4 Pages About My Trip Home...Enjoy:)

Now that I’m back in the USA (the OTC in Chula Vista, CA to be exact), I have a bit of time to sit down and recap my trip home from Ishigaki. If you think I’m just going to write about 15 hours in a plane…you are very wrong!
Sarah Haskins (my teammate from the OTC who also raced) and I were on the same flight from Ishigaki to Tokyo on Monday morning. Upon arrival in Tokyo (around 4pm), we checked into the airport hotel. It was a bit more expensive than we expected…but it was our only option because I don’t think it would have been fun to ride the trains in Tokyo while pulling two HUGE bike boxes!
We wandered the huge market place in the airport and chose a place to eat a late lunch/early dinner. We picked ‘American’ food because we were both craving a big, juicy hamburger:). The hotel had free internet service in the rooms so I plugged in my computer and we both caught up on our emails. In preparation for the next day, we turned off the lights early and caught some zzzzz’s.
At 6am I drug myself from a deep slumber, threw on some running shoes and headed out for another jog around the Tokyo airport. The air was not foggy, but it sure was full of car/truck/van & airplane exhaust! Every 4th person in Tokyo wears a face mask because the air is so polluted. Sarah and I jogged for an easy 30 minutes and then showered and checked out of the hotel. We left our bags with the hotel staff and got directions (and a map…very important) for taking the train into the center of Tokyo.
The train line started/ended right at the airport so getting on was no problem. As we speed into the center of the city, each stop it started to look, and feel, like photos you see of Japanese people jammed so tight on the train as they go to work. We had to switch trains at one station and there were so many people that we had to take a picture:







The second train took us to the center of the city and we got off and walked to the Ginza quarter (kind of like Broadway in NYC). There were shops, cafés, spas, etc. for a half-mile square. I don’t know if it was fortunate or unfortunate that everything wasn’t open yet because we were there so early. It would have been fun to go into the stores, but I’m sure that I saved a bit of money because I couldn’t go in (my shopping buddies will understand:)! This is the Chromo 6 corner…reminded me of a mini NYC Times Square:













We stopped for a bit of breakfast, and a rest for our legs, in a cute café and watched all the people heading to their stores to open for business. At the end of the Ginza area, we followed our trusty map to the closest Japanese-style gardens. It was only 300 yen to enter and walk around…and it was well worth the $2.50 we paid! The first thing we saw was a 300 year old pine tree with every single branch supported by a post:
















It was planted in 1709 (so it’s actually only 297 years old but I won’t tell anyone) by the 6th Tokugawa Tycoon (according to the sign in front of the tree:). After the tree we wandered through the big field of yellow flowers over to the Peony garden. Now this is a flower…they grow as big as your head! I wanted to pick one and take it home…but I decided I might not be able to come back to Japan if I did:







We wandered past the ponds with a tea house in the center, past the duck blinds where the hunters hid, and just saw so many beautiful things. The most amazing part was how this beautiful garden (and many others just like it) can survive in the middle of Tokyo. You could almost forget that you had just walked down a road with skyscrapers on both sides…until you looked up and could see their outlines from the garden (and I mean “outlines” because there is so much pollution in the air everything over ½ mile away is hazy and hard to see). My favorite trees were the cherry trees and we happened to be in the right season: when they are blooming! After watching (and reading) Memoirs of a Geisha, I was very moved by how beautiful these trees can be and found the perfect one to take a photo under:
By this point in time, Sarah’s legs are tired and my feet hurt so we head back to the train station to find our way back to the airport. It was no easier on the return, but we did know to get off the train at the last stop! Just like a week earlier when I arrived in Japan, I bought a ticket on the Friendly Airport Limousine Bus from the domestic to the international airport, about a 90 minute drive. Sarah’s flight departed only 1 hour after mine so we continued to travel together. It was nice to have company while waiting in the long check-in line, while eating lunch, and while waiting for our planes at the gate. She flew back to San Diego through SFO while I switched planes in LAX, so we parted when I boarded my plane.
I waited until most of the passengers had boarded the plane (only because didn’t want to stand up any more) and then handed my ticket to the United guy. When the machine spit my ticket out, the United guy looked at a paper and told me “You’ve been bumped up to BUSINESS”!! I could not believe my luck…the plane was SOOO full that I got moved into the most amazing airline seat I have ever been in (thank goodness I keep track of all my United miles and have a semi-high priority:). The downside to this is: I’m screwed for traveling FOREVER because the upside is: I had the most amazing flight home…great food, constant service, an ‘almost horizontal chair’ when it folded down, and 7 hours of sleep as a result!
Sarah and I met again in San Diego for a van ride back to the OTC. Before I went to Japan, I scheduled a massage when I returned…as I lay on the massage table, I realized it was the perfect ending to my perfect trip to Japan.
I leave you with one last photo from the race (that blur is me on my Blue bike, in my Speedo suit, with my Rudy Project helmet!):