.)

That’s some good shiitake.

And I can never resist taking a few shots of my bike with cherry blossoms, especially with the color of Noji’s Z2 in the background to set it off.

The next day, we got in more great riding, only to have Yos’s front tire go completely flat at a gas station. Luckily, I was able to locate a tire shop willing to help us out—iPhones come in handy in unexpected ways—and we were able patch the tube and get back on the road without too much delay.

Just to cap it off, my rear turn signal cover flew off on a mountain curve, and while Ami was able to find the lens, the mount escaped somewhere, and I had to make do with electrical tape.

But in all, the problems we had on this trip all came with pretty good timing: Ami’s battery died in range of my house, where we could charge it. My carb leaked in front of my garage, where I had the tools to fix it. Yos’s tire went flat sitting still at a gas station in one of the few towns we passed through big enough to have a tire shop, rather than at high speed on one of the mountain roads where we spent most of the trip. And who cares if I’ve got tape on my turn signal?

All these little complications just added to the adventure, and couldn’t keep us from having an amazing ride with good friends in great weather under the cherry blossoms.

日本語版はこちら。

My little girl is becoming a biker even earlier than I expected.

I’ve tried to expose my six-year-old daughter, Lin, to bikes and biker culture as much as possible, and have been taking her on rides on the back of my bike since she was four. We’ve been building up to this for a while, with our short Father’s Day ride up Yabitsu pass and our camping trip to Nishi-Tanzawa, and last weekend we finally made the next big step: Lin’s first long-distance touring and biker rally at Matsumoto Camp.

As I’ve mentioned before, Matsumoto Camp is one of my favorite rallies. It’s smaller than many, with only 100-300 bikes, but both the location and the regular core of bikers that shows up are just the way I like them, and I thought it would be perfect for introducing Lin to the wider biker world. Unfortunately, most of the Takatsu-gumi group I usually ride with had other commitments, so only YOS was able to ride with us this time.

The weather forecast had been calling for rain all weekend, but I was pretty sure my usual understanding with the rain gods combined with Lin’s luck with these things would push away those clouds. Sure enough, the rain stopped by the time we woke up, and we headed out to meet YOS at Ishikawa under a gradually brightening gray sky, and by the time we got to Futaba, the halfway point of the expressway trip, we were riding under clear blue skies.

This was Lin’s first long expressway trip, and I wasn’t sure how she would deal with it, but beyond a few requests to stop and rest, she was fine. Of course, once we left the expressway and headed up the Venus Line into the mountains, she was more than fine.

I let her have the camera, and she got some good riding shots of YOS on his shovelhead, and even took a little video from the back of the bike.

We stopped for lunch, but Lin couldn’t wait to get back on the bike, and left most of her soba uneaten.

We rolled into Matsumoto Camp by mid-afternoon, finished greeting all our friends, and sat down to relax just as the downpour started. But who minds the rain once you’re safely under a tarp? It let up soon enough, and we went exploring around some trails near the campground, and then Lin went off to play with some of the other kids that local bikers had brought along with them. I went off to relax with beer and conversation, confident that I had successfully shown Lin how fun rallies can be, and that I could be sure she’d want to go to the next one too.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that Lin was about to take the next step toward bikerhood. The Heaven & Hell MC, who host the rally, had brought along a 50cc pocket bike to patrol the campground and run quick errands, but they were letting the bigger kids try it out when they didn’t need it.

One of the older girls showed Lin how to work the throttle, and after a few tries, she got the hang of it.
She and the other kids took turns on the bike for hours, and then started again first thing the next morning. By the end of it, she was riding like a pro.

It took me years on the road to learn to ride that naturally. Not bad for a kindergartener, huh?

So not only has Lin learned the fun of rallies, she understands the joy of riding as well. It’s too bad she’ll have to wait another ten years before she can get a license, but until then, it means I get a lot of biker-daughter quality time.

Map view of this trip

The muse isn’t moving me to write a real touring report, but we had another great ride, mostly along the same route as last year.
This time, my old friend Kaze joined us from Osaka, and we got some great shots with his helmet cam despite the overcast. Unfortunately, the clouds mean that you can’t see the Pacific Ocean on both sides of the peninsula, but I think it turned out OK.