Hochi to Iya Valley
May 24, 2023
The bicycle rider sees the world in slow motion. The only thing slower is walking and the walker can not cover nearly as much territory even though they can go places where bicycle travel is difficult or impossible. I have done both extensively and for the pure joy of traveling, the bicycle is my first choice for a number of reasons. It is as nearly silent as a footstep and faster but not so fast that you can not let your senses take in all that the environment has to offer, good or bad. Today’s ride was one of climbing and some of the toughest climbs of the trip so far but still a treat for the senses after the exhaustion was put aside.
I should take a moment and write about climbing for my non-cycling friends. A climb is generally considered an uphill ride of 300 meters or more with a rise in elevation of 3% or more. In other words, a gain in elevation of 100 meters over a distance of a kilometer means that you are going up a 10% grade. Down in the USA they sometimes measure grades in degrees but in terms of difficulty a 10 degree grade is nearly the same as a 10% grade. Here is an example: a 100% grade is a straight up wall as is a 90 degree grade. Impossible for anyone on a bike unless you are Spiderman or Batman. For trains a 2% or 2 degree grade is about all they can handle without special equipment. The stairs in the average home have an average rise of around 33%, too steep to ride up on a bicycle, even if it was a smooth ramp set at that angle. Bicyclist tend to get pretty annoyed when the grade gets above 15% and really discouraged above 20%, especially if that grade at that degree of difficulty is continuous over a long distance.
One of our climbs today was around 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) over a distance of 13 kilometers (8 miles) with a continuous climb in the range of 5% to 12% and no flat portions. For my bicycling friends that single climb was like doing most the elevation gains of the Tour de Bonnechere’s Monarch of the Mountain course (100 kms) over a distance of 13 kms. Try it sometime and let me know how you did keeping in mind that I am a 71 year old heart attack survivor.
Of course for every climb there is (hopefully) an equal and opposite downhill. This is not always true and sometimes, like yesterday, you even can get a lot more downhill for your uphill effort. However, those moments are rare and should be cherished. Today there were some nice downhills through terraced rice plantations where rice is grown on man made ledges that spill water onto the next paddy below and on so down the steep mountain side. We also rode through forests with a mix of conifers and deciduous trees with some effervescent green bamboo forests mixed in to accompany the streams and waterfalls along the route. Combined with a landscape more vertical than horizontal it kept the mind engaged and open to other experiences such as the dog sitting in front of a roadside farmer’s home that looked at me with shocked amazement as I rocketed past on one of the steeper descents. On the more gradual downhills, I occasionally saw farmers in their boots and straw hats working in the newly planted paddies pulling weeds. There were also hawks, drifting on currents making the occasional cry as they tried to scare up a meal. Local thrushes and warblers added their songs to my journey and even a cuckoo that chimed in from time to time. Rounding a bend on a steep uphill revealed a small Shinto shrine to a local deity. Further below in a small town a man on a ladder carefully trimmed a cedar to perfection.
A hard but enjoyable ride in the land of the rising sun.