I`m Still Alive

Yo! Sashiburi!

I`m writing this from a web cafr in Hakodate! I have now cleared Hokkaido island. I`ll stay at an hotel tonight and skate down the mountain Hakodate tommorow, if the weather allows me to. I`ll go trough the happenings on the way first.

Day 0

I began the journey by going to Toijala, Finland. From there I wen`t to the Powder Flower workshop where my board was being completed. After a lot of shaping it was finally completed at 03.30 am. 15 minutes later a got into an bus to Helsinki Vantaa airport. The next day I spent flying and wondering around Charles De Gaule airport. CDG is absolutely horrible.

Day 1
Was spent in Osaka waiting for my board. Good drinks and nice company

Day 2
Airfrance graciously paid for my cancelled flight to Sapporo and I got my board from Kansai International Airport. I flew to Sapporo where I stayed in a Capsule Hotel. Unless you like to sleep in a small pod separated from a middle aged japanese guy wathcing porn by only a thin bamboo sheet, I can`t really recommend this form of accodomation. I spent most of the evening outside tho, getting to know my new board. The asphalt in Sapporo (and rest of Hokkaido as far as I know) was absolutely fantasticly smooth. I nearly got lost cruising around the city. I allso found couple of awesome 8 stories high parking garages that I skated. Too bad i didn`t have my slidegloves with me and the harder Cult tires. That meant that I had to take it easy, accidental stand sliding isn`t nice.

I had some troubles with the board at the beginning, for some reason I constantly staggered while pushing speed. I soon understood that it was because the board was so low. Even lower than my Lush Spooky, because this Powder Flower has more subtle concave adn is a bit thinner. Low is ofcourse good when doing long distance and downhill skating. I could go on about my board for hours but I`ll leave that into another post.

Day 3
Finally time to do some real skateboarding. After aquiring a map of Hokkaido I kicked of from the Sapporo TV Tower (I only realised I had actually started right from the root of the tower only days later) and pushed trough the endless flat suburban area of Sapporo for about 20km and camped in a thick forest somewhere at the base of the mountain range

Day 4
The walking day. I trodded up the mountains for the whole day for nearly 20km of uphills in sunny weather. Hot and tiring work. I camped at the top of the mountains in a place called Boyanakayma. There was a shop and a closed ski resort. I was too tired to ride the hills that night and went straight to my tent. Luckily I interpeted the weather correctly and set my tent up with it`s weather proof outerlayer on.

Day 5
I woke up to the sound or rain. It wasn`t just a slight drizle, the whole mountain top was inside a rain cloud. Visibility was about 20 to 50 meters and rain came down heavily. No weather for downhill skateboarding. I huddled in my tent eating food and reading Dan Simmons`s The Terror. I really like Simmons`s books, especialy the Hyperion saga is... Unique. The weather remained moist but the asphalt dried up by the evening so I got down to business and really skated them hills. I got used to my board`s downhill cababilities at the quiet, about 1km strip that led to the closed ski resort. When the night fell and the traffic calmed down I skated down the route 230 that I had been following. And I mean really skated, without my backbag, with slidegloves. It was incredible. Endless downhill, smooth asphalt, stunning views. Whoa... Better than I even imagined. I slept the night at the same place and set out to

Day 6

Allmost uneventfull day. I made my way down the hill, about 17km of downhill.　Too bad that it was very hard work to skate it down with my backpack. Increased weight means increased inertia and that means braking is hard. My right shoe sole is all but busted trough. After the downhills came some flat groung that I cleared in nice weather. Then I fought the law (but the law won). A police officer stopped me at the side of the road. After some discussion I came to understand that Skateboarding is illegal in Japan (this is not true). His main concern was my place of residence for the night. He insisted on taking me there (I lied about staying at Lake Toya Onsen) with his car. on the threat of getting arrested and jailed. After about 3km of sitting in his car he luckily got some more important assignement from his radio and dropped me on the road. I then made my way to Lake Toya. Nice 6km downhill leading to a Cyampu Jo at the north shore of Lake Toya where i stayed for the night. I met some friendly elderly locals that showed me around and gave me a tomato. Domo Arigato!

Day 7
I made quick work of the about 15km from the camping grounds to the seashore. Last about 3km were nice downhills trough tunnels that actually had bicycle paths at the side. I must`ve blazed about 40km/h at best in those tunnels. I stayed the roof of a terraced tunnel since it was the only flat spot I could find.

Day 8
The rain day. It started to rain like 15 minutes after I left my campsite. Soon I was too wet to care anymore and decided to go on to Oshamanbe, 20km away. There I checked into a nice japanese style hotel. Not quite a ryokan but close. The place had a Onsen. After a hard push in the pouring rain, the experience of lolling in hot bath was incredible. It remainded me of the one time I got injected morphine intraveneously in a hospital, absolute bliss. The food was good beyond imagination aswell. I cleaned myself, my laundry and my bearings and set out early in the morning for what would be my longest push so far.

Day 9
The monster push. I cleared the whole coast today. About 70/80km of pushing. This country truly is the country of extremities. The trip so far had been only hills and mountains, today was only flat ground with the exeption of few railway overpasses, slight headwind but good asphalt and wide space at the side of the road. I saw a lot of rather rundown looking fishing villages. I went on untill i reached the mountains again, climbed few kilometers uphill, about 30km from Hakodate. The rain came then and forced me to stop in a thicket of the forest.

Day 10
The nightmare day. I woke up around 5 am and waited for the rain to end. As it did so around 7 am I set out to Hakodate. The weather kept degrading from tolerable to wet and windy to absolute horror. Head wind was so hard that even walking became nearly impossible. I had to push even on the steepest downhills, I was soaked to the bone, cold and miserable. I blasted some Manowar from my iPod and fought on. I finally reached Hakodate. It took me nearly 7 hours to make that 30km push.

Of course, right after checking into a hotell, the weather calmed down...

Phew. That`s about it. I try to get back with more detailed explanations of the highlights and some pictures later today.