Cycling in Akita

Not the prettyiest video in the world, but I wanted to preface this post with a quick shot of me biking. Despite what it looks like, I did not crash, I don't know why it looks like I crashed but I didn't.

Anyway, so me and this guy.


His name is Nick, a pretty cool guy, laid back, easy going. The two of us got talking at orientation, and decided tht we ought to go bike riding sometime. He's from Colorado and apparently cycling is a big thing. AIU will lend bicycles to anyone who needs one, for free, for four hour increments. A pretty sweet deal, however, there are only two bicycles for the entire school. I'm thinking about talking to someone to see if we might be able to do a small fundraiser to get more bikes for the school.

In anycase when Nick and I were ready to go biking, there was only 1 bike left. Drat. Anyway, there,s a bike rental place very closeby, you rent them for 2 hours, and i costs 4 bucks. Not bad, not free, but not bad. The bikes are . . . well a picture says a thousand words.




Apparently all the bike seats are locked into place, and an attendant matches you with an appropriate bicycle. Needless to say, they gave us their biggest bikes, and they were still too small. Not too much of a problem, a little rough on the knees, sure, but these things pretty much glided over the concrete. a real smooth ride.

We weren't able to get to anywhere in particular on our route. We pretty much went 15 minutes out and 15 minutes back on each of the four points of the compass. We went up and down some really mad hills, I'll be prepared next time, to get some better video, but we probably hit 20 miles per hour down this one hill. Nick flew right into that sort of stuff, I held the brake the whole way down, and still hit some mad speeds.

Up hill was a problem, we had to walk our bikes a bit up hill. Having a bike thats to small for you seems fine right out in the parking lot, but at a 10 degree slope, you can really feel it in your knees.

It rained on us, but it was a pleasant summer rain. We got lost, but managed to find our way back. I have an excellent working knowledge of the area now.

At the end of the two hours though I trudged back to my room, and took a nice long hot bath. So worth it.

Anyway, when