Suddenly the back of the bike wobbled. Kaisa, cycling next to me gave me an angry glance – I should know better than to fool around on the bike in an uphill. But this time it wasn't my fault. There was something else going on here.
Glancing at the trailer I could only bring myself to tell Kaisa that things were bad. Really bad.
The axel that connects the trailer to the bike had broken off at one of the four connecting points. For one reason or another the metal tubing had given up, and was now at best limping along. There was no way I could continue riding with the trailer in this shape.
A thought flashed my mind – would this be the end of our journey? It would seem so… so banal. No big flash, no glorious arrival at the goal, just a stupid piece of metal tired from wear and tear reaching its limit.
As it so happened we were next to some industrial area of Toyo-oka, the kind of a small town we had passed dozens of by this point. I pushed the bike with trailer and all onto the parking space of the first building and walked through the door. Inside sat three persons, an older man, a younger man and a woman.
English?, I asked, knowing what the answer would be even before hearing it. They all shook their heads, as predicted. Still, I had nothing to lose, so I continued in my most simplified Wnglish along with my own version of sign language. Bike. Break. Help. Then I pointes to the outside of the room.
They followed me, and I showed them the broken hinge, telling them "downhill", "crack!" and "help!". It doesn't taken much language to convey the problem, when you have it right in front of you. The younger man and woman started conversing something at a rapid pace, while the older man seemed more detached.
I proceeded to draw my approximation of a blowtorch and showed it to the two. The woman's face lit up, and said a word that was very much alike the finnish word for welding – hitsi. At least that's what I thought I heard. At this point I knew they got me!
The young man then picked up his phone, called someone, I had no idea who, but was smiling widely when ending the call. (Being in Japan, this could of course mean anything, so I didn't dare get my hopes up yet.) But when he signed to me to load the broken trailer into his small van, I knew we were at least trying to solve this problem.
The woman wasn't going to be left behind either, and had Kaisa jump into her car. And then we left, leaving all of our gear, including laptop, bikes and all other possessions in the parking space of some Japanese industrial complex, hoping for the best.
As we didn't have common language, I could only trust that this man knew what he was doing. I managed to decipher that it would be a ten kilometer ride. Nothing to do, but sit back, relax and try to enjoy the situation. Easier said than done.
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