I took a quick overnighter to Lake Tama. It is called Tamako in Japanese. The lake is actually two lakes, Lake Sayama and Lake Tama, created by damming a branch of the Tama River. The lakes are a reservoir for the greater Tokyo area. As such, they are closed to all types of water recreation. No swimming, no fishing and definitely no boating. However, there is a really nice cycling/walking path that starts on Itsukaichi Kaido near Kichijoji and runs for about 10 kilometers before it gets to the lake. This portion of the path is not ideal if you are on a training ride as there are many barrier where the path intersects with the many roads it crosses. However, once you get to the Lake loop you have 10 kilometers of uninterrupted cycling over rolling, wooded hills. There are several points of interest along the route. The first being the dam itself. The dam is of the earthen type so there are no electric turbines or massive concrete structures making it inviting to local wildlife and insects. Below the dam is Sayama Park. More about that later.The path passes by the Seibu Amusement Park, Seibu Baseball Dome and Tamako Shrine. There are several large parks on south side of lakes that offer some off road riding if that’s your jam.
Day 1
I got a late start on the first day but it didn’t really matter so much as I wasn’t really going very far the first day and I knew where I was going. It is only about a 10 kilometer ride from my house to Sayama Park where I intended to camp. I took my time getting there because I was pulling my homemade trailer which I have named the Dragon’ Wagon, and because I made a brief stop to find a geocache. It is the first time I have been on the dam after dark. It was very pleasant and, dare I say, romantic? Being alone, the romance of the location was completely wasted on me. Oh, well. There were more people about than I expected. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. Being fall, the sun sets early and the weather was really nice. I sat at a picnic table in the park below the dam to make my dinner. After eating and cleaning up I went in search of a campsite. Officially, camping is not allowed in the park but no-one in charge was around after dark to chase me away. I camped near the edge of the woods near the train tracks. Even though the trains were still running until about midnight the noise didn’t bother me at all. The 2 or 3 idiots yelling in the wood were annoying though. I have found stealth camping or squatting is not a problem in Japan, especially if you arrive late and leave early. One thing to note is that Japanese senior citizens get up early in the morning to go walking and hiking. They say that people need less sleep when they get older. Since Japan is an aging society there are a lot of senior citizens traipsing through the woods and early hours of the morning. I noticed many years ago, that when I go hiking in the mountains, no matter the time of the day, I always see more elderly people hiking in the woods than young people. The only downside of the day, and in fact, the whole trip was that my bike fell over at the campsite breaking my smartphone holder.
My multifunction smartphone holder, headlight and speaker has been a very disappointing piece of equipment. This is the second one. The web site sent me a replacement after I complained about shoddy design. They asked me if I wanted a refund or a replacement. I took a replacement but I should have taken the refund. I will post a review of it soon.
The Draggin’ Wagon
During a period of unemployment a few years ago, I made wooden trailer to pull behind my bicycle. I made it more out of need for something to do than the need for a trailer. I use it occasionally for grocery shopping, to go to my guitar lesson and a few times for laundry runs. It is almost entirely made from wood. The box sits on a pair of mountain bike wheels from my son’s old bicycle. The wheels are mounted onto the box frame by metal dropouts I made from some brackets I got at the local home center. The tongue of the trailer is a piece of PVC pipe over a piece of wood. There is a golf ball sized hole over in the pipe the fits on the hitch. The hitch is a piece of 2×4 that I mounted to my rack with some brackets and wing nuts. The ball of the hitch is a golf ball with bolt through the middle to fixed it to the 2×4. I works pretty much like a ball hitch on a car or truck. Finally, I have painted it up in blood red with hot rod flames yellow. It tends to turn heads when I go by. I get a lot of exclamation and praise from small boys. The trailer is really handy for hauling heavy loads. I have put 30 plus kilos of groceries (includes two 10 kilo bags of rice) I have hauled we laundry to the laundromat and used it to bring home a load of pavement tiles from the home center. It is a handy thing to have but I am not sure I would trust it over a really long bike trip.
Day 2
The weather was perfect for cycling. Not too hot, not too cold. I followed the bike path around Lake Tama. This bike path is one of my favorite places to ride. On one side you have the woods that surround Lake Tama and Lake Sayama like a green bathrobe and on the side of the path you have a sparsely travelled road (by Tokyo standards) that cuts through intermittent parks, woodlands and an occasional manmade structure like a shrine or baseball stadium. The trail is almost always in the shade and it has the right amount of up and down to make is a fun ride without being too strenuous. I hid some geocaches to replace ones that had disappeared and checked on others that I had placed. All the while, the Draggin’ Wagon was tracking along nicely behind me.
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