Candy Cranks

Epic!!!!

Would love to do it again. Took the ferry at Changi Point Ferry Terminal. Theres no fix schedule as and when the bump boat fill with 12pax on weekdays or 13 on weekends it departs. $9SGD per pax and $2 for your bike(1 way). Once arrive at Tg. Pengelih we start riding for 17 km to Sungei Rengit. Stop for light breakfast then off we go enjoying the scenic landscape the state of Johor got to offer. Hills that kills begin after 15kms from Sg. Rengit. Fighting them hills with strong on shore monsoon wind from the North wasn’t easy. Against the strong wind going 30km/hr feels like 15km/hr. After 55km we got to Desaru. Settle in at the Desaru Holiday Chalet. Big family size chalet cost 500RM that fit 11 of us for a night. A dip in the pool to ease our muscle, quick nap then off for a short night ride to dinner at a near by small town call Bandar Penawar. We had the best authentic thai seafood at UBC restaurant. Next morning we prepare to battle the hills again.Thanks to Acit, Idris, Faizal, Luthfi, David, Minzi, Dan, Manda, Fab & Lyana.. great ride and we had a awesome weekend.

Pictures courtesy of Wolfywoot and The Killer Gerbil.

On May 2nd and 3rd, we had the Love Wheels Nagoya Calendar Girls Ride to Kyoto city from Nagoya. It’s only 45 minutes on the Bullet train, but we rode 180km for 15 hours in one day. We got started pretty early 5:00am, expected to get into trouble in case. We’ve got road bike, MTB, single-speed, city-bike and I was the only one got on a fixed gear bike!:D We all girls were not experts in long distance ride and had no idea what awaited us…

We got a special guest to join this ride, Jess from Candy Cranks author in Tokyo! We were getting pumped at Japanese bar for the long distance ride next day.

Started 5:00am. We got 8 girls, 2 body gurards and 3 Circles crew (supported us until their bike shop opens at noon.)

Thanks Kinu (Miss April) and KAz (Miss February) for organizing the Kyoto ride!

KAz made this cog with acrylic resin for everyone as a good-luck charm for the riding.

Crossing the Kiso River.

Going up the hills.

eeeeeeep! hurts my ***** so bad!! Circles crew adjusted my saddle lower.

Got flat…  Miss April just learned how to repair the tire at Circles yesterday, so she DID IT!!

Accident again… Miss February tried hard to fix it.

Hurts my foot…

Got lost… (searching the route on the i-phone & map)

Jess on the GPS.

26 km more to Kyoto city…

Arrived guest house at 9:00pm

Kampaaaaaai★ This is the greatest time at the long ride:)

I am so HAPPY that we all made it 180 km riding with no injury!! One of the girls were almost retired. There were so many dramas we made. It was great to see the Love Wheel Nagoya Calendar Girls are patient and tough.

This is the longest riding in one day.  I am glad that I made it with my fixed gear so I feel like I can go anywhere I want from now on, but I still have sore my legs now…

More pics HERE

So I’ve been working late lately and haven’t been up to much, but I did take the time to take a great ride up to north Toronto one night after work to check out this touring frame. Not only was the ride up there great, it was a beautiful night, and I got the frame! My size (52cm hard to find used) and an actual touring frame! Yippee! Come on bike camping all summer! Now to build it up. I have most of the parts, but will need new brakes… any suggestions on good ones to get?

plus check out this sticker

Mick from ifeellikealittlekid has been riding through South America and it looks like he’s been having an amazing time.

A small selection of some of the great pics Mick has taken so far.

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

Argentina

Chile

Salar De Uyuni, Bolivia

Death Rd, Bolivia

Ecuador

Looks incredible Mick! So jealous See more of his travels here.

Meet The Mittens, Clemence, Elvire, Victoria, Sylvie -  four fun loving French girls living and cycling in and around Paris. They’ll soon be blogging for Candy Cranks, so for those of you who don’t speak French (Me!) You’ll be able to follow their antics in English on right here.

Photos by Paul Hackmann.

We met a few cyclo tourists when travelling around Japan, all of them locals riding around and exploring their own country, and why not, it’s so beautiful. This is Kitani we met him as he was about to embark on a 9 day tour around part of Shikoku. I’m not sure what type of bike this is, he told us it’s British made, and not satisfied with the colour, he had it gold plated! He could probably do with some of these… Phil woods gold plated hubs.

I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos from the Shikoku island tour if you fancy seeing a few more. Check ‘em out here.

