Pooey was born (purchased) somewhere in North Carolina about 2 years ago. Passed from rider to rider, he was the torch on a charity motorcycle relay across the good old United States of America. When you see motorcycle and USA in the same sentence, you're probably thinking a big fat dude on a big fat Harley. But ADVRider.com is all about adventure riding. Off road, middle of nowhere stuff. Cool! You can check out the hellllla massive thread about Pooey here. Check out a couple rad shots from his tours so far:
So after touring America, Canada, Australia, India, and China, Pooey is here in Japan. There's not a lot of epic adventure style riding in Japan, unfortunately, and I don't really have the right kind of bike for that anyways. How to satisfy Pooey?
Booze! Yep, I use my vegetable crisper drawer for liquor. Shochu is made from vegetables, right?
Nothing screams Japan as much as Mt. Fuji, so on a brisk Friday morning I hopped on the CB1000 and headed west...
...with my new sports video camera mounted on the ride. This is a GoPro HD Hero camera. It's meant to be worn on a helmet or mounted on a vehicle. I'm still working out the kinks, but check out a short video of me getting onto the expressway! (warning: it's boring)
Sorry, no more videos. A 2 gigabyte memory card fills up pretty fast. I have a video where I'm at a stop light behind a truck for 2 minutes. Should I upload it?
Headed west on the Chuo expressway. Cafe culture sucks in Japan, so McDonalds is the choice for caffeine. I ordered a cafe latte, and the girl behind the counter freaked. Turns out they don't have McCafe in the countryside. Also talking to foreigners is hella scary to some countryside folk.
Arriving at the prime view spot of majestic Mount Fuji...
... was a disappointment. Fuji's magnetic cloud powers were in effect. Sorry Pooey.
Took some new roads on the way home (route 147 out of Yamanako to the 246). Monkeys!
Lookit them crazy monkeys!
I made a left onto 76, which I thought was 70. After a nice ride along a lakeshore and up into the hills...
... a dead end. I've got a nice collection of "Don't Enter" signs from Japanese roads. The benefits of being too cheap to buy a proper GPS system.
Check the map, and try again.
Managed my way back to the Tomei expressway. Inside a rest stop is a massive real-time map of Tokyo's expressway conditions. A little traffic ahead, but nothing too serious. On a Sunday night, you'll see a lot of red, but on a Friday you're ok.
Use of an electronic toll collection (ETC) system saves time and money. Being Japan, shit is all fucked up, and the unit for a motorcycle costs 4 times the price for a car. Regardless of that fact, they've been sold out for like 2 years. I just bought a used car one, which is technically a no-no, but it works so I don't really care.
Seriously, if I get busted for using a non-regulation payment system before getting busted for something else...
Thus ends my day with Pooey the globetrotting ostrich. He is, yep, a Beanie Baby. And, crime of crimes, his tag is missing. Would this ruin the value of this collectible toy? A quick google search, and it looks like Pooey (nee Stretch) isn't on the top of any collector's lists. Onward Pooey, see it all.
That HD cam totally rocks! :)
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