I picked up the keys to the house today and took a few pics. Here’s the new home:

On Veteran’s Day I raced in the 50km Senior division of the Tour de Okinawa. The tour is Japan’s longest one day road race and is UCI 2.1 rated for the pro circuit. That means it’s an international pro level road race, but not a necessarily the top level. There were twenty teams of five men each in the 200km International division. That was the professional race. Then there was 200, 120, 85, & 50 km divisions for the amateurs. Along with these races there were a number of ‘tours’ which ranged from 25k to 350k over two days. All told there were in excess of 3000 bicyclists involved in this event.

 

In my race, there were about 350 racers. That’s an enormous number of bicycles to have in one race. Also, easily 300 of those were very inexperienced riders in terms of racing etiquette. Considering the broken bones I’ve had due to mis-haps in road races, I was very concerned about safety in a race this large. I’ve been in races wtih 50 riders that felt very unsafe (when restricted to just one lane of the road). Fortunately our race had the ENTIRE road closed to traffic and we always had at least two lanes to work with. This was very cool. I’ve never had so much space to use. The best part was that the pack stayed to the left except to pass. Unlike a race back home, you just needed to stay near the right side and wait for someone to drag you up toward the front on the right. There was always space available there. However, there also were a large number (as I suspected) of riders who didn’t know common courtesy while in a race and would haphazardly jump left and right without warning. I saw a guy early on get tangled right in front of me only to just barely save it and continue. I would’ve run right over him if he went down. I also heard a wreck happen just behind me that involved several bicycles. There’s nothing quite as evil sounding as bicycles and riders hitting the ground in mass quantity. If you’ve ever heard it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I also head lots and lots of "zing zing zing" sounds of tires rubbing together. Also a very nasty sound.

 

I had ridden the course several times prior to the race and had a tactic worked out. The race is 32 miles, the first 11 were dead pan flat, then a 300 ft climb followed by a fast descent into another 250 ft climb, followed by 5 miles of rollers. Then a desicive short steep 150 ft climb at 22 miles followed by 6 miles of flat, then one more climb with about 5 miles to the finish. I had decided to jump on any breakaways that formed on any climb. There were about six of us that broke clear on the first climb at mile 11 and I thought we had it made. It was a HUGE gap. However, the fast descent was into a stiff wind and the pack (all 344 of them!) swallowed us near the bottom. I knew the wind would be a factor the whole way so when two men broke on the next climb I decided to let them go because I figured the pack would swallow them up again. That was a mistake because in the 5 miles of rollers with the twists and turns, they stayed invisible and the pack didn’t chase. Those two ended up winning by about  1 minute and 40 seconds and the next 53 riders rolled across the line in a span of 5 seconds from the third place guy to the 55th placed guy. That pack moved so slowly during the last 12 miles that I could have tried soloing and might have stayed clear. It was surprising how slow they went.

 

I jumped on the last hill with five miles to go which was my original plan if I was still with a group at that point. I had no interest in participating in a 53 man sprint. Unfortunately as I rode clear of the field up that climb, both legs cramped up severely and I was done. I stayed with the pack and as we rounded the final corner with 1000 meters to go, I led out the sprint knowing I’d get eaten up, but did it anyway because it was the safest place to be. As the field started coming around me, I just tried stay clear of accidents and looked for open space in case someone went down. By the time we crossed the line, I was 51st of those 53 riders.

 

Turns out that the guy who won (and who I had legs to go with if I would’ve) is a professional Keiren racer from Tokyo. Keiren  is an extreme form of track racing here that is one of only three sports that japanese can legally gamble on. I don’t mind being beat by him, but I wish I had a team to work with. A well organized break could have smoked the field.

 

I led over all the major climbs except the first one where I had to work my way up from about 100 riders back, so I had good climbing legs compared the field. Next year I’l ride the 85k race which goes over three significant (1200 ft or more) climbs. I think my odds are better in a race with more climbing. Overall, I had a lot of fun and enjoyed talking with the few Americans that were in the race. The Okinawans do a fantastic job of organizing the race. We had to arrive by 6:30 AM and ride from the parking area to the race in pre-dawn darkness and then we staged amongst four other fields. The races started five minutes apart and each field had 250 – 350 riders in it. It should’ve been chaos, but it worked out very well. Here is my finish amongst the field (this page may look funny if you don’t have Japanese fonts installed for your browser). Here’s a picture after the event was over. I had hoped to get one in my Arlberg kit, but didn’t have my camera with me at the time:

 

They gave us a nice embroidered hat (I’m wearing it in the pic), a water bottle, lunch, and a post race massage. The race was also chipped for accurate results. Very cool experience overall.

 

Now I take a break (I’ve been training for about 14 straight months) and will start training for a triathlon in April. I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

I got a new car. It is a Toyota Ractis. It’s a very cool car and they should sell them in the states. It is set up so that the rear seats disappear when you fold them down and you have enough space to put three or four bikes in the back without taking the front wheel off. And yet this car is still way smaller than you typical compact car you’d see in the states. It has (like virtually all newer cars in Japan) an amazing navigation system built into it. Here in Okinawa it’s not as bad as Tokyo, but you still can take advantage of it. You see, the streets don’t really have addresses or follow any organized format. I’ve read that some streets in Tokyo don’t even have names. Addresses look like this: 113-3-5. The first number indicates section, the next number indicates block or street, and the final number is the building number on that block or street. Needless to say, a good navigation system is great. Mine will show you exactly which lane you should be in and what each lane allows you to do well before you get to it. You can pull up any business that you want and it will show you where it is or how to get there. (ie, show me all the A & W’s on the island and it will populate the map with little rootbeers to show you the locations). Or you can just tell it to show me the closest food (or the closest McDonald’s). Interestingly, when I drive on base, it shows just blank space. I guess they weren’t allowed to put the base streets into it; even though 100s if not 1000s of Japanese nationals are on the bases all the time and could utilize the nav system.

