Friday, May 12, 2006

The Plan

An old friend of mine used to say, "When we plan, the gods laugh." I'm going to take that advice to heart on this trip and leave my schedule as open and in their hands as possible.

As it stands, the plan is simply to take my trusty old bike up to remote Cape Soya - the northernmost tip of Japan's northernmost island - in early August, when my job here in Kitagawa wraps up. From there I'll just pedal south until there's no more Japan left, which should take me as far as the beautiful islands of Okinawa. I'm planning to keep a nice leisurely pace with lots of camping to keep the costs down, and I expect the whole trip should take about two or three months.

I'm also going to be trying to raise a little bit of money with my trip for an organisation call LEPRA. More about that here.

I should stop and make a confession at this point though: I've never actually done a cycle tour before. Actually, I've never even ridden more than about 50km in a day before. Actually, I don't really even really especially like bikes... All of which should make the prospect of a 5 or 6 thousand km trip rather daunting. But hey, what's life without a bit of adventure (and no, it's nothing to do with my turning 30 next month, and the fact that the bike is red is a total coincidence...)

I'm willing to do the whole trip solo (sorry mum...), though some company would definitely be a plus. A couple of friends have expressed some interest, though no definites yet. If you're reading this and like the sound of it, drop me a note.

And finally, I'd like to throw the floor open to you, gentle reader, as any advice at this point would be most welcome: Must see places in Japan, places to avoid at all costs, tips for cycle touring in general, or an attempt to talk me out of the whole thing altogether... anything you can think of. Just follow the link below and leave a comment.

Cheers!

Posted by Andrew Wallace @ 1:56 AM  4 comments links to this post