Getting The Nimbus

May 1, 2023

I take the Shinkansen most of the way down to the port warehouse where the bike awaits, spend an hour assembling everything and off I go on Tokyo’s elevated  toll roads towards Kawaguchi, to store the bike until Axel arrives and we set off. The first 22 kilometers go well, after which the bike calls it quits, thankfully on a stretch where a ramp doesn't get me stuck in a place with no shoulders.

To make along story short, it takes a combined two flatbed trucks, eight guys from the highway patrol and emergency road service to get me to my destination. Add to this that my phone is dying, traffic noise and emergency service telephone operators who cannot speak English, and a brief rainstorm, so the whole ordeal takes seven hours, before I can park the bike near Andreas' workshop. Without his efforts on the phone I'd probably still be stuck out there. Am also glad that the roadside assistance insurance went into effect about 45 minutes before this happened.

I'm so knackered that I take the train 6-7 stops in the wrong direction before noticing. Somewhere around midnight the Tokyo transit system turns into a pumpkin, so part of the trip to my hotel is by taxi.

Emergency crew with cones and flares.

Highway Patrol while it was still light.
They spent at least two hours dealing with this,
 but I'm still baffled by the questions they asked 
and by how long each little step in 
the process took. 

Pity the video won't load, because the 
siren blaring is really neat.

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