Finding New Faces in an Old Japanese Favorite: Hiking the Kiso Valley

Whenever my wife tells me to go take a hike I happily oblige. She said it again last Friday at dinner and by daybreak I was on a train heading into central Japan's Kiso Valley.

The Magome-Tsumago stretch of the old Nakasendo trade route is a well-known and well-trodden trail - and for good reason. Magome and Tsumago are two of the best-preserved Edo Era trade route towns in all of Japan, and are connected by a pleasant (albeit hilly) 7-kilometer walk that takes you through forests and fields and rustic villages that can - and have been - settings for numerous novels and films about the Japan of yesteryear.

Magome is almost too pretty.

The sloping "ishidatami" part of the trail between Magome and Tsumago.

Beautiful and shaded in summer, beautiful and treacherous in winter.

Tsumago is less glazed (read: more authentic-looking) than Magome.

I'd walked this section of the Nakasendo several times, as a guide and on my own. But I'd never gone in winter. And I'd never ventured south of Magome or north of Tsumago. The original Nakasendo, the mountainous route between Kyoto and Edo, covered more than 500 kilometers. Tsumago and Magome were just two of 69 post towns where merchants, travelers, and nobility on their way to see the shogun would eat and sleep and trade.

I've no mind to walk the entire route. (I'd cycle it if not for all the stairs.) But I did want to see more of it. In short, that's how I ended up here:

Hiking Mt. Norikura: What I Really Want For My Birthday

 

It's nothing special, how I approach each birthday as a father. I just tell my kids (whether they ask me or not) I'd like to do something fun, and encourage them to throw their ideas at me; where to go, what to do, and where and what to eat. It's fun to hear what they say.

I smile at their enthusiasm and bite my tongue when they argue, and ultimately go along with whatever they decide - which is never what I silently hope for.

What the lone wolf in me wants is a huge home-cooked breakfast without having to cook or clean or listen to the kids go to battle over who gets which pancake when the first batch hits the table. He wants to take off on his own, cycling or hiking or both, at his own pace and discretion, with no debating where to stop for ice-cream. He'd get home just as the sun was dipping behind the mountains, and take a long hot shower and sit down to a burger and a beer without having to wash the dishes or listen to the kids argue over who gets to use the ketchup first.

Lone Wolf is going to have to try again next year.

To Each His Own, Together: Cycling the Chikuma River

 

As a thoughtful, likeable human being, my son is way ahead of me. I don’t know where he gets it, but I love when it’s on display. Take one recent Sunday.

The morning skies were cloudy and uncertain. I looked around at my kids, full of breakfast and lethargy, and felt a familiar dull ache. An ache borne of a persistent and pesky awareness that my days are numbered, both with my kids and in this body as I walk this good beautiful Earth.

Standing in the living room, looking at my kids on the couch and at those skies outside my door, I am torn between giving the next few hours to my kids or keeping them all to myself.

As usual, I give in to my compulsion to at least try to be a decent dad.

“You guys want to get outside for a while? Go for a bike ride, or an easy hike somewhere?” They remain entirely unfazed. What dad can compete with a video game? “Maybe stop somewhere for ice cream after?”

The kids have clearly reached the age when soft-serve is no longer as interesting as Fortnite.

It was a pleasant surprise to hear my oldest say that yeah, he’d be up for a bike ride. I must be one cynical father because I wasn’t sure if his expressed interest was genuine or if he was simply humoring me out of the goodness of his heart. If it was the latter, I thought, then (a) what a good actor, and (b) what a phenomenal kid.

Then he added a perfect dose of honesty. “I don’t really want to go hiking.”

We threw our bikes in the van and took off for the Chikuma valley, an hour and a bit away.

The Azumino-Yamabiko Cycling Road: Smooth Sailing Between the Mountains

John’s e-mails tell me that Spring has returned to the central Japanese high plains we inhabit.

“Yo Kev! Weather’s lookin sweet, bro! You up for a ride?”

His enthusiasm is infective. Not that it takes much to get me out on the bike.

He talks sometimes of mountain biking the trails of nearby Hachibuse-yama, though in his voice I hear more reminiscence than actual suggestion. That’s fine with me. I run those trails on occasion, and to me there's no better way to communicate with the gods who reside there than entering their world on foot. 

Besides, one broken collarbone is enough.

