Welcome to our blog! We are a couple of 30-somethings from San Diego, California who decided to take a small break from the real world to have a little adventure. Our goal is to explore the country of Japan by biking and camping from Fukuoka in the south to Wakkanai, the northernmost point of Japan. As long as we don’t get lost too many times, our journey will take 10 weeks between May 3rd and July 10th, 2010 (including travel, rest and site-seeing days) and will have us biking an average of 50 miles per day for a total of 2,500 miles. Neither of us has done anything like this before, so we have no idea what to expect! We hope this blog will motivate us to record our experiences, inspire others to explore Japan and other parts of the world, provide resources for others planning bike touring trips, and – perhaps most importantly – allow our mothers to sleep at night.
About us
We first met in July 2007 while working at Active.com, one of the few office environments where running a marathon is considered an every day occurrence, and biking 2,500 miles probably wouldn’t even make anyone blink an eye. Project meetings turned into emails, instant messages turned into lunches and dinners, and we’ve been dating ever since. Cycling is something that we’ve always loved to do together, as well as with the local Trek Cycling Group. One day Kelly came home and said, out of nowhere, “do you want to bike the length of Japan?” Having lived in Hokkaido for 2 years between 1998 and 2000, he had always wanted to go back and see more of the country, and biking/camping trip seemed like an adventurous, low impact and affordable way to do it. Vicky, having never been to Japan and not knowing much about how long exactly this length was (or how many mountains were involved) happily agreed.
At the time, we had no idea how we were going to do something like this or whether it was even possible, but we quickly found lots of great resources online that made us realize that it’s all relative… if a couple could walk the length of Japan on stilts (yes, STILTS!) then biking should feel like first class transportation. We were amazed at all the stories, pictures and advice we found online, and felt like we had stumbled across this wonderful, helpful niche community of bicycle tourists that we had no idea existed. We decided to document our experience, from the preparation and planning process to the trip itself. If it could help even one person plan a similar trip, it would be worth it!
Leave a note on the guest book
