BMW Motorrad Tokyo Bay<\/a> group again, which is organised by Nishida-san. This year the ride-out was a bit smaller, probably due to the weather – it was rather miserable when I left in the morning with quite a bit of rain about. Despite having run late I was one of the first to get to the meeting point at Takasaka Service Area, whereh Nishida-san was already waiting.<\/p>\nAfter everybody had gathered we left for the event. Initially it continued to be wet weather, but once we got far enough north it cleared up and we could ditch the waterproofs. Once we got off the highway we could enjoy some nice scenic roads leading through the mountains up to Hakuba. Instead of stopping for lunch enroute we headed straight to the hotel and then walked to a very good soba restaurant.<\/p>\n
Following lunch we split into the early and late groups and caught shuttle busses to the venue. I was part of the early group as I wanted more time to enjoy the venue and especially see the hill-climbing contest. After a couple of photos at the entrance I wandered around for a little while and then found a good vantage point for the hill-climb. Despite the wet slope a couple of bikes made it all the way to the top – notably the guy from Klim.<\/p>\n
While watching the hill-climb I saw that Arch was still around.\u00a0 I’d texted with him earlier and he said they would leave early, but I guess they decided to stick around for the contest, so I wandered over to say g’day.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately I did not manage to sign up for the off-road course this year. It was limited to the BMW 450GS and you had to pre-sign up over the internet. No sign-up on the day or joining with your own bike this year.. oh well.<\/p>\n
There were quite a few more vendors around this year with a big area set up next to the main entrance as well as the area next to the ski lift. The usual crowd was there – Touratech, Michelin, Klim, etc. This year there was also a BMW end-of-stock sale, which had extremely good discounts on items such as the Rallye suits. Unfortunately I didn’t realise or I would have queued up – instead I took a look the next day when most of the stock was already gone. I still had a good chat with one of the staff members who turned out to have german heritage, so not only could we speak in english, but also german!<\/p>\n
I did manage to score a nice pair of shoes from Schott for when I just run around Tokyo on the bike, and very nearly got a drive recorder. They had a pretty good show-price discount but unfortunately only for the standard version, not the GPS-enabled one.<\/p>\n
Some of the guys I rode up with are members of the BMW Owners Club and introduced me to the staff. One of the guys is also an accredited off-road trainer and said that being a member means easier access to training sessions. So we’ll see! They also have a rally later this year. I really miss my motorbike rallies from Europe, so this may be a way to get into the scene here.<\/p>\n
Later in the afternoon we gathered everybody for a big photo-shoot at the entrance and then had the BBQ, with live music playing on the stage. Loving it!<\/p>\n
Finally it was time to head back to the hotel, where we enjoyed onsen and nijikay.<\/p>\n
Day 2 – Sunday<\/strong><\/p>\nUp relatively bright and early to pack up the bike and head down to brekky. Then it was off to the venue again, this time by bike, and we even got to park up close to the entrance. Not sure if Nishida-san had pulled rank somewhere!<\/p>\n
We spent another couple of hours there and then gathered together to ride to a pizza place for lunch before heading back to Tokyo. The pizza place ended up being in a tiny lane in the middle of nowhere and was fantastic! Freshly home-baked pizza in a wood-fired oven. We had the full course menu, getting to try a slice of about 7 different pizzas, all fresh out of the oven. Amazing!<\/p>\n
At the pizza-place I said good-bye to everybody as I wanted to try to get to Tokyo before the predicted rainstorms started lashing down. The group is a bit slow and likes to stop a lot, and I didn’t fancy getting back in the dark with the rain and the usual Sunday-evening heavy traffic.<\/p>\n
The first part of the ride was great, along prefectural route 55, an amazing little road which I don’t think I had ever taken before. Once on the highway I opened up a bit, and was soon hitting the early rain. Traffic got heavier, but luckily it was still too early to hit any traffic jams, despite the poor weather. I made it safely home around 16:30, semi-drenched but not too cold and enjoyed a nice hot shower.<\/p>\n
Otsukaresama!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TL;DR: great ride-outs with the group from BMW Motorrad Tokyo Bay, fantastic event with hill-climbing, many vendors, great BBQ and live-music, followed by nijikay, onsen, and pizza the next day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,41,22],"tags":[108,109,96,23],"class_list":["post-839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-motorbike","category-travel","tag-bmw","tag-events","tag-japan","tag-travel-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":845,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions\/845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micha.name\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n(Click to open the full album)<\/p>\n