ok, so i'm in america, and i know that i claimed that i was going to be in portland yesterday, but there was a change of plans (mostly andrew kooy's doing) so i will be in portland the night of monday, for at least a few days. if you want to hang out with me, leave me a comment or email me or something, since i have no phone, and i probably don't have your number anyways. and now, i leave for george, WA. should be a blast.

I will post this entry on the SOLE PROVISION that my mother is not to be informed in any way, shape or form as to it's content.

Towards the end of the school year, i was lamenting to one of my middle-school friends that i missed having a motorcycle. the weather was warming up, and it just seemed a crime not to have one. he mentioned, in passing, that his dad has one that he's trying to sell, as they're going to the states for like 8 months. one thing led to another, and pretty soon i was over at his house chatting it up with his dad. the bike is quite old, only 4 years younger than i, and it hadn't started since Christmas. something went wrong, and it was too cold anyways, so he just wrote it off. he originally wanted almost $200 for it, but since it wasn't running, and there was no real way to tell how much i would have to put into it to make it run, he gave it to me, and said "if you get it running, we'll work something out in january when i get back." and he had it delivered to my door.

As with my last bike, it sat there for a while, staring accusingly at me whenever i let one of my idiot cats out, until finally i could stand it no more. i got ahold of some tools, and did a little "exploratory surgery". initial results were positive- it was much easier to work on than my last bike. i had been informed that the carberator was more than likely the culprit, so i removed the offensive item, and tore it down to it's constituent elements, cleansed it vigorously, and replaced it. and all seemed to be in working order. the bike started up almost instantly, which is unheard of in my experience. i got it insured, and drove it back and forth between work and home. and all was right with the world. here's a shot of all being right with the world:

1984 Yamaha SRX 250

So, after riding without any mishap for about 2 weeks, i decide it's safe to go on a little trip with the thing. fireworks are in season over here, so i thought i'd head over to my old stomping grounds and have a look. it's about a 30 minute trip, and about 20 minutes into it i realize i'm hopelessly lost. then about 21 minutes into it, my bike dies. funny how history repeats itself- the bike dying felt strangely familiar. like it happened once with another bike i once owned. except replace "once" with "repeatedly". this time the problem seems to be with the electrical system, with which i have no experience. so, i managed to get home via japan's amazingly complex public transit system, but i was left with a problem- what to do with my bike? i left it in a semi-seedy area of town (at least, i was so informed by a friendly local senior citizen), and the next day was sunday, which means i had to do church. who did i know with a truck? or maybe a van? then i thought about it, and realized that since this bike is much differently shaped than my last one, it just might fit into my very own car. i decided to go with it, and after much driving, prodigious volumes of sweat, and perhaps a little cursing, here's what i had:


You gotta admit, that's pretty darn cool. now all i need is for someone to be driving my car when i bust out the back of it knight rider style. but for that, i might have to work on my muscles. also my german.

At any rate, fixed it up right proper, and took the trip anyways, fireworks or no. i think deathtrap will always be my first love, and if i am ever actually in the market to buy a bike with money, i would have to have some really good reasons to not buy a motorcross bike. this one's growing on me, but the kawasaki will always be my first bike, and as it has passed into legend, it is slowly getting better over time as my mind distorts the memory.

Despite what seems prodigious efforts to keep me from doing so, i did, in fact, survive. barely. you may recall that i went hiking in the "wilderness" of japan back in october. if not, i'll make you a little link here and even leave it underlined for you so you can go back and brush up a little on your "ryan's life in japan: a history". i do this for your own good- there will be a test on this material. consider yourself warned. unlike the hike back in october, i was the sole "adult" on the trip, oragnizing the trip, or planning the trip in any way shape or form. and, as i believe i said in my last post, this has been something of a challenge for me. but, if i must say, i did rather well. there was only 1 or 2 little things that i brought that i did not need, and there were precious few things that i didn't bring that i did need. and those were more like "things that if i had needed would have been really bad, so it's really lucky that i didn't need them." i'll get on to more of that in a bit.

