Foote Family Christmas Party Japan 2008

Once again the Foote Family opened its doors wide to entertain 30+ people for a post-Christmas, Christmas party.  This was also a white elephant gift exchange party, which proved to be a huge success.  There were about four highly coveted presents that exchanged hands many, many times.  The most popular of these was a Cocoa Latte machine.  It was swapped at least a dozen times.  I ended up with a nice, wooden hand massager turtle.  Aya got a glove hand massager, another win for me!

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Cycling to Haneda Airport with a Thunderstorm

FULL RIDE STATS:

• Distance: 34.38 miles
• Time in motion: 2 hours 57 minutes 08 seconds
• Average speed: 11.6 mph
• Max speed: 28.5 mph

I had wanted to cycle out to Haneda Airport for quite some time.  This Sunday I finally attempted it.  I was joined by UK Mike and The Can, who also ride Trek 7.3 FXs.  I wrote down some rough directions based on a route planned by Tokyo Half-Fast Cycling.  However, it was a bit more complicated than that, and after much asking and street sign map reading, we were able to get to a point close enough to see JAL’s planes come in really close for landings. [Read more]

Cycling with Mike, again, and throwing up, again!!

FULL RIDE STATS:

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Gunma Japan Haikyo Urban Exploring!

I went on my first ever haikyo, or urban exploring as it’s called outside of Japan, with the Mikes in January 2008.  We rented a Nissan X-trail, which was a pleasure to drive by the way, and headed up deep into Gunma Prefecture, Japan.  Snow was everywhere and we were all very excited to be out of Tokyo and on our first adventure in a long time.  We went out seeking an abandoned theme park, volcano museum and schoolhouse.  We found them all, with varying degrees of difficulty. [Read more]

Renting a dog in Odaiba…Yes, renting!

Quite some time ago, a student told me she had rented a dog in Odaiba with her boyfriend.  I had to have her repeat that.  She really liked dogs, but since she was a pre-med student, she had no time to take care of one.  So she said renting one was the next best thing. I filed that story in my deep memory as I thought it might be something I’d like to do in the future.  

So this Sunday when Aya and I found ourselves heading to the Odaiba area to check out a sweet pterosaur exhibition, I recalled the dog rental story and suggested we try and do it.  I am very careful about doing anything with animals in captivity, but surprisingly no ethical warnings came up in my mind about renting a dog.  

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Imperial Palace cycling enters a 3rd week!

• Distance:  15.88 miles
• Time in motion:  1 hour 5 minutes 57 seconds
• Average speed:  14.4 mph
• Max speed:  29.8 mph

UK Mike and I have now entered our third week of doing laps around the Imperial Palace!  We are quite proud of ourselves.  So much so that we are thinking of adding one more lap to our usual program–which would mean going from three laps to four!  

UK Mike having heard of my record setting average speed in my solo palace ride last Wednesday, was asking me how I achieved it.  He said I must have been trying to set the record, and I told him as I wrote in my post about that ride, I could not have been more not trying to set any record.  I was just riding as purely as possible for the love of riding.  Hence my complete shock upon seeing 17.0 mph as my average speed when I returned home and checked my cyclo-computer.  I told him that I just kept my Trek 7.3 FX in gearing 3-5 during all the backside ascents and in 3-7 on all the long descents and straightaways on the first half of the loop.  

Though no one said let’s go for the same average tonight, I could feel that UK Mike wanted to push the pace, so I rode slightly faster than I probably would have on my own, but who knows.  Either way, I was setting the standard 10-minute lap pace, actually slightly sub-10-minute laps, and UK Mike was keeping up the whole time.  He took my gearing advice and stayed in 3-5 on the ascents and 3-7 on the back straightaways.  

We actually finished with a 17.3 mph average speed, which was for the ride from my apartment in Shinjuku to the Imperial Palace and the 3-laps around the palace.  In the future I’ll think I’ll use the dual-clock feature of my cyclo-computer to keep separate stats for the entire ride and just the laps around the palace.

Will we actually do 4-laps next time??  We shall see . . . .

A return to night riding, but with throwing up!

• Distance:  16.29 miles
• Time in motion:  1 hour 10 minutes 17 seconds
• Average speed:  14.0 mph
• Max speed:  29.8 mph

I wanted to start riding at night again.  As it is officially summer and it was sunny all day, I knew tonight should be the night.  I used some of my motivational skills and was able to extract UK Mike from his apartment to join me.  

I suggested we do three hardcore laps around the Imperial Palace, which would be a total of 15 km (9.32 miles), as one lap is 5km.  And I wanted us to do it in 30 minutes, the pace I set a long time ago on another ride in March.  Well, I did have to teach until 8:30pm then come home and cook.  So basically I scarfed down some green Thai curry and then hopped on my bike and started barreling down Shinjuku Dori.  Even at this point, I kind of knew it wouldn’t be an all internal ride.

I set a hard pace and UK Mike impressively kept up the whole time.  On the third lap I wanted to really attack the two incline sections on the latter half of the lap.  After about 30 seconds of hard grinding up hill, the first heave happened.  I kept on grinding up the incline.  Then the next heave was actual chunks, or rather brown rice with bits of tofu.  I had hit the wall and my pace slackened.  UK Mike caught up and set the pace during the slight downhill and flat section.

There was one more uphill part right before the finish, and I thought I can reclaim the lead there.  I used a sweet slingshot around the last left hand turn to take the lead.  I pushed it really hard up the last incline.  Boom!  More upheaval!  Lots this time actually.  Two good mouthfuls.  Might have been all my dinner!  

The finish line was just a few dozen meters away.  We chilled there for a while chatting while my stomach settled.  Amazingly, all the time I was heaving, I never once got any on my clothes, or my bike, and never stopped pedaling.  I don’t recommend this though.

We took a very leisurely pace back stopping to eat TWO ice pops each in front of a convenience store.  Despite the throwing up, it was still a great ride and something I hope kicks off at least once a week night riding, if not twice a week.

Arakawa Cyclo-Camping with Mike!!

Me and UK Mike at long last went on our first cyclo-camping trip!  It was an over 100 mile journey round trip heading first north along the Arakawa River into Saitama Prefecture, then back down the same path on the return.  In between we saw the surprising beauty of the Saitama countryside, along with motocross racing, a crazy bird, and a jazz cafe.

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