Entries this day: TJ_Bike_to_Atami Work_as_Santa! cheerful_dancing_fellows crazy_dancing_fellows fabulous! soml

TJ Bike to Atami

The next morning I wrote in my TJ Bike diary:

SLEEP won that race. I was able to sleep 4 hours without a tent, but then got too cold in just my sleeping bag. Did not use the tent poles, just got in it like another bag. It blocked the wind. 7:45am now. Ready to go. 24 km to Atami. 84 km done yesterday.

12:04pm JST Thursday 01 December 2005

I'm in Atami now; I arrived at 10:12am, 23 hours and 1 minute after my official leaving time. I spent 30 minutes with my feet in the public hot spring right outside the station; chatted with Kellie about PB preparations and then went in search of a free wireless connection, for I have foolishly not written down specifics about where we are meeting. From the email, I got the idea there was just one cafe in the area, but there are plenty.

Haven't found an internet signal yet, but I did find an electrical outlet in McDonald's where I chowed a chicken burger and salad and orange juice and still find myself hungry. I guess I need more food than usual after riding 100km.

The last part of the trek along 135 included two rather steep hills (fortunately with lovely steep downhills on the other side). I thanked the gods for free food and snagged a mikan from a tree before a woman offered me one a bit later down the road.

Right after that was the first whoooshing downhill, and I whooshed pretty quickly. A couple times on curves with gravel sprinkled on the edge; I thanked TJ Bike and the gods of friction and kept on zooming down the hills. Fantastic.

Right after the first zoom, I went by 真鶴駅　（まなづる駅）at 8:58am today.

Work as Santa!

12:24pm JST Thursday 01 December 2005

Whooo! Tom just called me and asked if I want to be Santa again at Tom's Jen's Dan's Lubo's kindergarten! Whoohoo! A nice blessing of work!

12:33pm JST Thursday 01 December 2005

Heh. walked just down the street and got a wireless signal. Aw yeah. I love you, future.

cheerful dancing fellows

3:23pm JST Thursday 01 December 2005

Aki arrived around 1pm, and we chatted for about 30 minutes about what we've been up to recently. She asked me how I arrived, and I was like, "by bicycle" and she didn't believe me and asked me again later. She still didn't believe me, and starting naming off shinkansen types to jostle my memory. I was like, "Aki. I rode my bicycle."

She said, "that's impossible."

Koji and his wife Kazuko arrived just before 1:30 as I was pulling out my map to show Aki my trek. I showed them all and they congratulated me a bit. I was smilin'. We chilled for a bit and Koji bought us coffees and sandwiches for me and Aki.

Coffee. Hmmm. I've always been a big non-fan of coffee, but I didn't want to turn down his offer after it had been purchased and brought to the table. So I poured in three sugars and a creamer and... it wasn't horrible. I even had ideas in my head that it wouldn't necessarily be my last cup of coffee, but as I'm writing this, I definitely have no plans to drink coffee again.

Then Shunji came and presented his speech about the park where he volunteers as and English speaking guide! I suggested a change of "introduce" to "tell you about" when referring to a inanimate entity such as a park. Yama arrived a bit later, and then took off again, and Kazue arrived around 2:29 with Naho around 2:31. Our awesome class reunited!

TJ Bike was a bicycle sandwich between Koji's and Yama's cars. All downhill from Atami station to New Fujiya Hotel, where they let him park attached to a rail basically out of the way, but near the front of the hotel.

Nice hotel. Wow.

Koji's wife and I each have our own rooms. I'm in 742 and she's in 743. Koji, Shunji and Yama are in one large Japanese style room (736). Aki, Naho, and Kazue are in another room, I believe. Sweet.

We're supposed to meet at 5pm in room 736.

crazy dancing fellows

8:27pm JST Thursday 01 December 2005

We met for wine and snacks in their room and then went to the buffet for a huge spread of goods. All variety of bite sized food, mostly leaning toward Japanese concoctions, but with some that could be western style. We joked about how much Aki likes to eat, about how Yama is Zue's young swallow, and how Shunji likes さけのさかな。

Headed down to karaoke after I finished my last plate of half fruit and half dessert where Shunji sang a song, then we waited forever for my song to come up (Eminem's "Lose Yourself" (the only Eminem option; I would prefer "Rabbit Run" or "Business" in that order)) and I was doing pretty well I thought considering I've never known all the lyrics to this particular tune.. Some of the class came to the microphone stand to dance around a bit and the plug got ganked out of the outlet and the show was over. 9 songs had been cued up after mine.

Then there were none.

fabulous!

12:05am JST Friday 02 December 2005

I have just been blessed with the gift of the wonderful Cheerful / Crazy Dancing Fellows funding my stay here at this hotel. Super thankful to them and the universe and everyone for helping with my adventure.

We just left room 736 after lots of drinking and more snacking turned to discussions of Japanese girlfriends and young boyfriends. I shared parts of my story and it seemed Kazue was the most moved. Talk shifted to where to meet tomorrow, and I believe Yama, Kazue and Naho are going to drive up northwest somewhere (Izumi?) where Kazue and Naho have friends. Not sure what it does for Yama, but maybe he lives in the area.

Shunji fell asleep and Koji talked about pension (年金) and several other related topics for a while. I understood very little.

We are going to meet tomorrow for onsen at 6:30am.

soml

12:11am JST Friday 02 December 2005

I had called this entry "thoughts" but then decided I should mix this in with a state of my life.

State of My Life Address:

1. I am in 熱海 (with Cheerful Dancing Fellows, my crazy class from PB 49), to where TJ Bike and I rode from Jesse's place in 桜新町. 9 hours of riding over a 23 hour period.

2. I've been living on Jesse's couch recently.

3. I've just been thinking about the future and funding my future and doing the right thing, and have thought it may look like the following:

   1. On PB 52, do a fantastic job of my job. Wake up early; take time for myself; go to bed early; take care of myself.
   2. Create the reality of $3000 donation for hurricane victims and join the bicycle ride from Texas to New Orleans in May 2006.
   3. Come back and hook up PB 54.
   4. Study with some monks, with focus on shiatsu.
   5. Go to Univeristy of Santa Monica and get a degree in Spiritual Psychology.
   6. Sweet.

4. I have recently set my Rob Updater to keep track of remove requests, but it doesn't do it via the database.

5. I'd like to add a field to Rob Updater mail list recipients that describes how easy it is for them to escape the list. For my friends and family who I know would "never" want off, it would write "Let me know if you want to change your email address, or *gasp* want off this list." For everyone else, it would say, "click here to be removed from the list." But then have a type of person who occasionally gets "House cleaning time! If you want off this list, do nothing. If you wanna stay on, write me back." Maybe once every six months.

   Ooooh; it could keep a date of the last time they were asked (or added to the list), and then automagically ask them when the date has grown older than six months.

6. I have not finished the thing I want to write for Gyosei and PB peeps comparing / contrasting Jerusalem and Tokyo. But I have gotten a good start on it.

7. No one in CDF took a single picture of our day.