I uploaded a map which showed my cycling route in the last entry. Did you notice that a part of the trace dropped on the map. It was due to an outage of the battery of my GPS receiver which was written about in this previous entry. After one hour's interval, I found it stopped working and replaced the battery.
By the way, my house is 50 km away from the starting point of the "Shimanami route" and it has been a problem for me. Surprisingly however, JR (Japan Railway) started a special service once a month. That is, a service for cyclists who live in Matsuyama City. They take up to 30 cyclists to the nearest station of the "Shimanami route" along with their bikes. I applied for this service and could enjoy cycling there.
The picture shows the inside of the train. In Germany, the train which accommodates bikes was made for that purpose, but this car is for just normal use. Each bike is simply fixed by a rubber rope to a handrail. In this way, I was transferred to Hashihama Station which is the nearest JR station to the "Shimanami route".
It took an hour and ten minutes to move the distance of 50 km. This line was single-track. So, our train frequently had to stop at small stations and let other regular trains overtake or oncoming trains to pass by.
(Vocabulary)
handrail 手すり
(Vocabulary from comments)
dividend (株式の) 配当（金）
pay dividends 役に立つ, 実を結ぶ
Nice looking bike! The fenders will pay its dividends each time you ride through water.
Posted by: Shiroi Tora | Jul 10, 2011 at 02:38 PM