Japan

The last entry in this blog was published almost exactly 2 years ago. At this time I didn´t know if I will ever continue with this blog, as this was thought to be my notebook during my stay in Japan.
Two years nothing happened, I stayed at home, no travel activities whatssoever.

Now I´m on the road again since the 5th of november and a LOT happened. But wait, we start from the beginning.


The original idea was to be away from home for six weeks, while one week was covered by some training class in Portland followed by a week of vacation and another four weeks in Japan.
The week of vacation I wanted to spent in between Portland an SanFrancisco, going down Highway 101. Instead of chosing hotels I wanted to couchsurf. This was the plan.

However things have changed and I exented the first week of training by another two days. Which would give me just enough time to go down to SanFran, see the californian angel again and say hello to my bike fellows, which I haven´t seen for 4 years now. To get at least some experience with the couchsurfing I had a look at the map of Oregon and figured out, that I haven´t been south of Portland yet. Eugene sounded fun. So I placed a couch request a for a couch somewhere in Eugene. At the time I had no idea waht exactly I was expecting.
I have no idea why I have chosen exayctly this couch. The only thing I remeber was, that another guy from Eugene area also had a couch available but he described himself as a kind of fanatic christian. No thanks.

The couch I wanted to surf was hosted by agirl and her roommates. Since I get along with women always better then with any group of men, I thought this might be it. Request placed, request accepted and so I made my way down to Eugene the one weekend, not knowing that this will change my life.

I arrived at around 10:00 at the place, but I think we agreed on meeting around lunch time. I was early I knew that and I felt guilty, but I thought I give it a try and rang the bell. What I didn´t know, my lovely host just returned from a nightshift a couple of hours before. I screwed up.
To make the story short, we had nevertheless a great day together. I got to know her father, have seen where she grew up and I enjoyed her company. The night was kind of short. We went to bed around 2is, ifd I remember correctly and I was awake at 6am again. I said goodbye the day before and made my way back home, in the assumption I would have the possibility to go back Highway101. Howerver, fortune was not on my side. I rode my car along the streets of Oregon for 1 1/2 hours to end up in fornt of a sign which said that the highway towards the coast is closed. Damn it.
An alternative route would have ment another 4 hour drive, to get to the same place where I almost was. So I decided to go back to Portland and call the day a day. After 5 hours in the car I was tired enough not to have any strange ideas anymore. I slept most of the day.

What a surprise the next day, when N. added me as a friend on facebook. I was really surprised. I think I was surprised, becaise the day before we had some discussion about the meaning of friends in Facebook. Not that I didn´t like her, so of course I added her.
Over the next couple of hours a new plan developed. Instead of being in the car for 12 hours on wednesday, I could already go down to Eugene on tuesday and go from there to SanFran. Which is then only a ten hour drive.She liked the idea, I liked it, another couchsurf attempt was on. Deal.

So I cam to Eugene and it happened that this was also the birthday of Sheryl, a chinese exchange student. The evening was awesome. After dinner, we occupied a place in the Diablo's, a Karaoke bar. I had never done it before. It was fun, but I sucked, hat´s for sure. However, I sang with N. the Oregonian angel "Losing my religion" it was definitely fun. Yes, alcohol was involved as well.
The night stretched out quite a while and I don´t remember that I had any sleep at all.
Hundreds of thoughts ran though my head and I wasn´t sure myself if I tried to catch up on things which I might have missed before... Not sure.

The morning was odd. I had so much fun in the night before that I would have loved to stay longer in this bubble of happiness and joy. I just had the feeling that the time we spent together was not enough to say everything which should have been said, unlike the last time with the californian angel (https://wakuwakudokidoki.blogger.de/stories/1044520/) and so she left to work and I got into the car to make my way to SanFran.

Luckily it was only a 9-ish hour drive, but still long enough after this very short night.
I hate my sentimentality. When I saw the first couple of familiar thing in the bay area and when I smelled the water, I had tears in my eyes. It was like a coming home.