Ride Day Nine – Imabari to Onomichi

Last day in the saddle for a while….. Left Imabari at 8:30am as a group and snaked our way through the dock area to the first of several LONG bridges. This is a very popular biking area – where we had not seen hardy any bikers the whole trip, now they were all over the place!

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/44237205?privacy_code=G1NlHs60tCW95fcgcLjhmQn5EzNgPckb

There are a series of bridges that connect Shikoku to the main island. They all have bike paths, except the last one, in which you have to take a ferry – for about 5 minutes:

The bridges themselves were fun to cross:

Then, of course, are the little side notes that are fun to stop and get a picture, like the big brother to Bridger’s dino in the yard:

The closer we got to the end, the slower we went, as if to prolong the ride by just a few minutes. This was in contrast to the previous rides, where we went as fast as we could towards the end, just to get off the dang bike! As we approached the ferry, a few picture opportunities came up:

We finally arrived at our Hotel (which was a really cool biking hotel, refurbed from an old fish processing warehouse), they had cold beers, great food as we had our last dinner together and everyone packed up bikes, accessories and gritty cycle outfits for the trips home. A few of the riders had completed the whole Epic – 37 days of biking through Japan! (let’s see, that’s 37 fish breakfasts….) Anyway, Bridger and I were off to see a bit more Japan before flying out of Tokyo, first stop: Hiroshima!