For all those registered, check your emails. Your route has been sent to you.
See you on the road!

For all those registered, check your emails. Your route has been sent to you.
See you on the road!
Shirakawago is a timeless glimpse at a bygone era and a place everyone visiting Japan should make an effort to get to. And it does need effort as it’s not the closest place to the main touristy draw cards. From its nearest big city Nagoya, it’s about a 3hr tour bus ride or 4hr by train and bus on public transport.
So, how about riding? It’s about 150km directly north from Nagoya and ought to take two to two and a half hours. However, I rode from Yokohama and the shortest route is around 360km and from Matsumoto to Takayama has some great twisties and fantastic views. But, winter snow and ice makes the short route dicy if it’s open. So, it was a safe 450km+ mostly expressway jaunt.
Making it to that last long tunnel was like Shirakawago was rolling out a big warm welcome mat for all the effort.
Got to get back and stay longer next time… Next time… How many attempts and years will that take? 😂
11 hours & @950km
As things stand, we are on for the 10th Coast to Coast. YES!
When:
Sunrise – 4:50am
April 30, 2022
Added caution and some changes due to the lingering plague do need to be taken into consideration in a few key areas.
1. Meeting
2. Routes
3. Overnighting
4. The Ride
5. Final Words
MEETING
Our typical event involves the gathering of a large number of riders, many shaking of hands, some brotherly hugs, close proximity talking, drinking and eating. There are varying opinions and levels of caution amongst the Twistybutts on how best to conduct oneself at present and that is cool but we can all agree that we are there for the ride so let’s focus on that.
* Respect each other’s choice to distance and wear a mask whenever gathered. *
For those preferring to completely avoid mass gathering and the potential for ‘an accident’ or those who refuse to wear a mask, let’s talk routes.
ROUTES
The typical Coast to Coast route will be available for those wanting to run that route. The start will still be somewhere on the Sagami Bay coast. It is always great to see everyone each year and the steeds gathered for the ride out. A highlight on the riding calendar!
However, things are a little different this time round for many and it would be great to see that lead to some alternate routes with various start and end locations befitting everyone’s circumstances. So feel free to do your own thing. Especially if:
We can use SNS to share our various rides and unique sites and challenges. Be great to see all the photos and read the tales from the road.
Here are some possibilities…
Plenty of twisties and touges needing dusting off all over Japan! Grab your local wingmen and make it happen.
OVERNIGHTING
Focusing on the riding and with a number of Twistybutts offering various preferences for hotels, camping and day trips, there is no official Twistybutt Hotel this year. Sad yes. End of the world, no.
The Ride
The origin of the C2C was in taking on an epic riding challenge aboard road ready steeds and enjoying the camaraderie of like minded riders through changeable weather over winding passes and all the while bettering yourself as a rider without running out of fuel! That hasn’t changed.
Let’s all get out for a Coast to Coast Twistyfest, round a lot of rubber, sharpen our riding skills and get to know our bikes better.
Looking forward to seeing the adventures via SNS.
FINAL WORD
All riders need consider their responsibilities to society and the potential spreading of unnecessary suffering. This goes for the various non-riders you’ll meet on your adventure as much as your fellow riders.
Be respectful and don’t be offended if you aren’t greeted as warmly as you greet others or expect. It’s not your backyard. Enjoy your ride, help make others similarly so and avoid anything that erodes that.
Finally, make your salutations to the riding gods for fine skies and to keep the roads and borders open!
WHAT IS THE COAST TO COAST TWISTYBUTT?
With the lifting of the corona virus state of emergency and local prefectural no-travel requests, it was time for the steed and I to chase the horizon once more.
This was the road that inspired the second wind and got me to thinking that a Coast to Coast Twistybutt had to be done. From here on there were mostly epic roads, views and the autumn colours would be even better. Besides, the 502 was ahead and I’d read a few months before that it’d be open for the start of October. If you get to the 502, it’s all downhill to the coast, right? Onward!
The expressway run home was a cold monotonous cruise control enabled decompress. It was the easiest and most economical leg of the ride though and traffic was surprisingly light.
This twisted fossil thoroughly enjoyed the stretch of legs and right wrist. And the MT10sp is proving a great steed for such stretches. Just wish it wouldn’t drink so much. 😉
TAP the pics below for bigger images.
460km done and home by 3:30pm for a nap. 😂
All done, 485km and some well rounded rubber. Until next Sunday….
POSTPONED – Until further notice…
Too much uncertainty around restrictions to go ahead with this at this point in time.
We’re all getting tired of the waiting game but gotta keep our hopes up for a gathering of the Twistybutts sooner rather than later. Hang in there all.
So, who’s keen for trying the Coast to Coast #10 on September 19, 2021? Yup, this September.
