I practiced riding my bike to work today.  It's about 10-11 km from my house to work.  Usually I take the train which mostly runs underground so I didn't want my first attempt to ride my bike there to be on a work day. And that turned out to be a good thing.

One of the things about streets in Japan is that they seldom run on a grid system.  It's not uncommon to have an intersection with five streets or intersections at strange angles that make it just a little tough to figure out which street is the continuation of the one you were on.

I studied my route pretty carefully and most of it is along a place that I used to ride to a lot and the last part looked pretty clear. As it turns out, I did get lost.  I missed my landmark and continued going along the street when I should have veered off to the left.  In my defense, the map makes it looks like I can take Sakura Dori all the way to the station I picked as my destination.  In reality, the veering off I should have taken must have a different name.  I ended up being near Tokyo Tower and a Mita branch of Keio university.  That looks like a gorgeous campus.  I would like to look around there sometime if I could.  

I managed to make my way back to the last subway station entrance I know is a useful landmark for me.  I spent some time really looking around at all the signs  on the street and noticed one sign giving the distance to a station further along the train line than my destination.  Finally, I was on the right track.  

When I got to my workplace it had taken me an hour and twenty minutes. That was easily twenty minutes longer than I had planned on for the longest time I expected.  I got on my bike and headed home right after.  I made it back in about 40 minutes which is much closer to what I expected.

The effort was moderate because I ride on the sidewalks which I understand is legal here (unless I'm wrong) and one really can't go that fast when there are pedestrians about.  It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon after three days of rain so a lot of people were out. I've tried riding on the roads before, but it is a really scary proposition.  Streets are really narrow and people sometimes park their cars illegally on busy roads so that a cyclist has to move more into the traffic flow.  It's a pretty narrow fit and quite a few drivers go quite fast and quite close as they pass cyclists.  I've also seen cyclists suddenly enter the traffic flow.  Crazy.  I just don't trust drivers to look out for me if I'm on a bike.

It's good to be home.  I was getting tired at the last ten minutes.  It's so good to be out doing something after I was such a couch slug with my back injury during the holidays.

And that is my bike ride adventure.  I hope I get enough sunny days to ride to work.  I certainly won't be doing that on a rainy day.