Back Roads, Bike Paths & Quiet Surprises: Cycling (or Driving) Japan's Noto Peninsula

The Noto Peninsula is a curious place. Found midway along the western coast of Honshu, it sticks out into the Sea of Japan like the thumb of a hitchhiker trying to escape the shadow of the continent. Off the long arc of its eastern shore lies Toyama Bay which, at 1,000 meters deep, hosts an almost unimaginable variety of marine life. The shores exposed for eons to the winds and sands of far-off Siberia are marked by weather-worn cliffs and rock formations only Nature could dream up.

Temples sit quietly in the skirts of the forested mountains, as they have for over 1,000 years. Farms and rice fields conform to the contours of the thick green land. Coastal villages wear clothes that only time and the elements can provide.

All this, and nobody ever comes here.

Kaimon-dake: Up Close & Passable

Kaimon-dake had been high on my to-hike list since I first cycled the Satsuma Peninsula in 2017. Under sapphire skies this conical peak rose like a perfect Mt. Fuji, floating on the edge of the ocean at the southwest tip of Japan, calling me in that silent language to come see things that exist beyond words.

Now, two weeks into 2021, circumstances had brought me back to this quiet, scarcely-traveled place. I’d just finished up a three-week working vacation down on the island of Yakushima, a mountainous place of monkeys and deer, spidery Banyan trees and gnarled, thousand-year-old cedars, and daily rainbows that naturally occur with daily rains. As with hiking Kaimon, I had fantastic expectations for this random opportunity to travel. In Yakushima, it can be hard to take three steps without having your breath taken away yet again.

Sadly, my working vacation came with little vacation. But in some places you can see a year’s worth of beauty in a day.

Back on the mainland but not ready to go home, I booked a hotel in Kagoshima and made a date with Kaimon. My visions of what was to come were stark and fantastic: I’d stand on the summit, the land and the sea stretching into eternity before me; I'd gaze down on royal blue Ikeda Lake to the north, then turn to take in the scattered gray-green islands swimming in the distant pelagic south. The beauty would be encompassing.

I had no mind to consider whether reality could actually measure up.

Jonen-dake & Cho-ga-take: How We See the World

 

I leaned my bike against the wall of the toilet hut, right under the yellow Watch Out For Bears sign. Such warning signs are common in these mountains. Actual bear sightings, not so much I don't think. Not in a normal year anyway. But when you close down an entire mountain range for four months, eliminating the usual throngs of hikers and campers, the bears start acting like they own the place again.

This was how I thought it should be. It was also how I feared it was.

In the immediate moment though my biggest fear was having to go into that putrid bathroom to switch out of my sweaty clothes. Since when are toilet hut cleaner people non-essential? Holy stench.

Hiking Mt. Bandai: Fatherhood and Who to Feed

My kids were staring at their grandma’s TV for the fifth night in a row. Not that there's much else to do after dark out here in the sticks, unless you want to stay up and keep watch for the wild boars and black bears that have recently been coming around.

A shortened summer vacation and a resurgent coronavirus had nixed our plans to visit the oft-overlooked, quietly intriguing island of Shikoku. To compensate we opted for a relaxing week at my wife’s parents’ peach farm in Fukushima, north of home but just as hot and three times as humid.

I’d spent most mornings helping my mother-in-law pick and pack peaches. As a family we’d done little else, remaining distant from the people and places that normally take up our time here. The days had passed sluggishly, slipping unremarkably by until suddenly it was Wednesday and we had a mere thirty-six hours before we'd have to return to Nagano. Tomorrow, then, was my last chance to carry on a nascent personal Fukushima tradition: going off for a day to climb one of the region's innumerable mountains.

It's a rather selfish endeavor, but we all need to feed our souls. And walking up really big hills then walking back down them is how I feed mine.

To this point it had been a private affair - just me and a mountain - so I was surprised at the words that were now falling out of my mouth.

Nasu-dake: Navigating Through Snow and Fatherhood

We visit my wife’s parents at their peach farm in Fukushima once or twice a year, and every time I bring three things: my hiking boots, my guide to Japan’s 100 Most Famous Mountains, and a hollow optimism that this time I’ll get out and do some hiking.

Then we get there and my wife and kids want to do a million things that don’t involve hiking and my boots end up sitting by the front door all week while I spend all my time playing daddy.

