You win some, you lose some

Nakashibetsu, July 19th 2007

As I pedaled out of camp with the mist surrendering to the morning sun, my foot slipped off the pedal and hit the pavement. I looked down and to my surprise the pedal was still attached to my shoe and not the bike! No problem I thought, I’ll just screw it back on. There. Good as new. Unfortunately, I only got another 50 meters before another downstroke sent my foot flying off the bike. It took another 3 tries before I was able to convince myself that this was beyond my mechanic sensitivities.

So I rode with one foot to the next driveway, pulled in and pointed to my problem. This solicited some guttural oohs and ahhs and a telephone call. I was invited to wait inside but then I’d have to take off my shoes…and not 5 minutes later a pickup truck pulled up. He looked at my bike, looked in his tool box, shook his head then loaded my bike and I in his truck with the urgency of a paramedic. We sped off to a gas station in the next town, there was no bike shop but the mechanics had an old bike in back and offered me a ‘pedaru normal.’ I was back on the road in no time.

High on my good luck, I decided to take my new chunky plastic ‘Hello Kitty’ pedal on a 26km detour to see the ‘mysterious’ Lake Mashu. When I finally got there, fingers shaking and face dripping, I discovered why it is so mysterious. You can only see it on clear days. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to convince myself that there was no way I could have known it would be this cold. It was a tough sell.

I should probably mention that I can’t read (or speak) Japanese. However over the past week I've learned to recoginize the first two characters for the word ‘campground.’ Coming into Nakashibetsu I spotted them on a log cabin with friendly flower pots on the stoop. The sun was getting low and not to sound repetitive, I was cold. It took me a while to pry my shoelaces undone with numb fingers before entering. But it paid off. Turned out it was a restaurant. The ladies Yoko and Ayaka decided after a cup of tea and about a half hour of comic communication between my phrasebook and her cell phone translator, that it was too cold to camp and I would stay at their house and go with them to some sort of festival at the local temple that evening. The street leading up to the temple was filled with the usual religious festival trimmings, cotton candy, corn dogs, kimonos and ring toss!