Day 10: (60 km) Sapporo - Shikotsu
(08/08/06)

Emily left today. Took the 7:45 flight from Sapporo to Narita, then on to Minneapolis. After hitting the snooze button one to many times, trying to postpone our parting, we hurried to the station. It's not easy to hurry while carrying a full sized bicycle box, it results in a kind of hunched over scuttle-rest-scuttle routine. The silliness of it enhanced by Bill the Small Woodland Critter poking his big head out of my backpack.

We found a cart at the airport and managed to maneuver it into the elevator with a few inches to spare. One floor up, the doors opened to a flock of ANA stewardesses politely smiling in formation. They looked at us, we looked at them, they noticed Bill, and some very polite smirks broke out. Bill got some more attention at the check in counter, receiving an exuberant "kawaii!" from more of the ANA staff. The whole process was exceptionally smooth.

And then she was up in the air and I was on a train back to Sapporo, to the ride, to seventy days of cycling without her. Driftless, I wandered Sapporo for a few hours, running errands I didn't really need to, browsing in stores I wasn't going to buy anything from. I felt the same way when Emily moved to Poland. Then, I had to return alone to a city and apartment that we had shared for half the time I lived there. This time, I could move on, keep dancing--a left right left right 80 RPM jig taking me to unfamiliar places. Still, it's hard not to feel like a part of me is unreachably distant.