It’s just like being at home, except I don’t have to do the dishes.

I did make it out a few years ago, on a day that any normal person would have stayed home. “I think I’m gonna go climb Adatara tomorrow,” I told my wife as the weatherwoman on TV talked politely about the typhoon on the way. My wife was planning on everyone going shopping in the morning, then to lunch at the same ramen shop we always go to (not for nothing, their portions are massive). Her plan, I’m sure, included me. “I’ll take that orange bicycle out there. You going to be okay with the kids?”

“Yes, of course,” she replied, sounding less than excited about the perfect storm brewing. “You don’t want to eat lunch with us at Kuntaro?”

I did. But I didn’t.

Everyone was still sleeping when I slipped out the door and pedaled off into the gray, misty morning, heading for #21 of those Hundred Famous Mountains.

Cycling Rishiri Island: Mountainsides, Shorelines & Heaven

Ten miles off the desolate northwestern shores of Hokkaido, Japan’s far-flung playground of the gods, Mount Rishiri breaches the water like a beast both heavy and buoyant. Clothed in the kind of mystery only distance can create, Rishiri-zan, and the namesake island on which she rests, offer only vague hints of the scars that remain after the brutal winters of eons and the mountain’s volcanic past.

Having come all this way, standing now a thousand kilometers and a world away from Tokyo, one feels compelled to venture just a little bit further, out across the water, to discover those secrets behind the haze lest the journey feel forever incomplete.

That's how I felt, there at the edge of the water.

I would not have come even this far if it weren’t for Ken, the very active owner of a cycling tour company. I’d emailed him a couple of years prior, to ask if he could use another guide here and there. As our ferry neared Rishiri’s port of Oshidomari I shaded my eyes and took in the detail-rich view, laughing quietly at my stupid, extraordinary luck.

Eboshi-iwa: Somebody Doesn't Want Me Here

The ride from my house to the trailhead wasn’t particularly challenging: three hundred meters of vertical (that’s almost a thousand feet for you Americans) over twelve kilometers of road. (Forty thousand feet, please learn the metric system, people!)

Granted, it wasn’t as easy as it could have been. I had to take my cheesy foldable bicycle with the twenty-inch wheels because Yeti, the road bike that has taken me across Alaska, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, is now sitting around refusing to fix itself.

My goal was Eboshi-iwa, a tall skinny tower of rock that makes for a fine excuse to go hiking in the hours between fatherly responsibilities. I’d been there before, albeit by a different route, so I knew nothing of the length or the terrain of the trail I’d be taking today. I wasn’t even sure there was a trail; last year, in a moment of gracious insanity, I lent my primo trail map of this area to my wife’s friend, Ryoko.

I haven’t seen Ryoko or my map since.

I was about a kilometer (figure it out yourself) from the trailhead when my back tire went flat. I didn’t have a patch kit, or a spare tube or an air pump because I generally don’t bother to prepare for such occasional contingencies. I’m too busy trying to get out of the house before someone can ask me to do something else for them. Besides, this bicycle had been operating perfectly for the almost four years since I rode it home from the garbage heap at the collection site down the street. It’s unbelievable the things people will just throw away. (Bringing home a discarded bike; maybe this is why Yeti is pouting in the shed.)

Aside from being unprepared, I also tend to travel light. I don’t like hauling around unnecessary bulk – like extra sneakers – so I had nothing but the hiking boots already on my feet as I began running (a generous term) with my bike up the road. It wasn’t until I finally found the trailhead that I knew how long the trail to Eboshi-iwa was. And I still didn’t know the terrain. But no matter. I could worry about the time – and that flat tire – later.

I locked my bike and took off clomping down the trail - or maybe someone's driveway.

.

A minute later I stopped.

Two gates before me. I had to choose. It felt like a game show.

I won! And on down the hill my boots clomped.

To this point the trail resembled a rutted access road. Probably because it was. Door Number Two took me down a path of dirt, then gravel, then concrete that crossed a stream and rose sharply before turning into a crumbling mix of all three. A sign for Eboshi-iwa pointed me left, bringing me up a dirt path that soon morphed into a lush, level ribbon of grass. This soon gave way to more dirt.

