Making of An Outdoor Geek, Part 2

Now that we had the issues surrounding our accomodation costs all figured out, it was time to call the hostel and make a reservation. The question was - which night?? There were going to be three nights on this trip.


To figure that out, we started guestimating how long it would take for us to get to the hostel at our destination, the big lake at the western end of Tokyo. 50 miles might not sound like much but we had to take into consideration it was going to be all uphill pretty much all the way after about 15 miles. Not to mention the heavy weight of the bicycle rig and the rather mountaineous topography of the western Tokyo. Not like in European Alps but sort of like in Virginia. But I was confident we should be able to comfortablly do it in two days at most. So we decided to call the hostel to make a reservation for the second night.


Ring, ring, .....
"Hello?"
"Hi, I'd like to make a reservation."
"For which night?" "Two weeks from today."
"For how many?" "Three."
"How old are you??" "...uh... fifteen..." Liar!!
"......"
"OK. It's gonna be $15/person/night."
"Huh? Well, I saw $10/person/night in my guide book." "Oh, yeah.. That's changed."
("@#$%!!!") "..$13 a night is all we can do."
"Fine." Click.


This was a problem. It was good that we managed to have our second night covered at the hostel but this also meant we would have barely a dollar in our collective pockets altogether after our accomodation costs.

To be continued...