So here it is, the short summary i know you've all been dying for. we were out there for 5 days- from sunday until thursday. i will go through them in an orderly fashion, and will try and keep this short and thus somewhat more managable, and i may even include pictures to keep those fleeting attention spans of yours from wandering off.

Sunday:
Did the church thing. and, seeing as though i'm the only pastor in the country (still! it's been like 2 weeks now! and the place hasn't imploded or anything!), the church thing was a little stressfull- there were the usual slew of things that needed to be taken care of, but only me to take care of them. further proof that the world needs more me's running around. left as soon after church as i could, but still managed to miss the train that i'd been hoping to catch, what with all the well-wishers, doom-sayers, map-lookers, conversation-havers, and i-hiked-once-ers who mobbed me. the guys were excited, but also somewhat nervous, realizing that the 45lb pack they were sitting next to on the trains would be sitting on their back all week. there was really nothing that special about sunday- we hiked for roughly 3 hours, and set up camp just as it was getting dark, which was pretty darn good timing on my part. the weather was hot and muggy like you wouldn't believe, but it was cooler than it had been in tokyo. i taught the guys how to tie up their fly sheets, how to gather wood for a fire, where not to wash out your cooking stuff so as not to atract bears, etc. it rained on and off during the night, but when i woke up from being bitten by an ant on the face, i could see the moon, so i figured we'd be ok. here's us the first morning enjoying instant oatmeal:




Monday:
This day was difficult. the morning started off well with the boys complaining about being up so early (in spite of the fact that i banned all chronometric devices, they guessed correctly that it was about 5 in the AM. but really, we went to bed at like 9, so they have nothing to whine about). packed up, had devo's and hit the trail. we started out from the train station at about 650 meters, and the peak we were trying to hit by the end of monday was like 2017 meters, so, as you could probably correctly guess, the going was mostly uphill. we lunched at a pleasant little hut, which came with complementary water, which was nice cuz we were running out in spite of the fact that we were carrying 6 liters EACH. the farther we hiked the cooler the trail got. most (actually, probably all) of the hiking i've done in japan is in areas that have been harvested for their lumber and replanted with cedar, which, after a few years, they harvest again. now cedar is a soft-wood evergreen, and actually not native to this region at all. as we kept hiking, the woods slowly changed from man-made to a real, actual, japanese forest, with huge deciduous trees, underbrush, and some cool moss. it actually really felt like i was hiking in a forest in the northwest US somewhere. like a lot. it was cool. then the rain started.

It did not start suddenly, but rather slowly, lulling us into a pacifistic "maybe it will stop" mindset, but it gradually got worse and worse. by the time it was raining hard enough that it necessitated rain gear, we were all already soaked to the bone. so we just kept hiking. the rain got progressively worse, and the higher up we got, the more fog we ran into. i didn't know it at the time, due to lack of electricity, computer, internet, and other evils, but a typhoon was on it's way. i saw it on the news on saturday, but at that point it was supposed to hit really south and fizzle out. not so. Here is a nifty link that you'll need to watch a few times to really appreciate. watch the date in the corner- we left on sunday the 24th, which means that we could not have left at a more perfect time to rendezvous with the demon typhoon from hell.