It’s still warm but cool on the Peaks and most mountain passes are open. There is a chance of typhoons scuppering things and we’ll have to deal with that. If we start the salutations to the weather and road Gods now, we oughta have a good shot at a green light.
As to the State of Emergency, that’s out of our hands and will be dealt with as the restrictions dictate. In any case, social distancing and respect for local covid concerns along our route needs to be a top priority.
Anyway, if you’re keen, pencil it in and let’s see if we can’t have a ride to see out the warmer weather.
Got out for a leisurely 320km through Izu to see out the year.
It’s been a lonely year on the road. Looking forward to seeing off this plague and catching up with the Twistybutts in May!
Roll on 2021!
Left home in the cool pre-dawn for what I thought would be a morning excursion but one thing lead to another and before I knew it I’d gone Coast to Coast and still had to get home, which is near the coast so…
Was a fantastic ride! @1150km in 20hrs with @250km of that on the expressway.
Nice and cool at altitude so tried to stay up there as much as possible.
Got to finally do a road on my bucket list, Sugawa Touge on the 403 between Niigata and Nagano. Exceptional views and a fantastic hillclimb. Bit narrow on the south side though. The phone was overheating unfortunately so here are some other snaps from the ride instead.
About the Bones
Now, why did I start the day with a 190km expressway run out to Nikko? Let’s roll the clock back a bit.
Almost two years ago to the day while returning from several great days of touring Tohoku with a Viking, coming around a right hander into a narrow bridge crossing, I was met with a a black van on my side of the road and a tough choice…
Head on Collision…nope!
Dodge the van and likely hit the guardrail over the bridge…guardrails are rather unforgiving from previous experience, so…nope!
Try to pull up and go off the corner…lots of thick grass to plow, a concrete pole and tree to dodge but ok…
It all happened so fast that there really wasn’t a decision process to ponder. As soon as I grabbed that brake lever, a wide line was inevitable and going off road it was.
The braking was strong enough to leave a faint gray streak for the last metre or so before leaving the sticky stuff but by then we’d slowed to running pace. After shimmying across the dirt and then off the brakes into that long welcoming green grass with about as much traction as butter, the grass had a another surprise for us.
Just as I was sizing up the tree’s thick branch that we were going to have to plow through at just above front wheel height, we launched a little on a hump hidden in the grass. Not a space bound launch but I’ve many a time thought what would have been if I’d hit it with pace… In any case, it threw me out of the saddle enough to unsettle me and after that I was a mere passenger.
It was about then that my eyes widened to dinner plates as there was a gaping trench below the branch which had also been hidding behind that long grass!
A stone walled creek/river of unknown depth and bottom. Yep, the crash that keeps on giving! Branch crack, crunch of fairing-plastic and then the odd pop-click-crack, like lobsters on the reef if you’ve ever heard that when diving but a hundred reefs of them pop-click-cracking out from your marrow to your sensors. Bones n joints doing what they aren’t intended to. Head first into the wall! Just above the helmet visor. Then again to the crown of my head on a lower stone step protruding from the wall.
I came to, draped over the FZ1 with my left fingers in mesh summer gloves filtering clean clear mountain waters gurgling below me. The old beast had saved me once more.
I did the sensory check and then the digit-limb-everything check and I was in one piece, operational but quite badly winded. Clambered to my feet noticing a sore wrist and bit of dizziness. Looking around, I was ankle deep in a 2-3 metre high 2-3 metre wide concrete bottomed, riverstone lined creek/river teeming with life, both plant and insect. The FZ1 had lost the front below the fork stanchions but looked ok. It wasn’t. Discovered a fatal frame crack much later. Still pains me.
Back in the trench, I was bewildered and having a little trouble staying upright when the Viking appeared above. He’d been some way back but close enough to see something amiss. I just remember asking, “Did I fk up?” Oviously!
On extracting myself from the trench with the help of a good samaritan passerby, I painfully realized something was not at all right with my wrists. As the shock and fight or flight chemical dump wore off waiting for the ambulance, it became painfully apparent there were a few things not quite doing what they should’ve been doing.
The ambulance and fire crew were great while the local inspector Cluoseau wannabe bordered on comical with his various hypothesis and line of resulting interrogations.
Later, at the hospital after some xrays and CT scans, the injuries were clear.
Rehab lasted a while. The back is still not right, the left wrist isn’t either but I’m no spring chicken and that wasn’t my first rodeo. I can still ride!
And ride I will. One day shy of the second anniversary of that decisive day, I went to look over that place and make peace with my demons.
It is a beautiful little area and was all the more so in the early summer light.
Think I’ll make this a regular place to visit around this time each year. A pilgrimage to pain and life and what could easily have been my last ride!