After completing our tour of Shikoku, we decided to do the island hop, which starts at Imabari and ends at Onomichi. Its an 80km stretch that spans across 8 islands and seven bridges. It has some pretty spectacular scenery with parts of the islands looking almost tropical and other parts looking totally industrialised with shipping ports and metal work factories.


We planned on catching a ferry back from Onomichi to Imbari but we found out on arrival there were no ferries, so we had to ride back again. We camped for the night and set out again the next morning, it turned out to be quite a day.

Going back across the islands was lovely, we had some great food along the way. 80km into a nasty headwind we then had another 40km to the port of Sanjoi to get the ferry to Osaka. We got lost and arrived late and had to wait 5 1/2 hours to get on the next ferry which left at 10pm, then it was a 6 hour ferry ride. At this point we had run out of money and all the foreign ATM banks were closed. Arrived at Osaka and tried to find an open post office to get some money out, it was too early at 6am so we decided to ride straight onto Nara through 60km of full on traffic. I was so over it at this point. I hadnt slept in 24 hours, hadnt showered for 3 days, was covered in road grime, dirt and god knows what else, was hungry and tired and all I wanted to do was sleep. Tarn went off to go and find some fruit for me, he came back with this….

I didnt have the stomach to even taste it, it smelled like the strongest smelling banana youve ever come across in your life. Tarn had a few bites and then tossed it, only to come out with a vegetable Kit Kat!!! I stupidly tasted that one and regreted it immediately.

Then we arrived at Nara, found a hotel and it was like heaven! We stayed at a traditional ryokan with a zen garden running through the middle of it, hot shower food and sleep then I was ready for the deer. Nara has a ginormous park that is home to over 1000 deer that live and roam freely. I always get quite excited by deers so I was off to go and pat them and make like Snow White. There they were, looking all doe eyed and innocent, and as I soon found out, absolutely not to be trusted. I went and bought them some deer biscuits so I could lure them over and pat their cute little heads, unfortunately this was not to be the case. No sooner had I had the biscuits in hand than I was head butted in the arse by a rather lively male. I had thought it was cruel that they had chopped all their antlers off, but I could now see why. I spun around only to be head butted again by said deer. They were coverging on all sides, I felt like I was in Night of the Zombie Deer, I ended up throwing the biscuits at them and legging it, so much for bloody Bambi.

After a couple of days rest we decided to get the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) to Tokyo. It was a choice bewteen an 18 hour ferry ride from Shikoku to Tokyo, or a 2.5 hour ride from Nara to Tokyo, no choice really! It was awesome, it travels up to 300kmph, it’s quite disconcerting going that fast whilst being on land. The only thing I can compare it to is travelling down Foveaux St trying to catch Em and Jay at the last Alleycat ride I was in (hehe). The timing of the trains is unreal, you could set your watch to it, we left and arrived to the minute exactley as scheduled.

Arriving in Central Tokyo Station was a complete jolt to the system. Tarn had to build the bike back up in the middle of the mayhem while I rung around trying to find a hotel. I thought we were going to have to set up camp in the Imperial Gardens after 12 no more rooms available calls. We finally found one and then got lost several times trying to find our way there. Riding through Tokyo is a bit like being in The Fifth Element, added to that is Tarn who navigates through traffic like a maniac. I feel like Im strapped to one of those crazy NYC messengers and I cant get off the ride! I do love Tokyo, its sensory overload from every angle. We re going to check out the CWMC tommorrow, im really looking forward to it!

Hello again! Its been another week since my last post, I cant believe how quickly the time is going. Tarn and I have left the northern part of Shikoku following the Iya Valley, also known as The Tibet of Japan, with its lush green forests, vine bridges, emerald green rivers and waterfalls. We hit the southern most tip of the island and have been riding along the coast which is also beautiful, rocky and alot cooler than the mountains. We have been travelling through alot of rice fields, cute fishing villages and passing some amazing old temples and shrines.

There is 88 shrines on the island, its not unusual to see pilgrams walking around the island to visit them one by one. The best thing about travelling along the coast is getting to go for a swim after a long days ride, its like heaven!

We camped at a cute little surfing beach and went for a walk when we discovered Dr Evils secret hideaway! It doubled as an aquarium so we went in and checked it out, was so cool, proper 1960s decor, felt like I was in a Bond movie.

The one thing Ive noticed about Japan is the amazing array of creatures, spiders and flying insects they have,  I am forever noticing new ones that look even cooler than the last one. I can see where Japanese animators get their inspiration from, check this guy out, he looks like he should be starring in a Batman movie.

