Enoshima Cycling Trip

 I decided to take advantage of the three day weeend to ride to Enoshima.  Enoshima is not super far away, and therefore not a serious challenge, but at around 4 hours it's also not your routine bike ride either.  

Technically you could wake up in the morning, ride from Tokyo to Enoshima, and then ride home, but my behind desn't have the endurance to handle 8 hours, even if my legs do.

Just to make things more fun, there is also the whole typhoon thing.  I don't mind cycling in a little rain if I have the right clothes and a waterproog bag - but I don't really want to ride in the middle of a typhoon and be sopping wet.  

I decided to leave last night around 10pm to get a bit of a head start, so I left home and headed to Kamata.  Kamata is about 18km from my house, and it took me about 44 minutes.  That's actually pretty good time, but there is usually less traffic at night.  

Here we are at the station.  There were random salaryman who had missed the train sleeping in front of the station on the ground in their business suits, as you will often see in Japan...

Donkihote

There was parking at the train station, but it says maximum of 2 hours.  

I opted to just park right in front of Kaikatsu club.  At least this way if someone triggers the alarm I can go downstairs and check it out right away.  

Below is a video of the ride, but it's not particularly scenic, and the video quality is worse than usual for some reason (dirty lense?)

There were still random people walking around the arcade even after midnight.

After arriving, I rested for a bit and then decided to take a short walk:

Video: Kamata at Night

It started raining around 1am.  

My dinner consisted of a Bento box from 7-11.  

I woke up around 5:00 and headed out around 5:30 despite the fact that it was still raining a bit.  I wasn't sure how far I wanted to go, so I entered Kannnai into the navigation unit.  When I got to Kannnai I decided I wasn't ready for a real stop yet, but I wouldn't mind a five minute break at Starbuck's Coffee.

"Triple Espresso Latte" - Now we're talking!

Here is the video because, why not?  There are rain driops on the lense some of the time, but there isn't much to be done about that.  Enjoy the music.  

Video: Kamata to Kannnai

After my Coffee/Bathroom break, I continued on to Yokohama Serigaya.  I chose this place simply because there is a Kaikatsu club here where I could take a shower while charging my camera batteries.  

Video: Kannnai Starbucks to Yokohama Serigaya Kaikatsu Club

Leomo Activity Data: Link

From here I will continue all the way to Enoshima.  

I should be able to make it there, go around a bit, and escape to safety before the heavy rain starts.

Although there were a lot of large (i.e. 50kph with lots of trucks) roads to get Yokohama Serigaya, much of the trip from there to Enoshima was cycling paths and along the river.

Approaching Enoshima

Closer yet.  Word of advice: Use the road instead of pedestrian bridge if you are on a bike.  

On the island.  Plenty of people despite the impending Typhoon.

Time to replace some of those calories I burned off

At one point on the way there, it started raining enough that I had to hide under a pedestrian bridge for about 15 minutes until the rain died down enough to continue.  

After eating, I walked around Enoshima a bit and took some video, but then upon checking the weather report, decided it was time to get going before the real downpour began.

Yokohama Serigaya to Enoshima

Video: Enoshima Walk

I knew there was no way I would be able to make it back to Tokyo before the rain started, so I looked for a location close to Enoshima.  I actually wouldn't have minded staying on the island itself, and there are hostels, but I didn't have a quick way to check prices and availability.  Kaikatsu club has two locations in Fujisawa.  I chose the one that was a little further away from Enoshima just because it had parking.  As luck would have it, that one does not have rooms (just booths), so I moved again, to the shop near the south entrance of Fujisawa station.  

The downpour started a few minutes after I arrived!  I think it's time for a nap.  

It’s around 1am now, and it's raining super heavily outside.  

Looking at my stats so far, I've traveled 81.7km, whereas the shortest route from Google maps is only 59km.  That's unavoidable when using way stations as Io tend to do, but it's also roughly 20km, or a third more distance.  It also means that if I head straight back in one shot, I should be able to make it home in significantly better time.  

This is especially true because despite me traveling almost 82km, my travel time was only 4 hours and 16 minutes.  Google Maps tends to assume a travel speed of around 16kph, which I have found to be roughly accurate for city travel in the day time due to all of the traffic and traffic lights, but in the countryside or at night time, I can do significantly better than that.  

