Sunset

I somehow got all of the Tawas internet to myself for 15 minutes and got another video to load, enjoy.

Next Morning

Lets see if I can get a short video up, this would have been Monday morning leaving Clare.

 

Looks like it worked.

Photo dump

Well since internet seems to be a foreign concept up here, I'm gonna post what I can and leave the video until I can edit a decent one at home.

First off I'd like to introduce my traveling companion, Freeloader.

This little dude has been my traveling companion for almost 15 years, he tends to eat all the snacks while I do all the work. He's been to three national parks and I have forgotten how many states. Anyway, yesterday freeloader decided he would try this "beer" that, "man" as he calls me is so fond of.

"Hmm, not bad, man might be on to something"

"This goes down good! why the heck didn't I try this before?"

"Crap! WTF!, bear down, bear down, I can't feel my fur!"

Sigh, evidently the little guy is a light weight, but that'll teach him to eat the last Clif Bar.

Ok enough of the furry little snack thief. Lets see what else I took pictures of.

The road goes on and on

And on

I look like 40 miles of bad road.

This ole girl looks pretty good though

The gorgeous Rifle River, maybe I should have done a kayak trip.

The infrastructure improvements up north never cease to amaze me. . .  I might have the wrong picture

I did find a friendly name in West Branch

 First thing I did when I got to Tawas, best double cheese I ever had.

 

The view helped

Being a good boy scout, I then set up camp, showered and made sure everything was done before enjoying this. This was along with a delicious shrimp burger which unfortunately looked so good I ate it without taking a photo. Both came from Mr. Jacks in East Tawas, which also has wonderful ribs, which I am eating as I type this.

This is a sentimental picture for me, I have a photograph (on real paper) of the Trucker in this exact same spot taken on our very first trip together. Do you believe the old girl is older than digital photography?

What else is good in Tawas?  Sunsets of course!

Next time we will discuss how getting pulled over by the police, quicksand and a bald eagle all figure into my vacation. Yes I saved the best stories, mostly because I don't have pictures. Believe it or not neither bald eagles or police officers like to pose for photos. As for the quick sand, there is a video, but like I said internet is spoken slowly up here.

one more shot of the furry one

Cya
Jim

Wandering Around Michigan

So I've set off on another adventure, nothing went to plan and it is turning out great! First the plan, in July I conceived the notion to journey Michigan's off the track gravel roads via my newest ride, the Salsa Cycles Fargo. Strike one, the Salsa was a demo bike from the shop, a customer wanted it, we sold it. Good enough I was getting a new carbon fiber version of the same bike. Strike two, said bike is not going to be in my hands until November.

 I had recently purchased a bike frame from Surly bikes to build up as a replacement for my very long in the tooth 2005 Long Haul Trucker. That plan was a winter build for spring, so we decided to just transfer parts from the Trucker to the new "Troll" frame. Strike three, the parts were not compatible. So instead we rebuilt the Trucker and I was set to go.

The plan was to go from Midland Michigan to Grayling to Harrisville, to Tawas then Bay City and home. The Midland to Grayling section looked longish to my legs so I left work a bit early on Sunday and went to Clare, shaving about 25 miles off Monday..

 

This in hind sight was an excellent idea. Got to Clare no problem. My friend Mark caught me about 12 miles down the trail and rode with me until the 15 mile mark before turning back. The little city campground in Clare is pleasant and close to everything. I had some dinner a bit of a fire and went to bed.

Akihabara

Yesterday I went to Akihabara, the largest electronics shopping district in Tokyo (and probably the world).  It was an easy train ride and I am getting the hang of using the system.  It was also very crowded and very, very noisy.  In Japan everything talks, ATMs, gas pumps, video games, vending machines.  If it has room to put a speaker on it, it talks.  Top that off with vendors trying to lure in customers and girls trying to get you to come to a "Maid Cafe", plus the chatter of 100,000 people and music blaring from every shop and well you get the idea, it's loud.

I mentioned Maid Cafes, so I guess I should explain this.  It's not quite what it might sound like.  Lots of Japanese people kinda suck at the whole boy/girl human interaction thing, they don't have time for it because they work so much.  Maid Cafes are a way to have that without the pitfalls of actually going on a date.  You go to one of these and a very pretty girl makes you something to eat, it could be as simple as instant ramen noodles, but usually it's a burger or something, then she sits and talks with you while you eat.  She may sing a song, play some silly game with you or what ever.  It's just company for men that are too busy to actually go find a girl to have dinner with.  Come to think of it, it's actually the modern version of the Geisha.  Needless to say I didn't waste money on having some girl make me instant noodles then pretend to be interested in talking to me.

I started my visit by going to what is billed as the biggest electronics store in the world.

Yodabashi Akiba, the foot print is about the size of a small Wal Mart and it is 8 stories tall.  Each floor is dedicated to a different sort of electronic.  Ground floor is all cell phones, imagine a giant walmart sized store with nothing but cell phones and cell phone accessories.  I was going to shoot some pictures inside but couldn't find a vantage that truly gave you an idea of what it was like.  Each floor was like that, and the only thing I bought was the adapter I needed for my tablet keyboard, cost me $6.50.

It's an electronics store but they had bikes, so I browsed around that being very happy.  Mostly it was the typical Japanese bikes, which are very much like my rain bike, the old ladies Fuji with full fenders I ride when it's nasty out.  All of the upright bikes I see are like that, a ladies frame and everyone rides them.  Many bikes here are electric assist, although I rarely see anyone using it.