I do have a very cool mental picture of hiking through an area with 1 meter high bamboo, these skinny 5 meter high trees, scattered about, and interspersed were these HUGE deciuous trees that were probably about 4 or 5 feet thick. the fog was to the point that we had very limited visibility, so we couldn't see the tops of the big trees. i've always seen images of china that look like that and wanted to visit them. turns out they were here this whole time. they ended pretty quick, though, and were replaced by these evil rocky saddle things. we would fight our way up for about an hour, get to a flat place to catch our breath, hike around the corner, and the path went up into the clouds AGAIN. we repeated this a lot. we did see a monkey cross our path ahead in the fog, though, which was a first. i'll forever have a mental picture of chris standing a little ways ahead of me on a knife-edged saddle, in the pouring rain, the wind trying to blow us off, and these clouds absolutely whipping by. in my brain i was trying to figure out how we were going to make camp on the rocks with the wind going at 30 mph. by the grace of God there was another hiking shelter at the peak we were trying to reach that day. it was no shack either- some blankets, insulated windows, etc. there was no fire pit, but at least it was out of the rain. here's us that night:


Tuesday:
As is evident from the little sattelite imagery now available at your fingertips, the rain did not stop on tuesday. in fact, there was even some lightning during the night, which made me a little nervous, seeing as though we were in a building on the top of the highest peak for quite a few kilometers around. Not even 10 minutes down our trail chris, who was leading at the time, saw a deer bolt across our path. all told, we had 4 deer sightings that day, but we think one of them was the same deer twice. tuesday was somewhat monotonous- more going up in the rain, lots of mountain streams. actually, i almost had a very serious accident. years ago they had skinny log bridges on parts of the trail, and they had been replaced with high-quality bridges with actual concrete foundation and all that. we walked across many, many of these, which were very nice and safe, except that i slipped on one. they have little 1x1's nailed down in case you should slip forward or backwards, but i slipped sideways. only about a foot, mind you, but what with no hand rails and a 10 foot drop and a really steep mountainside, it was enough to just about stop my heart.

Our trail for the day took us right by another shelter on my map, but it didn't look like it would be free, so i was planning on stopping there for lunch, then pressing on and making camp in the woods somewhere. the day before, we had hiked until all of 3:30pm, which means we lunched at what was probably 10am, so tuesday i pushed the guys a little more, telling them we would stop at the hut for lunch. we hiked long, hard, and soggy, taking as few breaks as possible due to the rain, and bone-chilling wind (and one of the guys didn't bring rain gear, or even hiking pants. i guess when he saw "rain gear" on the list i sent him he interpreted that as "stuff i could wear in the event it sprinkles". he was very cold). at any rate, we get to the hut, look around, and realize that it's been recently abandoned, most likely due to the typhoon. there was someone's actual house connected to the hut, with a TV antenna and all that. the menu on the wall had prices for supper and beer and whatnot. the shelter itself was not locked, so we entered to lunch. the guys wondered very verbally about the chances of us spending the night, and implored me to dig out my chronometer, which i grudgingly did. imagine my surprise when i discovered that it was not lunch time, but supper! it was 5:30pm. most likely we had overslept the morning due to the fact that we slept indoors, because i knew we hadn't been hiking for more than half a day. now i was faced with an ethical dilemma, however: the sign on the wall also clearly stated that it was ¥4,000 (about $40) a person a night, which is a LOT of money. there was a box on the wall for the money, however there was nobody up there to know that WE were up there. the compromise i came to is that we would sleep on the ground in the entryway, and only pay half price, since we weren't acutally using their stuff, just their ground. and also their wood- the wood stove was in the entryway, and we fired that thing up and got supper cooking without wasting any time at all. in about 20 minutes we who had been actually shaking with cold, unable to feel our extremities, had stripped down buck naked and were running around in the rain to cool off. sometimes it's great to be a guy. actually, all the time.