That's because I tend to push around 30kph on flat land if I'm riding on the road.  This means my average speed is mainly influenced by the amount of time I spend waiting for traffic lights, or riding on the sidewalk (which is of course slower).  

I know some people will say "30kph... I can do 45..."  Remember, I am using an eMTB - this has advanatges of ruggedness, comfort, and stability, but the disadvantage of being heavy!  

This is relevant because I am looking at then I will have a window where the rain stops (or at least slows) for a few hours where I can move.  

At present Google and Yahoo are giving different forecasts, but if Google is correct, then the rain will stop about 2-3pm. (Yahoo says the rain will change from heavy to light around 5pm, and then stop around 9pm).  

Even coming here, the forecast changed hour by hour, so I know better than to put too much stock in the forecasts, even just a few hours ahead of time.  It seems that even with the enormous amoutn of resources being spent on weather forecasting, answering simple questions like "What time will the rain stop today?" or even "Will it rain today?" is just too difficult.  

5am

I just came back from a short walk.  I donned my rain coat and planned to make a run for Family Mart, but the rain was very light, so it turned into a 10 minute walk.  

If the rain were to stay this light, I would have no problem heading home from now.  The problem is of course that the rain could turn heavy at any moment.  I'd day that if I tried to make it all the way home, that risk would be close to 100%.  If I were to just move 30 minutes or so, my chances are better, but is there really meaning in that?

If my odds were 50:50 of making it at least an hour away, I would leave now - but sadly, the typhoon is getting closer, not further away.  

10am

I woke up around 8 and headed to the Dean & Deluca cafe near Fujisawa station for a proper coffee and some breakfast.  

I also found a proper parking spot, and moved my bike from the somewhat suspicious place it had been parked to the new place.  

For those interested, I used the following site to find the spot after random walking and using Google Maps didn't lead to anything useful: https://www.min-chu.jp/top

I feel like it's not raining that hard at the moment, but the forecast is for the rain to increase for the next hour or so, and then drcrease after that.  

The "Schedule" looks like this:

9mm of rain is a lot, so I think it's best to wait until around 13:00, check the actual weather and updated forcast, and act accordingly.  

It's now 13:28, and I have been here for 21 hours, 15 minutes.  

It's good that I got some sleep and had the chance to walk around Fujisawa a bit, but I don't want to spend all day here.  

Even though the forecast said there would be 4mm of rain here from 12:00, I peeked out the window and saw most people not using umbrellas.  I took a walk outside, and it barelyraining at all.  Now it's almost 13:30, and I don't think the rain is going to pick up.  So, I'm going to head out.  I used Google Maps, and plotted a route to Enoshima that took me past major towns on the way to make it easy to stop.  For the way back, I am going to use Navitime to pick the best cycling route, and am not planning to stop.  (I may stop for a bathroom break, drink, at most).

15:23 Unplanned Stop: Yamato Sakuragaoka

So by he time I packed up my stuff, checked out, and actually got going it was basically 14:00.  That was only an hour earlier than the time whn the weather report listed the rain as < 1 mm.  (You can see from above that the forcast shows 15:00 as 0.8mm).  I had been outside from 12 to 13 with basically no rain, and the rain was forecast to decrease after all, so I felt safe in getting underway.  

Sadly, nature was not on my side.  Things started off good, but then I passed this Kaikatsu club, and though to myself "Nice to know that's there, but I don't need to stop!"  I had been riding on the sidewalk for a bit because of cars and puddles, but there were starting to be fewer cars, so I hopped back on the road to pick up some speed.  I felt like the rain was increasing, but I told myself "Ah it's probably just because I am going faster".  It wasn't.  Once I could no longer ignore the rain, I found a sheltered place and stopped to check the situation out.  Sure enough the intensity of the rain had increased quite a bit in the space of just a few minutes.

I faced the choice of soldiering on, or stopping for a bit.  Mainly I didn't want to ruin my sneakers, so I decided to stop here, in Yamato Sakuragaoka.

I planned to make it in one shot, and I ended up stopping less than half way, which is very disappointing, but I suppose I can't control the weather.  

This is still abut 35km from Nakano, with considerable elevation, so still about 2.5 hrs I would say.  

16:45

Looks like the rain has passed.  Time to head out again!

