WhiteGiant
Maximum Pace
- Nov 4, 2006
- 1,233
- 395
Last night, a few weeks ago, my friend Simon and I decided to go out on an all-night bender! We rode from Kanamachi, in Tokyo’s north-east section, and decided to do a semi-nostalgic ride to Odaiba – where we’d first ridden to after I’d bought my original $150 MTB from Cost-Co.
Straight down Meiji-dori, and then after turning right onto Wangan-doro we found ourselves in Ariake; on the Odaiba man-made island, where we stopped for aahh…. refreshments! We both felt we were riding really well, with ave.speeds of 36km/h on some of the roads.
It was now about 2:30am, and with a few “refreshments” under our belts, I came up with the idea of crossing the “Rainbow-Bridge” at night while the traffic was light – From Odaiba to Shibaura-futo.
There has been talk amongst some of our members about doing certain “bridge” or “tunnel” rides late at night or early in the morning, when there is little traffic. But so far, none of us had attempted such a proposition.
As the instigator, I take full responsibility, and it took me about… ooohh, 15 minutes to convince Simon that, “It just has to be done mate!”… while he vehemently argued that, “we’re gonna get busted dude!” Anyway we set off at about 3am to find the start of the road across the bridge. Then things went a little … iffy…
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As we crossed through the first toll-gate barrier (at about 35km/h), we could hear the guy there shouting at us, but I was sure that if we just “keep to the left”, all would be fine.
There is a long roll up from there, but we just kept pounding the pedals to give us as much time as possible – we were going up the bridge at over 20km/h, and we thought we had it all sorted….
About 300m from the top (middle) of the bridge is quite a wide steel-grate section that we assumed was only to prevent cracks in the bridge when it sways due to the wind – we have, all of us, ridden over many similar obstacles without incident.
This one however, is different! It seems that there are bicycle-specific tyre-spikes built into them. We both saw it coming up, and did our best to bunny-hop over it. But on an up-hill climb, lifting that rear tyre is not so easy.
Full Blow-outS (plural)!
Simon came past me and continued for another 30m before he too had to come to a stop.
We had both blown out our back tyres. We knew that only had a several-minute window of opportunity before the police came, so we settled into “quick-punc-fix-mode”. About 5 minutes later, an emergency-response / maintenance truck turned up and started putting down flairs on the road to avert traffic, just as Simon & I were getting our spare tubes in. The police were only minutes away…
Tactics:
Both myself and Simon were a little bit worried about getting arrested big time in a foreign country (and me, just one week from my wedding), so we “discussed” how we might make it out intact. From the experiences we’ve all had – Thanks to Philip for his “insurance” write-up – and general knowledge gained from other crazy stuff that’s happened, both Simon & I decided that we would have to “play the dumb, ignorant fool gaijin” if we were to make it out alive!
It is actually very difficult for me sometimes to pretend that I don’t speak the language, and both Simon & I were very close to slipping a few times – Particularly in the Patrol-Car, with the driver whining about how “bicycles are illegal on highways…” and I had to pretend I had no idea what the guy was saying.
Needless to say, the cops did eventually turn up. Our bikes were put onto the service-truck, and the two of us had to ride in the back of the patrol-car to Hinode!
In that sense, we can both say that we did in fact make it to the other side of the bridge… without either of us commenting on what that loud-mouthed-prick with a gun in the driver’s seat was complaining about.
All’s well that ends well!
The police dropped us off in Hinode, and after taking our names & serial numbers, they let us go. Soon after that, the truck with our bikes showed up. We were just a stone’s-throw from Shinbashi, so we stopped in at another convenience-store for another “refreshment”. It was now about 4:30am.
We rode home our separate ways from there, and that was that!
T & S
BTW: Simon looked at his punctured tube afterwards, and found not one, but 2 identical slits on either side. They are some heavy duty spikes!
If I have any advice at all, when trying a similar ride, stop first! And carry your bike over those steel-grates.