These are electric assist mommy mobiles complete with kiddie seats front and rear, they run about $1200 which isn't bad at all.

Better shot of the electric assist.

I so wanted to bring this bad boy home with me.  Pretty blue anodized framed mini-velo.

BLEH! YUCK!  Yikes, sorry to interupt but I just tasted the "tea" I ran down and got while I was doing this post.  If you are ever in Japan, do not get this:

It literally taste like burnt seaweed.  I wanted some tea so I ran down to the vending machine, they had green tea and this one, I'm tired of green tea so I picked this.  First thing that I have had so far that I absolutely did not like.   Be warned, this is Bad Tea.

The rest of my trip to Akihabara was wandering around the smaller shops just looking.  The advertisements on the sides of the buildings are amazing and many are as large as the whole building.

I did find some little souvenir shops and picked up a few things.  Then about dark I grabbed my train back to Koto and had dinner at a place I had picked out earlier.  It was one of my Japan bucket list items, eat at a conveyor belt sushi restaurant.  I didn't shoot any pictures because I'm self concious about shooting in a restaurant and my assigned seat wasn't in a good spot to do it.

At these places you can either grab stuff off the conveyor, or use a touch screen to order from the kitchen and a trolley will bring you your order.  I did a bit of both.  The nice thing about them is that they are cheap.  I had four plates of sushi, it was as good as any I have had in the states, it cost less than $5.  I could not have gotten one plate for $5 in the states.  The salmon that I had two plates of would have cost me $8 for one plate at Fuji Sushi back home.  Here it was 95 yen or about $1.

I finished the night off with something I hadn't done yet, I went out for a beer.  I first went to an Izakaya, these are the small bars frequented by Japanese business men when they get off of work.  I was a little early and the place was pretty dead.  So I had my beer and headed back to my hotel.  I then checked out the small place directly across the street from my hotel.  I didn't know what it was none of his signs are in english, but I had seen businessmen having lunch there so I figured he would have beer.  Turns out it was a sushi restaurant! but he did have beer, so I sat down and ordered.  The owner didn't have a word of english, but there was a young couple there and the young man had better english than my japanese.  Pretty soon we were chatting and he was translating for the owner, who decided he would have a beer and join us.  We were the only folk in there and I found out he does a great lunch business but it pretty dead at dinner.  The young couple insisted I try some sushi I had not had before, it put what I had for dinner to shame, easily the best I have ever had.

I had a couple of beers and the owner's family sat off to the side and had their own meal, they had two little girls who were curious about the gaijin (foreigner) and I made faces at them and they ended up laughing at me and I had the best evening yet In Tokyo.  The owner kept on bringing me little dishes from the kitchen to try, which is typical in Japan, you don't drink without some nibbles on the side, all of it was excellent and they were amazed that I could actually wield a pair of chopsticks as well as one of them (this was after I picked up a completely round boiled potato that came with some boiled chicken they gave).  I had a good evening and will be going back there for dinner before I leave.

It's sunny and low 50's today and I am off to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden.  I'll have lots of pictures I'm sure.

Kiyosumi Garden

Went to Kiyosumi Gardens today, which a small traditional Japanese Garden about 10 minutes walk from my hotel.  I shot some video and took some pictures.  Park looked to be about 3 acres in size, next to it was another park that was similar in size and even at 11:00am was full of dog walkers and folk laying out blankets for picnics in the 45 degree temps.  I'd say Tokyo is also tired of winter and ready for spring.  It was cloudy, and not the best views, but I can see how the park would be fabulous in the springtime.  Speaking of spring, many of the trees here are budding already and there were even some flowers at the park.

I don't know what this is but it was pretty, the only other thing in flower was a small tree.

Lets start with a short video.

Now some pictures.

This bamboo and granite fountain looked very old and had obviously been carved by hand.  The bowl in the top was about a foot deep.

This bridge is made of two giant slabs of stone each about 7 feet long.

Lots of ducks, lots of Koi (Japanese Carp) some of the Koi were close to 3 feet long.

Another short video, I used to keep Bonsai, so I found this interesting, you might not.  It is possible to use bonsai techniques on full size trees to get a nice shape, the Japanese often do this and it was obvious to me that whomever tends this garden is a master.

Here's some random shots around the park.

The hill is the focal point of the park, it is offset by a small house done in the traditional style that sits out into the pond.

Unfortunately I could not go inside the house.  It is rented out for parties and events. I can imagine an awesome family reunion here, it's hard to see but there is a six foot covered porch around three sides and the walls are all sliding screens.

This is a small shrine that was tucked in behind the big hill, I almost missed it.  I always feel weird taking pictures of places of worship, it feels like I am intruding.

Better shot of the little figure in the right of the previous photo.

A closer look at the main part of the shrine.

The people who first built this garden imported and placed stones from all over Japan, I thought these looked quite striking.  Keep in mind none of this is naturally occurring, someone built all of it.  The hill was made, the pond was dug and every rock was placed by hand by the gardeners that created this place.  The Japanese have a long tradition of imitating nature as art, Bonsai, Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) and Japanese gardens, such as this, are all examples of that.  I would call this a Kaiyū-shiki-teien, or promenade garden, it has a small winding path meant to lead you around the garden and present you with views created by the artist.

Here is some info in English about the garden.  More info and pictures not taken on a cold cloudy day can be found here:  http://teien.tokyo-park.or.jp/en/kiyosumi/  

I am off to Akihabra today, which is a place for the Japanese cultures of Manga and cartoons and such.  I'm not planning on shopping there, but everyone says you need to go there and it is an easy train ride so I am.

Cya later.