We ve had a couple of hiccups with The Wasp (the tandem) We had out first stack the other day, nothing major, we got caught in a rut on the road which gave us death wobbles and tipped the bike over, I came off, unfortunately my foot didnt. Aggrevated an old ankle injury but nothing too major. We then travelled 30km up a mountain pass that turned out to be the wrong road, it was a loggers track that turned totally rocky so we have no alternative but to go back. As we were coming down the mountain we realised the back brake was gone. Some oil from the Rohloff had leaked onto the brake and it was not gripping at all. Then the front brakes started to cook and were also slowly failing. I started to get somewhat nervous as Tarn was giving me instructions on how to put my feet down in case of an emergency. HUH?!!! My feet dont touch the ground!!! We were picking up speed and clocked about 62kph when we came to a flattened out section on the descent, luckily we were able to slow down enough to stop. We had to wait for the brakes to cool down and then made a very slow and careful trip down the rest of the pass. The only other section of the ride that has been particularly hairy was going through a tunnel that was 2km long. Parts of it was so dark I couldnt see my hand in front of my face, it was literally pitch black until a truck or car went past and lit the way. I dont know what was freakier, not being able to see or failing brakes.

The day wasnt all bad, we did have lunch at a great onimiyaki restaurant. (essentially you have a grill in the middle of the table and you are given a dish of fresh food that you cook yourself.) We had no idea what we were doing so the super cool owner cooked it for us. He then showed us his jellyfish in a jar!

For 500 yen you can have a jar of jellyfish, oh if only I could get them through customs! We then passed a junior school that was having its annual Sumo Championships, how cool! Even the girls got to have a go, ( they have special uniforms made ). We hung out there and talked to some of the teachers, found out about the rules of the game.

We had an interesting end to the day, we were trying to find a camp site and got told it was on top of the mountain. We rode 300 metres up on a 3.5km long road, ( I thought Bondi hills were bad) hairpin turns the whole way, arrived at the top to discover no camp site. We decided to camp in amongst some tall trees and got woken at 4am to the sound of nut bombs being dropped on our tent. We couldnt see what sort of creature was above us ripping nuts of the trees and throwing the scraps on us, so Tarn decided to shine the torch into the trees to have a look. We still couldnt see what it was, but lets just say it didnt appreciate the light. If it could speak English Im sure it would have made a sailor blush, it went off its head! Screeching and squawking, we got back in our tent and turned the torch off.

We dont have much time left on the island unfortuantely, we re making our way to the northern tip on the western side tommorrow to leave to another island, we havent decided where yet. Ill be sad to leave, I love it here. My only regret is not being able to speak Japanese, we have had so many locals approach us for a chat and Ive always  felt so dissapointed at not being able to converse with them. Im going to miss our morning ritual of packing up camp and then making our way to the nearest village to ride around until we find the bakery. Im addicted to their happy face buns that have chocolate or custard in them, totally unhealthy but totally worth it!
Sayornara for now!

I love Japan! Wow, what a place! Its been almost a week since Tarn and I left for our 4 week cycle tour and its been truly amazing. The country side itself is not only beautiful, so are the Japanese people. They are so friendly and hospitible.

We started out trip in Osaka, made our way to Kobe and then caught the ferry across to Takamastsu on the island of Shinkoku to start out trip. Day 1, about 20km of flat road out of the city, followed by beautiful mountains that seemed to be getting closer and closer until hello 1200ft mountain pass. The temp was 38 degrees celcius, humidity was high and the sun was scorching, I thought Tarn was going to have to pour me into a bottle and stick me into a bottle cage. But we made it, and what must go up, must came down, and down we came. All 200kg of us came flying down the mountain, talk about bullet train!

A couple of hours riding and then it started to rain, and rain, 4 hours of tropical downpour before the weirdest thing happened. All these little cute crabs starting coming out of the forest. Miles away from the sea in every direction, and there were crabs on the road! Bizarre. So then we set up camp on the edge of a river, the sun came up and all was good with the world again.

The Wasp (The tandem) is doing well, no problems to report apart from some squeaky brakes. Been getting plenty attention from the locals and had many conversations using hand gestures and head nodding.

We re leaving tommorrow for the south western part of the island, so far we ve been from the top down to the southern most town of Kochi. Given the lack of internet cafes I ve come across so far, it may be a while before I can post again. Sayornara for now!