Swaths of grass can be hard to come by on a school playground in Japan, never mind on the side of a mountain. Rock walls are more prevalent out here, though as remnants of centuries-old castles and such. And I’d never seen or heard of any old fortress ruins out here.

I have noticed an increase in signs on some of the trails in this area, in many cases the new ones replacing the old, weather-beaten ones. Here, however, were two signs for Eboshi-iwa pointing in two opposite directions. Neither sign looked very old. One of had only Japanese characters. The other had “Eboshi-iwa” in English lettering as well as Japanese. I suspect this was an attempt by someone to keep the invading foreigners out of certain areas now that the castle walls are mostly in ruins.

With my primo map of the area gone right along with Ryoko, I’d had to resort to a third-grade level download of these trails. The path leading left, marked by the Japanese-only sign, was on my digital navigator missing a chunk in the middle. Whether this was meant to dissuade people from hiking up a trail that had fallen into disrepair or was another part of someone’s Keep-the-Foreigners-Out scheme I couldn’t say.

If the clock wasn’t ticking I might have gone left.

As the path wound and rose the ground underfoot slowly shed its multiple personality disorder. Eventually the evidence of the ongoing deadwood removal work was the only thing interrupting the consistency of the rolling dirt trail. The fresh, bilingual signs kept coming, assuring me I was on the right path – or should I say the path someone wanted me to stay on. The signs appeared with an almost irritating frequency, actually. Every few hundred meters I was reminded how far I still had to go, which in turn reminded me that I had twelve kilometers to cover on a flat tire once I was back down off the mountain and out of the woods.

At an apparent fork in the trail the forest turned suddenly, suspiciously disheveled. All over the uneven ground fallen branches and leaves that somehow seemed imported lie strewn like the aftermath of an intemperate storm. Sitting low in the midst of the contrived disaster scene was a rock sporting two characters, for “stop” and “mountain”. They were bright orange and arguably hastily-painted, and together made no sense to me. Stop the mountain? Stop! Mountain! The rock’s odd placement on the ground didn’t help in discerning what the grizzled elf sprite that did this was trying to say.

Either someone really doesn’t want me here, or wants me lost out here forever.

Despite the suspect nature of the man-made bits, Nature remains beautiful.

Meanwhile the Shinto-infused evidence of man’s infliction on the land remains magically, beautifully harmonious. Traditional Shinto deifies all aspects of Nature, and the expression of Shinto (“The Way of the Gods”) manages to enhance rather than detract from that to which it ascribes its spirit.

And though I may harp on man’s other intrusions, I do appreciate the signs.

The name Eboshi-iwa literally translates as “Crow’s Hat Rock” though it comes with the added meaning of “nobleman’s headgear”. Viewed from certain angles and mixed with a touch of imagination the name seems like it could fit.

Though if I saw someone walking around with a hat shaped like that? Noble probably wouldn't be the first word to come to mind.

For some, Eboshi-iwa means a chance to test their rock-climbing skills. That’s fine I guess, although judging from the gear left behind on top of the crow’s hat they might want to also practice their cleaning-up-after-themselves skills.

On a clear day the view from the rocks that sit slightly above Eboshi-iwa is fantastic, if limited to the southern half of the surrounding mountain landscape. Even under less than perfect skies this is still a great place to feel above the gentle crush of the everyday.

The hike up there and back down ended up taking less time than I’d allowed for. So did the trek home as I decided, after twenty minutes of running with my bike along the side of the road, to jump on and roll downhill, daring that flat tire to turn to powdered rubber from the grinding pressure of steel bike wheel and pavement. After four years it had become pretty worn, it needed to be replaced anyway. Plus it would be fun, I thought, to see how absolutely shredded it would get over the next ten kilometers.

To my amazement, it not only survived, it remained usable, if barely. The tube inside should have been torn to ribbons, but upon inspection I found only the original single pinhole that had almost destroyed the day.

I patched it up with some expired glue and a dried-out bit of rubber from the shed. The next day I found the patch had held.

I guess there are some people out there – sign makers and tire patch manufacturers among them – who want us to be able to keep on exploring.

I’d say it’s only right to oblige.

Yufu-dake: Encouraging the Kids to Climb

Like most events in my life, my introduction to Yufu-dake came about quite by accident. I’d gone down to Kyushu, to the hot spring village of Yufu-in, to help lead a cycling tour. Set among the mountains of geologically-active Oita Prefecture, Yufu-in reminded me of a village in Slovenia, where one might also encounter steam billowing into the air from scattered underground vents.

