Bike Notes

Here’s a quick overview of what I’ve learned so far about bringing my bike over to Japan and well, other mishaps.

I knew that to travel on a train in Japan with your bike, you need to put it in a bike bag. In Japan, they’re called Rinko bags and are made of a light material that squishes up into a compact package. Since I didn’t have time to order a bag straight from Japan, nor did I know the right size to get, I purchased a standard type of bike bag off Amazon.

It got the job done on the trip from Tokyo to Kyoto, but was way too bulky and heavy to take along on any rides. Also, I had to take the handlebars off to make the bike fit in the bag, which took me forever to put back on.

The Rinko bag, on the other hand, is quite brilliant. I only have to take off the front wheel. Propped up in the back of a train car it kind of looks like a large double bass.

I’m by no means an expert at bike mechanics and the bike I’m riding is way different than the bikes I tried to work on when I was teenager, eagerly inspired by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

In my case, I failed to grasp anything zen about bike maintenance and each session usually ended in either tears of frustration or tools thrown about in the yard.

Before packing up my bike, I meant to heed all kinds of internet wisdom and practice disassembling my bike a couple of times prior to imminent departure. This was not to be, for various reasons.

In the afernoon before leaving I was unable to get the pedals off and frantically got my bike to the friendly guys at West Point Cycle on Main Street who helped me out. At around 11pm before having to catch a 7am flight the following day, I couldn’t figure out how to get the seat off.

In the end, all was well, and despite the man at YVR security undoing all the red Tuck tape holding the box together and retaping it with flimsier packing tape, the bike made it safely to Toyko.

Here’s a link to the site which spawned the idea of biking in Japan in the first place.