 

The one big drawback….is that it’s all in Japanese. She tells you what to do, in Japanese. the instructions, help menus, business listing, etc are all in Japanese. It has voice recognition –which will be great once I learn Japanese. So, I spent about 3 hours pushing buttons and trying things and I now know the japanese symbols for "delete, Are you sure? Yes? No?" I’ve got a few thousand more to learn.

 

Oh yeah, it plays DVDs and has 30 gigs of storage for MP3s. Any CD put in it is just like putting into iTunes. It gets the name of the CD and the tracks and copies the music —all in ENGLISH! Too bad the menus to get to it to play it again are in Japanese…

 

I was offered a house on base and I pick up my keys tomorrow. I finally get to leave the hotel! The house is in a great location so we may stay there a while if we like it. I’m sure we’ll eventually move off base, but we’ll see how it goes.

 

Gina comes in a little over two weeks. It’s been a long three months without her.

 

Tomorrow my band is doing a fundraiser by playing college fightsongs for a couple of offices on base. For $50, we come to anyone’s place of business and play their fightsong for them. I stole this idea from my good friend Stuart Welsh who teaches in Oregon and does this for the Civil War game ( I think that’s what they call the Ducks &  Beavers game). It’s a great idea that I hope expands next year.

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Last night Okiniwa hosted one of two games for the Far East Football play offs. You see, sports are a little different when most of the schools are separated by huge distances over the Pacific Ocean. It’s similar to sports in Alaska where the teams have to fly to get to their games because there are no other schools in their local area. On Okinawa, we have two American schools; Kadena and Kubasaki. During the course of the football "season", they play two official games that count. In between these games, they play every Friday in some unofficial scrimmages against one another. If, after the two official games, the teams are tied, they will play a tie breaker. The winner qualifies for the Far East Tournament. This tournament is hosted in various locations in the region each year and the team is flown to that location for the first round of the play offs. Four teams make it to the play offs so there are only two rounds of play offs total; the semi-finals and the finals. We got lucky this year in that Okinawa was a host site and our team beat Kubasaki to qualify for the play offs. So, we played Soul American HS last night and my band got to play. If game would’ve been in Japan, Korea, or Guam, then we (the band) wouldn’t have been able to play.

 

Interestingly, the cheerleaders where absent becuase there is a rule that stipulates that if your school is  in the play offs and also a host site, you may not have cheerleaders present because that would constitue a ‘home field’ advantage in what is otherwise considered a ‘neutral’ site. Apparently no such rule exists for bands which seems odd to me because having a band rip out songs throughout the game seems like a home field advantage as well. My principal is going to check on it to be sure, but we won the game and at this point I anticipate playing for the championship game next Saturday as we are the host for that game as well.

 

So, we have 6 – 8 high schools in the Far East region and a four team tournament that crowns the Far East Champions. It must be tough for Guam. They only play themselves I would imagine since there is no other DoDDS HS in Guam. Perhaps there is a non DoDDS school there that plays football since it is an American territory. Here in Okinawa, the locals don’t play football, so our team only plays the other DoDDS school However, the Okininawan schools do play virtually all the other sports we play so we have many games and matches against them in Cross Country, Tennis, Volleyball, Baseball, etc.

 

It’s a far cry from your typical football league for sure…

Eisa performer who is also in my band & piano classes		Daiko drum in Eisa group

It would appear that I’ve been delinquent in my blog lately. I’ve had plenty to write about, but I just haven’t had the energy. About two or threes days after recovering from that nasty flu, I caught a cold. It hasn’t been to bad, but it’s lasted eight days now and it’s driving me crazy. Hopefully it’ll be better tomorrow. Today was the last day of the quarter for the students and tomorrow is a teacher work day to get grades done. I am pretty much done with my grades so I’m going to work on getting my curriculum where it ought to be.

 

10 days until the Tour of Okinawa. There are 300 riders in my race, and my race is the fourth wave of the morning. We are separated by five minutes at the start and there are 100 – 300 riders in each wave with several more waves behind us. It’ll be a mess of 2000 or so bike riders lined up. Getting close enough to the front to be competitive will be impossible. This is a race more like Bloomsday that a regular bike race. I think I’ll be very competitive, but not if it takes me five minutes just to get to the start line. C’est la vie.

 

I have two new photo albums. One shows a couple of shots of the fake food restaurants put outside their doors to entice the customers in. It’s pretty funny because it is obviously fake and doesn’t stimulate my appetite at all, but some one spent a lot of time to make it look accurate.

 

The other album is a couple of pictures of Eisa performers. Check out the history of Eisa on the island, it’s quite interesting. As the phot caption says, one of the pictures is of a student of mine. She’s a senior in the band and also is in my piano class. Check out some video of the performance:

 

 

    

 

These are the drums that I hear sometimes as Eisa groups gather to practice near my hotel. They make the walls shake…even though they are concrete and I’m five storys up. They sometimes go until 10:30 at night.

Fake display food outside a restaurant		More fake display food