I lugged by bike by subway over to my friend, Matt's last night in order to go for a bike ride. I skipped my class on Wednesday and took off for Mt. Fuji. It was a rather long trip for two out-of-shape Americans on mountain bikes, but it was a lot of fun.
It was a great ride. We left at 7am, which was a little late. Everyone said the weather was going to be great. We had to follow some dirt paths along the river for a while. Then we followed a busy road where I definitely noticed the pollution. There is a bit of a shoulder on most roads, but not much. If you ride on the sidewalk, you have to dodge all the slow bikers and walkers. If you take the shoulder, you have to survive near- misses between car mirrors and telephone poles. I think city riding is more technical than even the hardest single track mountain biking.
Anyway, eventually we made it out of the city. We followed a winding two lane highway all the way to Yamanakako (the lake in front of Mt. Fuji). At first it was rolling hills, but soon we were in a Colorado-like atmosphere of huge mountains and lots of cutbacks on steep inclines. The last big uphill lasted for about 10 or 20km or so it seemed. We stopped once in a while for a picture or a drink. It began to rain, so the pace quickened.
We finally reached the top and saw a sign that said Yamanakako. That is where Matt turned around last week when he tried to go. We didn't really want to go down that hill, because we knew that it might be pretty big and we would have to peddle back up it. Plus, it was getting late and we had a long return ahead. Anyway, we went for it. Only about one kilometer down, the trees parted and we saw Mt. Fuji. It was pretty cool.
We ate some nuked lunches that we bought at the 7-Eleven, took some pictures, and headed back. By this time the rain was really coming down, so descending at speeds exceeding 60kmh was not the safest. We couldn't see anything and we were soon covered in mud and polluted rain.
We got back in town by dark (6pm), but we soon lost our way. We wanted to take the road instead of the river, because of the rain. However, we didn't know the roads too well. We were freezing, it was dark, and we nearly gave up. We must have asked for directions about six times. One guy gave us a ride for about 10km. We finally made it back to the English House at about 8pm. 200km!!! and we have the pictures to prove it.