Okinawa Day 2

So, we went to Gyokyusendo.  These days it is known as Okinawa World, a full blown theme park complete with bus loads of obnoxious tourists.  I won't say which country these obnoxious folks were from, lest I be accused at some point of being prejudiced, but in all of my days of interacting with people from other cultures, I have never been as obnoxiously inconvenienced by folks like this before.  They were...obnoxious.

(Partly because the Okinawans as a people are very meek and gentle, and partly because I want to represent my home country well, I try to go out of my way to not be the "ugly, loud American."  Well, my fellow Americans, you no longer need to worry about being the tourist everyone else hates.  Because these folks...wow.  It's as if they went out of their way to be obnoxious.)

Anyhoo...for all of you animal rights activists out there, they've discontinued the Cobra vs. Mongoose fights at the snake park (part of Okinawa World).  I'm okay with that.  Seemed a bit cruel to me, even when I was an ugly American.  We spent most of our time going through the caves, then wrapped up our time by watching an Eisa demonstration.

The bike was an ongoing concern for me throughout the day.  It found its way to Tokyo, but the folks at the airline were very non-committal about whether or not there would be room on the plane from Tokyo to Okinawa.  It was a good thing that my wife was talking to them, because I probably would have lost my patience with the absurdity of the situation.

It did arrive late at night, and I picked it up at the airport, went about assembling it, and dumped the box in my father-in-law's car.  A few notes from that ride: I should have tried to take it on the Monorail, and ridden that up to Shuri, leaving me a breezy ride downhill to the house.  I didn't.  I rode through Naha (down Kokusai Dori - which would have been a lot more amusing if I wasn't hustling so much), up the brutal hill known as Shuri.

My light for my bike was low on juice, much to my surprise.  So, the only function that worked was the flashing light.  This is good in the city, where the function of a bike light is more to be seen, than to see.  But not so good in those rural parts (the last leg of my ride) where there are no street lights, very few cars, and, in this case, a fast ride down a steep hill.  Now you see the road, now you don't see the road.  Worse than that, because of the blindingly bright bursts of light, my eyes just couldn't adjust very well, so I was more or less blind for that part of the ride.

Lastly, my rear fender was rubbing my tire.  I don't know if it was because I had just assembled my bike in the dark, and was now riding that through town with little to no light, but I had the feeling that my bike just wasn't...tight.  As if everything was just a little loose.  But, alas, I made it back to the house, didn't get lost, and committed to take most of the bike apart the next morning and reassemble it in proper light, taking my time.  I felt like I got away with one with that night ride.