Chapter 5: CHAPTER FIVE

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CHAPTER FIVE

Tour buses, trucks, cars and lots of other bikers zoomed by me in both directions as I putted on the next day after I had turned onto a heavily traveled highway. But by now I was getting somewhat used to the traffic conditions on the major highways that I needed to use to connect from one mountain road to another. Some of the bikers flashing V-signs at me as they passed by had V-signing riders mounted behind them with long black tresses billowing from behind their helmets and were dolled up in skintight motorcycle suits of very ladylike pinks and pastels – a real fashion show on two wheels! I even saw a few V-signing female bikers driving their own bikes but almost all of them were biking alone and not in the gaggles of anywhere from four to ten or more their male compatriots seemed to prefer.

Careful drivers too.

I had to ask directions several times again in the miniature hustle and bustle of Takefu, Fukui Prefecture and got lost twice on the country roads leading to Ono. But there I finally saw the traffic sign marked “ROUTE 158”. From there on there was only one road I could follow – the right road I discovered as I downshifted into first and keeping my speed below 20 as John had warned me slowly, slowly, slowly, climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed the steep narrow twisting road up the face of a cliff rising so high only a few scraggly trees could cling to it.

Near the top I found a narrow turnout stretching from the outer edge of one of the never-ending hairpin switchback curves chipped into the face of the cliff and decided to give my aching backsides and arms a very needed rest and let the cub's engine cool for a while. I gazed at the plain fanning out way down below me and here and there glimpsed squiggles of the steep narrow road rising from it to where I now stood. I strained to see the Sea of Japan but it was hidden behind a low mountain range on the far horizon.

Still, what a view!

After I felt rested enough and gotten most of the kinks out of my body, I turned back and looked at my little cub huddled by the side of the road. It couldn't have brought me all the way up here from all the way down there. And yet it had! After brushing my hand against the engine to make sure it was cool enough to go on, I mounted the tattered seat again looked down and chuckled, “Hey little buddy, what else can you show me?”

We putted up and over the pass and down into a beautiful canyon formed by even steeper cliffs than the one I had just driven up, a river flowing on the right. Fascinated I stared straight up at those cathedral walls reaching to heaven, glistening crystal threads cascading down from their mist-shrouded peaks.

Waterfalls! Up there!

HOOONNNKK!!!

Shocked back to reality, I sharply swerved the cub back into the left lane just as the as the onrushing car whooshed by me on the right, honked again to remind me that gawking at gorgeous scenery while driving can be hazardous to a biker's health. Breathing relief and much more cautious, I putted deeper into that curving vault of a canyon oblivious to the darkening clouds gathering above me.

FLAAAASH!!! KABAAAAAMMMM!!!

Lightning seared my eyes as a hydrogen bomb of thunder exploded right in my ears, echoes booming down the canyon walls and deep into the pit of my stomach. An avalanche of rain and wind slammed into me and soaked me to the skin before I could stop and scramble into my raincoat, torrents slashing right through it too. Frantic, I putted onward.

More lightening blinded, thunder deafened, rain slashed. Mother Nature was throwing a temper tantrum right at me!

I fled forward, squeezed in between those giant haughty cliffs. Not a building, not a house, not a shack, nothing offered refuge.

“Hey little buddy, get us out of here!”

Putt-putt cough! Putt-putt hiccup! Putt-putt sputter! My poor little cub was drowning!

“Somebody HELP!”

Lightening flared. Thunder roared. Rain slashed. Nobody came.

I wheezed the cub around a sharp bend, finally saw protection under a long tunnel-like metal overhang arching the whole road. Another soaked biker squatted at the far end. I parked the cub and hunkered down close by. Soggy shrugs said everything as we watched the storm flash and boom. Maybe it was beautiful in its awesomeness but both of us were too miserable to care.

Finally the lightening ceased, the thunder silenced, the wind died. But the pouring rain refused to lighten. The other biker mounted his trail bike, shivered me a V-sign, varoomed off. I had to kick the cub ten times before it finally sputtered to life for a few seconds then conked out completely. I kicked and kicked and kicked but couldn't get a single putt out of it or even a cough, totally scaring the shit out of me.

Oh God, now how I am going to get out of this nightmare?

Helpless hopeless and terrified, I just stood there in that pouring freezing rain until at last I remembered something about a gas cock among all the other levers and switches and pedals the mechanic had rattled off. After an endless panicky search, I finally found the tiny valve and twisted it from On to Reserve. I still had to kick another ten times or so before the cub finally coughed to life and still wheezing, at last started putting us onward again, the rapidly darkening twilight adding to my terror.

Finally I spied a few shacks looming up out of the gloom and a woman clad in the baggy pantaloons and pointed straw hat of a Japanese farmer's wife, a straw coat or something wrapped around her. I stopped and asked her if there was anyplace nearby to stay overnight. She shook her hat, spraying water everywhere and said in thickly accented Japanese, “Not here. But there's a yadoya in Shirotory about three ri up the road.” I thanked her and wheezed my drowning cub onward into the gloom wondering what a yadoya was, how many kilometers there were in one ri and how the hell I could have gotten this far out in the middle of nowhere so quickly.

After experimenting with all the switches and levers attached to the handlebars, I finally found the one for the headlight and flicked it on. But even after I figured out the cub had a high beam as well as a low one and how to switch it on, the feeble beam caught only the ghost of the center line when there was one as we twisted up and around and down and around through an ink-pouring nightmare stretching to eternity.

But even in the rain and cold my eyelids started drooping.

Just as I was falling asleep at the handlebars, murky lights of habitation smoldered up around me and one of the first houses had a sign in front of it reading “Minshuku”. I splashed my way into the entranceway and begged the kimono-clad proprietress for a room, a closet, a sofa, a rug on the floor, ANYTHING!

She looked at a sleepy clock tick-tocking snugly on the wall. “Well, this late all I've got is one room left but it's – “

“I'll take it!”

Submitted: November 07, 2018

Romance romance japan gaijin travel-in-japan japan-1970s

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B Douglas Slack

Ome of the things I liked the best about traveling through Japan, especially the norhtern prefectures, was the utter changeability of the scenery just around a curve or over the top of a mountain pass. I wasn't on an asthmatic puttputt, but was still intimidated by the larger touring buses.FInding a gas station was usually my first priority after deciding to stay in a particular vilage. Usually, the owner had a 'friend' for 'relative' who knew of a place to stay. I once lucked into the delightful ryokan near Aomori and stayed there three days--giving English lessons to the owners kids for half the bill. When my wife joined me, I brought her up with me. She and the owners wife had a blast figuring out what they were saying as wlel as shopping.

BIll

Wed, November 7th, 2018 9:45pm

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I'm glad you're following the story. But I'm afraid this will be the last chapter for a while. I'm having cataract surgery on my right eye tomorrow and on my left eye a week from tomorrow. No big deal, I understand, and I know I need the surgeries. But it means I can't read or write very much for I don't know how long a time. So please bear with me.

Ken

Wed, November 7th, 2018 6:43pm