East of town Yufu-dake (Mount Yoo-Foo) dominated the skyline, rising higher than the others. Its double peaks floated pale in the late afternoon sun. Seeing them flipped a familiar switch. I wanted nothing but to go climb them.

But the next day would be taken up by the indispensable task of reconnoitering by bicycle the first leg of the tour. In the morning the other two guides and I would pass by Yufu-dake’s doorstep, but I would get no closer. A fifty-five-mile bike ride through the hilly Oita countryside was fair consolation, but still…

Two weeks later I was back at home, telling my wife how beautiful Kyushu was. She’d never been there, and seemed only lukewarm on the idea of taking the kids there during their winter break. But slowly the idea grew on her.

“Where should we go first?” she finally asked.

“Yufu-in,” I replied without any explanation as to why.

I’ve tried, with varying degrees of failure, to introduce my kids to the wonders of being in the mountains. My boys would rather go kick their soccer ball around. My daughter won't usually hesitate, but then every ten minutes along the way she'd mention ice cream.

My wife is generally, quietly non-committal on the idea of a hike. But the view of Yufu from a nearby roadside lookout point sold her, and soon the five of us were on our way across the golden grassy flats leading to the climb up the Yoof.

My boys were excited, walking and running, walking and waiting, then sprinting ahead again. My daughter, not quite up to the task, rode in her carrier on my back. Compared to her delight of being able to go up a mountain the extra weight is nothing.

It was chilly, even there in Japan’s southern reaches. I had on my ski jacket. My older son wore his long soccer coat. My wife and daughter had scarves around their necks. My younger son, true to form, was wearing gym shorts.

Forty-five minutes had passed when we took our first break, among the trees of the lower slopes. The scenery, or, more likely, the nascent talk of ice cream, kept the kids happy for a while. My younger son kept hurrying ahead, though less out of excitement, it now seemed, and more out of wanting to get to the top and back to the car.

We were going on two hours when we took another break, above the trees at a point that offered an expansive if hazy view of Yufu’s conical little sister, Mt. Iimorigajou, and the town of Yufu-in. Big brother passed around a bag of cheese doodly things. Little brother passed around quiet hints of his displeasure.

Twenty-five minutes later the top of Yufu seemed to be inching within reach – though such determinations can often prove false and dispiriting. Yet another twenty minutes we’d made it to the saddle, the ridge between Yufu’s twin peaks. Nishi-mine, the western peak, is higher by a handful of old volcanic boulders. The climb involves a series of chains and, for a dad hiking with two anxious boys up ahead and an increasingly-heavy daughter on his back, a fair bit of consternation. Without any protest from anyone we elected to climb the eastern peak.

My little girl, ever ambitious, wanted to walk to the top. It was a struggle for both of us, though not one that could dampen our enthusiasm. We were going to make it to the top, all of us. My sons, visibly agitated for a chunk of the climb, were now clearly satisfied for having conquered this dormant volcano. They scampered about the rocks and scrub of the summit, enjoying what lie underfoot more than the 360-view of the land far below us.

Eventually my wife appeared, spent but smiling after our four-hour uphill journey. She still had her coat on. I’d shed mine long ago.

For a while we took in the view, of the quiet land and of our rejuvenated children. We took pictures and passed around the hodgepodge of breadstuffs and bento we’d brought. We wondered aloud where the zip line back down was. We spoke of coming days.

As proud as my boys may have been to be up there, they slowly turned antsy, telling dad in quiet but clear terms they were ready to get going on the long trek back down. My wife asked them - several times - if they didn't want to rest just five more minutes.

Gravity can be a sneaky fiend on a descent, particularly one laced with snow at the top and strewn with leaves and rocks and roots the rest of the way. I reminded my boys of this several times, in part to remind myself as well. A twisted ankle wasn’t going to make hauling my daughter, who seemed to be gaining weight by the minute, any easier. I welcomed each moment she said she wanted to get down off my back and walk for a little again.

We reached those grassy plains marking the end of our hike ten minutes shy of four-thirty - a full six hours after we’d set out. If I had thought it would take that long I probably would have put my dreamy plans of climbing Yufu aside for another day.

