Tuesday October 14, 2025

Yes folks you read that right I had my very first trip in an ambulance.

First, how the day went. We left the guesthouse in Imabari, after a good breakfast of boiled egg, ham, avocado and toast and coffee.

The fella we met last night was already in the common room and was spread out everywhere. His suitcase which he had kept in a locker was open and everything was all over the place. I am sure the lady at the reception desk was horrified. I asked if he was this messy at home. He said “yes, but my wife cleans up after me”. He asked me if I knew about Instagram. I said yes then spent the next half hour showing him how to upload pictures etc. His granddaughter had set it up for him, but he didn’t know how to use it, even with the help of ChatGPT.

We got the bikes out of the garage and went back to the train station to begin following the Blue Route around the Island of Shikokou.

Although it is a designated cycle route to explore the Island of Shikoku it was not always a safe route. Ralf and I are very comfortable cycling in traffic, but some Japanese drivers do not give you any room when passing. They may slow down and wait until it is safe to pass, then close pass you, it is quite scary.

Several times we took the sidewalk/multi-use path. The path was wide enough to cycle and gave pedestrians sufficient room.

We were heading to Matsuyama for a rest day and another castle visit. The scenery was quite nice, mostly along the coast with some minor hills for good measure. 

We stopped for lunch and a fella asked where we were headed and where we had come from. When he came out of the store, he gave us two yogurt drinks for good energy. That was kind of him.

About 15 kms short of Matsuyama disaster struck.  A bug landed on my face and crawled inside my glasses. I took my glasses of to shake it off, but the bloody thing decided to stay on my face and crawl towards my eye. I was going about 18 kph at this point. I slowly applied the brakes and veered towards the guard rail, I over corrected and of I went onto the ground. I hit the ground hard and screamed and writhed around a bit. The problem with the Montague brakes is that over time – about 500 kms they become slow to grip, even though they are disk brakes. Then they decide to grip and stop you very quickly.

Ralf came back and asked what happened. I was still moaning, he glanced at my foot and his face went white. Which was odd considering the lovely tan he has. Anyway, he told me not to move and disappeared. It seemed to be a long time before he came back, but it was probably only a few minutes. He came back with a lady who took one look at my ankle, she also went white, she made soothing noises and they both told me the ambulance was on the way. She kept trying to encourage Ralf to take the bikes back to her office, but he wanted to wait until after the ambulance arrived.

When the ambulance arrived, one of the attendants made a splint for my foot/leg and asked where else it hurt, my shoulder hurt. They cleaned the road rash and put a bandage on my elbow. They not so very gently put me on a stretcher and put me in the back of the ambulance.

Ralf had our handlebar bags in the ambulance which had all the pertinent information including insurance cards. The police arrived they asked if we had bicycle insurance. Apparently, if you ride a bike in Japan you are supposed to have bicycle insurance. We said we didn’t have Japanese Bike Insurance but we had medical insurance, that seemed to keep him happy. Ralf asked why we weren’t going to the hospital. They had to check which hospital was on-call for emergencies that day. Eventually we headed to the hospital. It was a bit of a bumpy ride, sirens going and the attendant apologizing for every bump we went over.

At the hospital they gently moved me from the stretcher to a bed. They checked me out, cleaned my road rash wounds again and told me the orthopedic surgeon would be here soon. That didn’t sound good.

I was taken to x-ray, I could see the x-rays as they were taken. oooh that didn’t look good. A break in my shoulder and a break in my ankle/foot.

When the orthopedic surgeon arrived, he looked about 16, then I thought about Ralf’s niece who is in her first-year residency as a doctor, and she looks about 16 as well!! Maybe it is a sign of age, when you think policemen and doctors look really young. Surprisingly, no-one spoke sufficient English to be able to tell us what was happening. Then Mr. Oichi arrived, he is an administrator who could speak English.

The Ortho surgeon asked if he could mend my foot. I said yes of course, thinking this was going to be under anaesthetic or something. Nope he had hold of my foot, the nurse had hold of my leg and they pulled and manipulated it there and then. I wasn’t expecting that, Ouch that hurt. He put a warm cast around it and it was strapped to keep the “adjustment” in place until later.

Ralf went to retrieve the bikes and take them to the hotel we were booked into that night, then came back to the hospital.

I was told I would be admitted, and surgery would be performed next week. Later they came back and said I would have surgery on Thursday. Pins and plates in both shoulder and foot/ankle, about a two-hour surgery.

My shoulder hurt more than my foot.

So that is the end of our cycling trip of Japan.

This was written about a week after the accident and posted when I got home.