Pic 1: Simon fixing his puncture 1/3 of the way across Rainbow bridge.
Pic 2: Simon with the nicer of the two officers (getting let go in Hinode).
Straight down Meiji-dori, and then after turning right onto Wangan-doro we found ourselves in Ariake; on the Odaiba man-made island, where we stopped for aahh…. refreshments! We both felt we were riding really well, with ave.speeds of 36km/h on some of the roads.
It was now about 2:30am, and with a few “refreshments” under our belts, I came up with the idea of crossing the “Rainbow-Bridge” at night while the traffic was light – From Odaiba to Shibaura-futo.
There has been talk amongst some of our members about doing certain “bridge” or “tunnel” rides late at night or early in the morning, when there is little traffic. But so far, none of us had attempted such a proposition.
As the instigator, I take full responsibility, and it took me about… ooohh, 15 minutes to convince Simon that, “It just has to be done mate!”… while he vehemently argued that, “we’re gonna get busted dude!” Anyway we set off at about 3am to find the start of the road across the bridge. Then things went a little … iffy…
----------------------------------
As we crossed through the first toll-gate barrier (at about 35km/h), we could hear the guy there shouting at us, but I was sure that if we just “keep to the left”, all would be fine.
There is a long roll up from there, but we just kept pounding the pedals to give us as much time as possible – we were going up the bridge at over 20km/h, and we thought we had it all sorted….
About 300m from the top (middle) of the bridge is quite a wide steel-grate section that we assumed was only to prevent cracks in the bridge when it sways due to the wind – we have, all of us, ridden over many similar obstacles without incident.
This one however, is different! It seems that there are bicycle-specific tyre-spikes built into them. We both saw it coming up, and did our best to bunny-hop over it. But on an up-hill climb, lifting that rear tyre is not so easy.
Full Blow-outS (plural)!
Simon came past me and continued for another 30m before he too had to come to a stop.
We had both blown out our back tyres. We knew that only had a several-minute window of opportunity before the police came, so we settled into “quick-punc-fix-mode”. About 5 minutes later, an emergency-response / maintenance truck turned up and started putting down flairs on the road to avert traffic, just as Simon & I were getting our spare tubes in. The police were only minutes away…
Tactics:
Both myself and Simon were a little bit worried about getting arrested big time in a foreign country (and me, just one week from my wedding), so we “discussed” how we might make it out intact. From the experiences we’ve all had – Thanks to Philip for his “insurance” write-up – and general knowledge gained from other crazy stuff that’s happened, both Simon & I decided that we would have to “play the dumb, ignorant fool gaijin” if we were to make it out alive!
It is actually very difficult for me sometimes to pretend that I don’t speak the language, and both Simon & I were very close to slipping a few times – Particularly in the Patrol-Car, with the driver whining about how “bicycles are illegal on highways…” and I had to pretend I had no idea what the guy was saying.
Needless to say, the cops did eventually turn up. Our bikes were put onto the service-truck, and the two of us had to ride in the back of the patrol-car to Hinode!
In that sense, we can both say that we did in fact make it to the other side of the bridge… without either of us commenting on what that loud-mouthed-prick with a gun in the driver’s seat was complaining about.
All’s well that ends well!
The police dropped us off in Hinode, and after taking our names & serial numbers, they let us go. Soon after that, the truck with our bikes showed up. We were just a stone’s-throw from Shinbashi, so we stopped in at another convenience-store for another “refreshment”. It was now about 4:30am.
We rode home our separate ways from there, and that was that!
T & S
BTW: Simon looked at his punctured tube afterwards, and found not one, but 2 identical slits on either side. They are some heavy duty spikes!
If I have any advice at all, when trying a similar ride, stop first! And carry your bike over those steel-grates.
Pic 1: Simon fixing his puncture 1/3 of the way across Rainbow bridge.
Pic 2: Simon with the nicer of the two officers (getting let go in Hinode).