But it was a great hike and a worthwhile endeavor for all of us, I thought. My daughter now has a photo of herself on top of a mountain. As far as she’s concerned she climbed it, and if that spurs her on to keep reaching for new heights that’s fine with me. (She has since climbed several more peaks.)

My boys, though the day may not have steered either of them toward a life of seeking out new mountains to climb, now have their memories of this day to add to their growing wellspring of accomplishment that, I believe, will serve them well regardless of their eventual chosen road.

Besides all that, it is without question that ice cream tastes so much better after a challenge.

And the hot springs feel so, so good.

The Monsters on Yakushima's Mocchomu-dake

Boasting fairytale waterfalls, relentless rain forests, and giant cedars older than Jesus, the Japanese island of Yakushima is a dense display of natural mystique. Spring each year sees the return of sea turtles to Inakahama Beach, where the females lay their eggs in the same spot they themselves hatched 25 or 30 years prior. Wild monkeys sit in the road along the western Seibu-Rindo, staring down motorists, daring them to hit them while the deer quickly turn tail and disappear into the woods.

And then there's the rain - as much as 8 meters annually in some places. This soil-soaking climate contributes not only to the hardiness of those multi-millenial cedars but to moss-covered forestscapes so captivating you're bound to fill up your memory card.

I'd wanted to see Yakushima since the moment I knew it existed. I was so intrigued with the whole rain-soaked package that by 2004 I was ready to cycle the 400 miles from Osaka through Shikoku to Kagoshima where I would pedal right onto the Yakushima ferry and cycle and hike the hell out of the place - and then cycle home, all in the space of my upcoming two-week winter break.

Instead, in a strange and sudden change of heart, I put on a suit and tie, bought a box of tangerines, and hopped a train north to Fukushima to ask a peach farmer for his permission to marry his daughter.

A potentially ruinous turn of events, but thirteen years and three kids later I finally found myself on my way to Yakushima, as a guide on a two-week cycling tour that would end with a one-day, 100-kilometer circuit of this mystical, monkey-ridden island. No matter I'd never been there. "Just follow your Garmin, guys."

We pedaled past waterfalls; negotiated the monkeys along the Seibu-Rindo and spotted several deer (more specifically, their asses as they ran away); had lunch on the pale yellow sands of Nagatahama Beach (it wasn't nesting season); and gazed on those mountains of age-old cedar from afar. Not bad for a day's work, but seeing those ancient forests up close demanded I head off on my own after the tour.

Badgered by vague recollections of a small number of small children waiting for me back at home in Nagano I thought making the three-day traverse over the top of the island would amount, according the vague female voice shouting at me over my thoughts, to an unforgivable shirking of fatherly responsibility. So I set out instead a day hike up the relatively modest mountain known as Mocchomu-dake, which probably doesn’t mean “forest with some crazy shit” but it very well could.

Why Shouldn't You Go Hiking with a Strained Oblique?

I'll give you one reason.

I’d been itching to get out and climb Mt. Hachibuse for weeks. Then suddenly the day came. The sun was rising bright in the sparkling sky; immediate responsibilities, both parental and professional, were nil; the car keys were just sitting there.

My wife yelled in my general direction as I was pulling out of the driveway; something about one of the kids and a piano lesson. “One of my kids takes piano lessons?” I sped along Route 63, winding along the foot of the mountain range that culminates in this curious, non-descript peak I was rushing toward.

Honestly, I don’t know why I wanted to climb Hachibuse-yama. Of all the countless mountains around here it is nowhere near the highest. It is nothing you could call dramatic. There’s a road that takes you within a half mile of the top. Hachibuse means ‘prostrating bowl’ for Pete’s sake.

If I'm careful what could possibly go wrong?

If you decide to hike the short trail (built for those of us with a wife who needs the car later) you'll find it meanders through the woods until, halfway up the mountain, it spits you out onto the road. As if suddenly aware that it wasn’t supposed to be playing in the street, the trail quickly dips back into the woods. Then as if it were one of my kids it forgets it isn’t supposed to be playing in the street and runs out onto the pavement once again. At this point the trail turns into a squirrel in a panic, running into and out of and into and out of traffic’s way until it finally dies like road kill at the blacktop’s edge.

From there it’s a twenty-minute walk along the rocky shoulder, up to the parking lot where the smart people start walking.