Wednesday:
The morning came with the fire being out and me being chilly. as i lay there in my bag, i realized that i could hear the nearby stream, and wondered why i hadn't noticed last night. as the fog slowly cleared from my brain the answer replaced it- because of the intense rain and wind the night before on the tin roof, we sometimes had to yell just to hear eachother. i reached out of my bag and saw the most beautiful thing i've seen since the exact same thing happened last october- the sky. not overcast, not gray clouds, but blue sky. granted it was patchy, but it had enormous potential for growth, and it did not dissapoint. not only was it exciting, but for me it was actually a relief. the guys didn't know it, but on tuesday we had the choice to take a shortcut and go straight home rather than continue on the hike as planned. i made the executive decision to stay on the original course, and all day tuesday i had beat myself up for it- mostly because i had doomed us all to a night of freezing coldness, especially chris, who had a sub-standard sleeping bag for those conditions. on tuesday morning, though, poring over the maps and thinking about this, i thought of waking up on wednesday morning to not-rain, and the sense of accomplishment from knowing that we hadn't turned back when we could have, but pushed on. in a way, i was pretty much counting on it being sunny on wednesday morning. and it was! i ran out and looked at the view, which was the first time in 3 days that i had been able to. i could see about 7 mountain ranges from me to the horizon. very cool.

We hiked for about 2 hours, then got to the peak we were trying to reach and had lunch, and fixed evan's pack, which was trying to kill itself and take evan with it. after hiking for another good 2 hours, we get to another peak, and it was confusing, cuz this one had the same name as the one we stopped at for lunch...in all reality, the second one was where we were trying to get to for lunch, and i misinterpreted the maps. so, the guys weren't happy with me for lying to them and having gone half as far as i thought we had. i wasn't happy with me either. from this peak the trail quickly degrades to a washed-out, mini-bamboo-covered trail of death. we proceeded on this for a while until we came to a river, where the path disapeared....

There had been a few times that i thought maybe we'd lost the trail, but this time we really did. there was a big clearing around where the trail met the river coming in, but there was no path going out. the trail had been marked by some useful woodsmen with red tape- it was taped around trees, branches, etc. and we couldn't find any. i found a river on the map, assumed (incorrecly, as it turns out) that it was the one we were at, and deduced that since the river runs to the dam, and our trail led to the dam, we could just follow the river until we found the dam. makes sense! so, we bushwhacked down a hillside of DEATH, with rotten falling trees, big rocks, random roots just begging to break your ankles, etc. it was difficult, and the guys weren't enjoying themselves. actually, at one point, evan got stuck under a huge dead tree. i thought it was pretty funny, but he failed to see the humor of the moment. he had slipped coming down, and had been sliding on his butt, and the tree had fallen over at an angle, so there was just barely enough space for evan to get wedged in. he was totally helpless! classic.

So we get down to the bottom, and there's no trail waiting for us. panic! i scour the map for somewhere else we could be, and i'm not pleased with what i come up with. i decide to scout a bit, going next to the river. the river bank quickly became a river cliff, so i was forced to wade across- wet boots are not happy boots. sure enough, we are at the wrong river- there's another river that joins from this HUGE magnificent waterfall-probably like 7 or 8 stories tall. if we hadn't been so screwed i would have enjoyed it more probably. the river we are on DID go to the dam, but it went over a few waterfalls of it's own. the only solution- hike back up to the ridge that we came from. keep in mind that hiking DOWN this thing took 90 minutes. none of us wanted to guess how long it would take to go back up. but, up we went.

At least, about half-way up. then we took a right. according to the map, the trail we were supposed to be on up on the ridge would be losing altitude, so we decided that we would hike level along the side of the ridge in hopes of meeting the trail. bushwhacking is bushwhacking, or so we thought. this was the hardest thing i have probably ever done in my life. evan had been falling farther and farther behind, and what with the daylight fading, me and chris split up about a third of his pack. i got most of it (i'm not trying to be a martyr, i swear). i was leading the bushwhack, and we would hit these patches of short bamboo that were...well, i'm i don't want to insult God's creation, but lets just say that i'm pretty sure this bamboo was post-fall bamboo. it was about 5 feet tall, and grew so thicky you couldn't see more than like 5 feet. maybe. it would wrap itself around your arms, legs, waist, neck, feet, face...it was like being dragged backwards by a thousand miniature demons. there were equal parts living and dead stuff, so sometimes you would grab a handful of it to keep from falling, and it would all just snap, and you'd go tumbling down. or you'd stumble forward, and it would hit you on the cheek and slide up and try and poke your eyes out. i'm not kidding. it was impossible. and i was leading the pack, breaking the stuff up.

