Last year I bought Beth a bike for Christmas–a Surly Long Haul Trucker (in green). Why did buy Beth that? It was because she wants to go on rides and tours with me, so I figured it would be prudent to start getting her set up and used to riding.

But there was also a secondary reason… I wanted that bike for myself. This don’t mean I was buying it in her name but going to gank it later; what it means is that I wanted to buy a bike but my current bike at the time, a Trek 7.3 FX was working relatively well and I couldn’t justify buying a new bike for myself, but I could certainly justify buying it for Beth.

Fast forward a few months and my desire to get a LHT increased to the point where I made an agreement with myself that I would buy it but only after selling my Trek. Fortunately for me, a week or two later I had found a buyer and had the cash in my pocket.

Buying the complete version of the Long Haul Trucker (versus buying the frame and selecting components yourself) costs $1,095 if you buy it in the USA or you can buy it in Japan for the equivalent of $1,600 US. I wasn’t a fan of that $500 extra for buying the bike from a store here, so I just ordered it online from the States and accepted the $250 in shipping.

Two weeks later it was sitting in many pieces in my living room and a few days later I had it fully assembled in time to take it on its inaugural voyage to Takizakura (lit. “Waterfall Cherry Tree”), a 1,000+ year-old cherry tree about 60 km southeast of Fukushima city.

Takizakura is the tree on the right. Ignore the people.

Though really, it felt more like I was going to see a huge crowd of people that a tree happened to get in the way of. The line of cars to get to the tree was at least 5 km long from the direction I came from, though luckily being on a bike allows you to ignore all of that and pass the gridlocked cars quite easily.

And that’s the story of getting a brand new bike and taking its first trip to see a tree that’s been around since… well, from a European standpoint, since the middle of the Middle Ages.

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