Charity Bike Ride

Just when you thought, "I exercise enough, I can handle a bike ride"...
You realized YOU WERE WRONG!!!

WHY:
The Oita City JETS (as I'm sure you've discovered by now) are big into charity. The main charity we support is Room To Read (www.roomtoread.org). RTR is a NPO that promotes education through building schools, libraries in third-world countries. Over the years, Oita JETs have raised enough to build one school in Vietnam and one in Nepal, and we recently reached our goal to build our 3rd school in Sri Lanka! We will now begin fund raising for a new library-building project called the Reading Room.

WHAT IS IT?
This event is an annual event. Every year around 30-40 participants bike around the island of Kyushu (approx. 300k routes) within 3 days.

OUR STORY:
We started Friday night, riding our bikes to Tsurusaki where our friends, Nick and Rhea, live. We stayed the night with them and got up early the next morning to head to the next city, Sakanoichi. We met up with the rest of the cyclists and volunteers. We got our maps, talked about the route, got all our gear together, and nabbed a group picture.

Day 1 would be our shortest distance (65k), a few inclines, and 1 mountain. What we didn't expect was the wind! The weather was supposed to be rainy, but warm. It turned out to be the hottest day yet and no rain. The wind made the ride exhausting! Even while going down a hill, often you had to pedal because the wind was pushing you backwards!

We quickly learned which other riders had similar riding styles: speed, breaks, endurance, etc. After about the first 3 hours we all spread out. The faster, more experienced riders flew ahead; the slower riders took their time; the nature observers stopped for pictures; and the average (us) did a combination of all. We stuck with another Oita Jet named Chloe. Chloe is from Australia. She's fun to hang out with and is always finding something to make others laugh. The worst part of Day 1 was about 3/4 of the way into our route we reached a mountain. We decided, after about 15 min of pushing through the pain, to get off and walk. It was a nice break and we enjoyed the beautiful views. The BEST part was making it to the top of the mountain because then you get to FLY down! We were rewarded near the bottom with an unusual ice cream shop. They had CRAZY flavors: Corn, rose, sesame seed, green tea, red bean paste, and some more average flavors.

We got to camp about 5 pm that evening. Many had finished but a few more were behind. That evening we all cleaned up and had chicken fajita's that the volunteer's cooked. There were three large rooms which we all crammed into with sleeping bags or sheets and tried to get some rest. That night there was a HUGE storm that kept many of us awake through the night. (By this time, Thayne had completely lost his voice due to a cold he had just got. Erika had started to get sick also but managed to keep it controlled.)

The next morning we had bagels, oatmeal, and fruit prepared for us by our awesome volunteers. We ate, packed up and prepared ourselves for Day 2!

Day 2 was our hardest day, in terms of route. This was a 75k route but we had to go over many steep mountains! The first half of the day we kept in a group of about 8 riders. We enjoyed each others company and kept a steady pace. Once we hit the mountain, again - there was a separation. The first mountain, was probably one of the steepest and highest. Many of us quickly realized "It's not happening" and got off to walk but Erika, with a few others, pushed on... ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP. We were all so inspired and proud of her that she was able to make it. Once we all made it to the top, we grabbed some food from our packs and ate. Most of the others in our group pushed on but we enjoyed the view a bit longer and wanted to let our food settle. The trio (Erika, Thayne, and Chloe) was back together again as we pushed on through the next 3 mountains. We decided to try our hardest to ride the whole time, and mostly accomplished that! The down-hill part of the mountains was very dangerous with sharp turns, side debris and fatal edges. Luckily NO ONE got hurt or fell! Near the end we met up with the rest of our group and finished the day together.

We made it to the Marine Culture Center around 5:30 that afternoon and at this point we all were extremely sore. By this part of the trip (around 16 hours of biking in 2 days) you start to walk a little funny, your bottom is too sore to enjoy sitting down, and your legs feel as if they are bricks. We all tried to stretch our legs and pump ourselves up knowing we've done an awesome job.

We had dinner in the cafeteria then showers\onsen. The Marine Culture Center is very dormitory like. There are specific rules and times for everything. We were separated by gender into rooms with 4 bunk beds. Boy's rooms' smelled of sweat and manliness and girls rooms' smelled of flowers and cookies (hah). It was Chloe's birthday so we all sang happy birthday and had cake then went to bed.

That night neither of us slept very well. Thayne felt pretty sick and the medicine he took kept him up the whole night. Erika had some distractions that kept her up late, but like it or not... we MUST CONTINUE!

The next morning about 8 of us started the morning off with a short yoga routine down at the beach. Eyes swollen and legs sore we all tried to regain our enthusiasm for the day. After breakfast we gathered for our last briefing and were off on day 3.

Day 3 was our longest day consisting of 94k. Much of it was flat but a few hills\mountains slowed us down. Again, we gathered in a group of around 12-13 and rode about half the day in that group. This day was also, possibly, one of the most dangerous days due to the amount of tunnels we had to go through; The worst of which was the "Tunnel of Death" (TOD) as we affectionately called it. This was a tunnel about 2k in length and no sidewalk. Once we made it up the large hill, where TOD starts, we were greeted by our awesome volunteers. A car would follow us through the tunnel, with hazard lights to make sure we did not get hit by any cars. Once we made it thorough we stopped to get our picture of "WE SURVIVED TOD!" A smaller group of us, about 5, decided we didn't want to waste any more time, and headed off. The down hill was AMAZING! Thayne, having a speedometer on his bike, topped off at 60.5 k/h. (this is where he got his nick-name "the bullet" It was such a rush! (again no one was injured!)

The rest of the day was biking around the coast back to where we started. Our group (Erika, Thayne, Elaine, Kate, and Jeanelle) were the first group (besides the "professional riders) to make it in. We arrived around 4:30 that afternoon.

We still had to ride our bikes back home (about 45min ride). We felt very proud that we had completed the task put before us! We would not have been able to finish had it been for 1- God and his aid through it all (plus his BEAUTIFUL creations\landscapes we were able to witness), 2-The help of our fabulous volunteers who cheered us on, gave us snacks and water, watched our backs, gave us medicine or any thing we needed!!!!

Day 4 - RECOVERY. Erika's knee started bothering her quite badly by day 2 but she pushed through and thankfully did not injure herself! She took the next day off of work to recover. We both sat on the couch most the day watching TV\movies and enjoying each other and our success!

FYI - we rode, in total about 181 miles. If you start in Tampa, FL and travel 181 miles you will make it to Lake City, Fl. Just a few miles south of the GA border. Sure, going 70mph you can get there in about 3-4 hours but we did it ALL on BIKES! (plus, Florida is FLAT!)