The bamboo came in patches, almost like fields. at first they were rare, but as we kept going, they became more and more frequent. finally i told the guys that we were losing too much time and we were going to have to go up and find a way around this stuff, or we'd be trying to do it in the dark, which none of us even wanted to think about. so, i lead the way up a landslide, and after about 10 meters, get to a deer trail and rest. chis is the next up, and as we're standing there, i notice something behind him on a tree.

red tape.

I wasn't sure if i was halucinating it, so i asked chis if he saw it too. good news for me-he did. could this be our trail?! i looked ahead while we were waiting for chris, and sure enough, there was more up ahead. i almost kissed it. we would have been deliriously happy if we had any spare energy at all, but we were all like "ok. we're on the trail. let's go." after about 20 minutes we had to bust out the flashlights, which goes to show how close it had been. we made camp at this antenna thing that was the most random thing ever, and we had some good conversation about God looking out for us, and how when we feel we are at our lowest point, God's still there, and we should never lose hope. i even cut a peice of red tape and brought it back as a testament of God's goodness to us.

Here's us the last morning:



Thursday:
Sunrise on thursday was unbelievable. the morning before we had been way down in a valley, so it was quite light before we saw the sun at all, coming up over the ridge. thursday morning there was nothing to our east- just foothills and a city. i was getting breakfast going, but for some reason my stove woulnd't light for the oatmeal. i opened it up and realized that i should have paid more attention to the fuel for the thing. i just assumed we'd be fine, but it was totally out. which means that if we hadn't used that wood stove on tuesday for 2 meals, we would have run out of fuel 2 meals before- so there would have been no hot food for wednesday morning or night, or thursday morning. which would have been bad, cuz you really need hot water to make dehydrated pasta. just one more way that God was protecting us from my lack of experience. we had granola bars instead, and broke camp. we hiked down for so long i actually revelled in little stretches that we went uphill. we saw 3 deer running away from us in the woods. we finally make it down to the dam, which we could have made it to the night before if the trail hadn't disappeared and we hadn't gotten lost. we decide that we're just gonna walk on roads to the station, as we're all worried about evans' pack breaking more. i figured we'd make better time on the roads, and we did, but it was still really, really far. and all our boots were still wet from the night before, so as we walked on the blistering blacktop, our feet were stewing inside our boots. the guys really wanted to try and hitchhike, but i didn't- i wanted to walk to the goal, to finish, to do the whole thing under my own power. after a while, i figured that we were all suffering for the sake of my pride, so i gave the guys permission to try, and after only like 10 minutes we got picked up! we never got the guy's name, but we nicknamed him jesus (that's spanish), because he saved us. he cranked the AC, and was somewhat talkative, but we were all so wasted we just zoned out. he offered to take us not to the station that we were aiming for, but actually about 30 minutes beyond that to a bigger city that we were headed for anyways (chichibu). he helped us unload, and was gone. after we claimed a table in the promanade, i went and bought ice-cold milk. never tasted so good!

IN CONCLUSION...
I figure we went about 50 kilometers total, which is...about 30 miles, by my estimation. day 2 we went like 16k, day 4 we went about 14k, and the other days we went...not as far. i will most likely never do this again-for a few reasons. 1. it was just too hard. i'm no spring chicken, but i had been training for this for about 2 months, and it was really hard. the 2 guys i was with hadn't trained at all. 2. it was just too punishing. i had all my gear, and i know that it's medium to high quality. chris had bad gear, and evan's bag broke, and 5 days was too long to be out there with bad or broken gear. i will probably do something like a 3 day hike again though, now that i know the area. it was a defining time for me, and it's something the guys will never forget: "the summer my youth pastor tried to kill me", or something.