I've been taking a few bike rides in recent weeks. Actually I cycle about 20% of the time, push the bike uphill about 10%, and freewheel downhill for 70% of the time. My bike has no gears, its a "mamachari", so I get my wife to drop me and my bike off up in the high country and then head home downhill.
Yesterday I cycled 30k from near Iwami Ginzan, and took Route 46 all the way back. Some of the time its a 2 lane road, but some of the time its a single lane mountain road. It passes through a couple of villages, and down a couple of mostly uninhabited valleys.
Lots of people busy in the paddies, planting by machine, and also by hand. Most appeared to be at least 60 years old.
Stopped in at a couple of shrines. The shrine in Oe has 3 beautiful huge cedars flanking the entrance.
There is also a few nice temples, and of course many roadside altars.
Lots of empty and abandoned houses, both in the villages and on the hillsides.
In the heat of the middle of the day most people are inside, but this guy was out and about. I think he was out scouting around for gardens to raid. I saw one this lunchtime in my own village, single male out of the cover of the forest. I suspect he will bring the troop back around dawn.
There were also lots of flowers still. In the last valley there were a lot of wisteria.
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We have a really cool highway 46 here in central Forida that takes us to the St. John's river. It's lined with great dives that serve gator meat. But you get to see quite a bit of beautiful swampland with cypress and oak tress. It also takes us to the beach, but unfortunately with all the red necks I might get run over if I tried to ride my bike. For some reason hillbillies and rednecks don't get along here...I might just try to head to the ocean for my birthday and piss some huge trucks off along the way.
ReplyDeleteEver had any bad bike wrecks? I went over the front of my handle bars late last year and got one hell of a road rash.