Ride to Mt. Fuji 29 Jan 06

Hugo, who founded and runs the BMW R80ST list, graciously offered me a ride on Sunday 29 Jan. In order to get an early start, he and Yuko invited me to their house to spend Saturday night. I did and loved it, especially after a great Sashimi and Sake dinner at a little place in their neighborhood.

We did walk over to Hugo's garage of bikes at a reasonably early hour. I had the previous day noticed the wide variety of bikes in Tokyo, including this poseur scrambler that I'm sure is a lot of fun in the city but has probably never needed those dual sport tires or that high muffler.

Yuko was looking very stylish that morning and she was actually loaning me her Guzzi, which I was looking forward to riding. Hugo also showed me his race bike. .

Well, Hugo and Yuko trundeled out the Guzzi and prepped it. It wouldn't start. We stared at it a bit. Then Hugo and Yuko started taking the bike apart and checking everything, including the points. They even took out the plugs and before replacing them with new ones, blowtorched the inside of the cylinders!

We spent an hour on that Guzzi. Eventually, after we had tried everything else, while Hugo tried to start it, I got in front of the bike, kneeled, and bowed homage to it. It started! Just as we were congratulating ourselves, it stopped running again and wouldn't start. So I did the kneeling and bowing thing again and it started right up.

The first thing we did was to stop at the local gas station to relieve ourselves, put air in the tires, and fill up with gas. What's cool about these stations is that there are no gas pumps on the ground. The gas lines hang down from the roof!

Then we were off. I had a little trepidation about riding in foreign city traffic, on the wrong side, on an unfamiliar bike, but following Hugo soon disabused me of any notion of caution. With Yuko on the back of his hepped-up R80ST, we were soon beating all of the bikes (and there were many) in zooming through the cars. One thing I noticed is that we didn't stay in between the cars at the lights but rather pulled out in front of them and a bit into the intersection. Hugo says this is because the cars may pull away on red, sandwiching you.

The Guzzi 500 required a little bit of spinning up to keep up with the R80 in taking off from the lights but no problem: it was a blast. One peculiarity: there are two front disks. Only one is activated by the front brake lever. So until Hugo told me that the second one was activated by the foot brake, I thought stopping was a bit of an adventure even by R80 standards.

We soon cleared the surface streets (which Hugo clearly knows well) and got up on what passes for a city freeway in Tokyo. It's more like someone built a roller-coaster for cars. It's elevated and goes around and over buildings - going where ever space permits. And it's narrow. This would be a geat motorcycle raceway.

Hugo got us out of the city and onto the freeway. It was chilly but not really cold. Hugo had fixed me up a connection to my heated jacket (took some manual crimping) so I was just fine. One funny thing I wish I had a picture of: Hugo was paying the tolls but I had to get my own ticket and hand it off to them. While pulling away from the ticket dispenser, I had to use my hands so I put the ticket in my teeth. Then I would ride up just behind and to one side of Hugo's R80ST and Yuko would reach back and pluck the ticket from my teeth.

Just as in Germany, there are freeway rest stops, with reserved parking for motorcycles, and we stopped at one. All the restaurants inside were crowded so we got some pastries to go and amused ourselves with the fabulous array of vending machines outside. One automatically ground the coffee and made a coffee drink according to your specifications. OK, that's ordinary. But this one had cameras inside the machine and showed you live video of the progress of the manufacture of your drink.

Eventually, we reached a mountain road. Now the Guzzi came into it's own. This bike is lighter than the R80ST and just as well balanced. It is so flickable. We had to go a bit slowly because there was melting snow on the road but the little bike wanted to go much faster. We rode up this mountain road to a vista point for lunch. Evidently this is a big motorcycle and motorscooter destination.

We were on the top of a small mountain that overlooked the lake and mountains where I went via train on my trip last August. Unfotunately, the day was cloudy and Mt. Fuji could just barely be seen on occasion during lunch. Hugo and I posed in front of a barely visible Mt. Fuji and then we saddled up and took off.

Going downhill, the Guzzi really came into its own. Like the stock R80ST, it loves the horsepower of controlled free-fall. We passed some cars and in general had a fine time on the all-too short descent. We did go in the other direction for a short visit to the town that likes at the foot of the picturesque lake, and then back up and down to get to the freeway again.

We stopped at another rest stop on the way back and started to see some BMW's, though mostly new ones parked in among the Harley's.

We blasted through the Tokyo traffic again, taking different little back-alleys, garaged the bikes (Yuko cleaned the Guzzi because I had gotten it dirty), and went for pastries at their favorite neighborhood bakery.

Then we hurried to Hugo's and Yuko's Tai Chi class. . There were actualy a couple of groups and individuals practicing widely different martial arts in this community space. It was a lot of fun to watch, except that I had to be quiet and not ask questions. :) Very hard for me.

Afterwards, we went to Shinagawa station where some of the local workers were just finishing the day with a group critique on how they could better perform their job.. Then we wandered around the Shinigawa Commons near my hotel. The restaurant I was looking for was closed but we found another that sold excellent Sake. They were actually closing too, but Yuko persuaded them to sell me some. We then went through a process of finding a bottle that Yuko thought was good and that I could afford. Here's the menu.

We ended the evening at a cute little restaurant on the surface streets just outside of the fancy commons. In the midst of dinner, Hugo and Yuko demonstated a Yoshinkan Aikido posture called the "kamae" that they found funny.

Well, that was pretty much the end of the trip. I am greatly indebted to Hugo and Yuko and look forward to seeing them again, either in Tokyo or San Francisco.