I woke up crazy early this morning, I'm talking 4:45am and riding by 5:30. In my first 2 hours one of the spokes on my wheel broke which is real bad, so I waited outside a Cycle Base Asahi from 7:30-10am for them to open. In that time I cleaned my gears and new chain a bit better. The service was quick and easy but they didn't have a black spoke, so now I have one silver spoke on my back wheel. Battle scars! I made a quick route to the bridge to leave the island. The route turned out quite beautiful, mostly flat taking me through the suburbs of some gorgeous towns. Highlights were the Nakatsu castle and the rice fields. At this point however I was getting quite sick of using cycle-walking paths next to highways, everytime there's a road crossing the gutter transition is needlessly harsh and I feel like I'm doing damage to my bike every time I jolt over one. It makes me want to stick to the road, which feels dumb when there's loads of cars trying to get past me and a huge cycle lane that I'm not using. Anyway, at one point there was some paint indicating a cycle lane on the actual road for about 10km which was amazing and a much needed break from this curb hell. It got me thinking a lot about what a good cycle route is, and how we'll probably never see them common in Australia since everybody has an unusual and frankly stupid hatred for cyclists. Definitely has something to do with old car manufacturer propaganda I would bet money on it! Then again with petrol prices what they are, maybe people will realise out absolute reliance of cars is actually very dumb. A topic that could be fleshed out more eloquently than on a gps route description I suppose 😅 I made it to the top of Kyushu two days earlier than scheduled, so I booked a hostel for 2 nights in Kitakyushu before I move onto my guest house over the other side of bridge on the main island Honshu. I booked here first because there's supposedly and Aussie inspired cafe nearby that I plan on going to tomorrow. There was also a gluten free katsu restaurant that I ate at for dinner!