Sometimes you have to face the fact that nature is just against you - or perhaps more realistically, the state of the art in weather prediction is just still really poor.  

After checking the weather outside and on various sites multiple times, I had decided that it was time to depart.  I packed my things and left, only to have it start raining heavily about 30 minutes into my journey.  This time there was no Net Cafe (or any cafe) nearby, so I took shelter under the awning of the closest building and waited for a little over half an hour until the rain let up a bit.  

The place where I waited half an hour for the rain to stop

Video: Stuck in the rain: Sudden downpour

If I had known there was going to be a downpour, I could have just stayed at Yamato Sakuragaoka for another hour instead of standing out in the rain.  

Other than that, the trip home was mostly uneventful, and not particularly fun.  On the way to Enoshima I had used Google Maps' default cycling routing, and for the second half of the trip at least, the routes were a bit scenic.  

For the way home, I used Navitime's default routing, which is designed just to give the quickest route.  Quickest in this case meant mostly following major highways.  Since these were roads with guard rails and speed limits of 50 and 60 kph, it was dark and wet, and I was unfamiliar with these roads, I chose to mainly ride on the "sidewalk".  

I put the term sidewalk in quotes because for much of the way calling it a sidewalk would be generous.  It was more correctly "that semi-paved space behind the guard rail", that was quite narrow, frequently overgrown with vegetation, and sometimes had people and other cyclists.  

Obviously this kept my speed down, and I probably would have been better off with a slightly longer route that was mainly composed of 30-40kph roads I could have actually ridden on safely.  Alas, my priority was just on getting home, so I just dutifully followed the navigation prompts.  Obviouly this makes for a less than beautiful and entertaining video as well - but there were one or two good views along the way.  

Nearest I can figure, these shots were taken near Tōkaichiba in Kanagawa prefecture.  

Other than the 30 minutes of standing around, I made the trip from Yamato Sakuragaoka to Honancho  in one without stopping.  The actual travel time was only about two hours, but the normal waiting at stop lights combined with the above-mentioned pit stop means it actually took me over three and a half hours total time.  

Navigation Data

Interestingly, while I basically left the power assist funtion off pretty much the whole time on the way to Enoshima, I decided to leave it enabled on the way back.  When I arrived home, I still had 22% left. That's Amazing considering that the climb was over 500 meters.  (I used all of the modes, starting out with Eco, and finishing the last half of the trip with the highest power mode).  It wasn't really necessary - but I wish I had brought the Yamaha when I went to Nagano!   

Summary and Conclusion

Obviously, things could have turned out slightly better.  I was cooped up for 2 weeks because of COVID, and there was also a Typhoon last weekend.  This weekend was a three-day weekend, so I wanted to take advantage of that.  

I made the choice of Enoshima just because I wanted somewhere interesting that was within a single day's ride (or so I thought...).  I figured I would head our Friday morning, arive around noon, and spend all afternoon at Enoshima.  I could head back in the evening, perhaps stopping at Yokohama or Kawasaki if I didn't want to make it a single shot.  I even decided to head out Thursday night instead of Friday morning in order to give myself a little bit of a head start.  

I knew heading out that a typhoon was coming, but the weather report was constantly changing, so I had to take a decision to go or not - and I favored action over inaction.  

I don't regret going, but I do regret believing the weather reports.  I undersatand that predicting the weather is an enormously complex task, but questions like "Will it rain today here?" and "How much will it rain in the next three hours?" are among the simplest.   It seems to me that if we can't answer those, then perhaps we should spend our money elsewhere.  

I did genuinely enjoy much of my ride to Enoshima, especially the second half - but I didn't particularly enjoy staying so long in Fujisawa due to the rain, or having to stop twice on my way home.  The trip took longer than I planned, and because of that, cost far more than I intended.  I also didn't have much time to spend at Enoshima itself, because by the time I got there, I knew the heavy rain would start soon, and I had to head to Fujisawa.  

In short, it was an interesting trip, but I would like to go again when the weather is perfect (Cool with no rain), and plot a better, more scenic route.   

I have over 400GB of video data from the trip.  I don't think I am going to edit all of it, because that would take a very long time, and most of it is probably not interesting, even to those people who use my videos for exercise bikes.  If I were looking for videos to exercise to, grainy night footage of the highway and blurry videos of riding in the rain wouldn't be on my top ten list.