Aaron Chase/Cannondale Press Tour

Aaron Chase and Don Hampton will be traveling to Japan and Australia for the next two weeks to promote the new Cannondale Chase bike, host screening parties for the Chain Reaction 4 & Killing Time DVDs and shooting new material for CR5 and Killing Time II.

Day #1 11/5/03

Aaron
Getting up at 5 am was no big deal seeing as though Hampton arrived at my house just two hours before. Tired nonetheless we were both excited with what’s to come and dreading the 13.5 hour flight at the same time. The car service came promptly at 6am, said good bye to Kara and got in the van, They must have been out of the regular airport drivers and given us an old man that 6 out of 7 days a week drives a hurst. Traffic threw NYC sucked but we still made it to the airport on time with bags that weigh 88lbs. Just had to juggle some of Hampton’s camera gear from bag to bag to disperse some of the weight, cruise threw customs with only one three way allen wrench set to get confiscated and we are off to sit on our ass (mine still very sore from the epic 50 ride the day before) for the next 13.5 hours. “Its on”

Don
It’s around 6:30 pm EST and I am not sure what time it is in Tokyo where we are landing. We are half way into our 13 hour plus flight and about to cross the international dateline. Our day started at 5am in Vernon NJ and we learned first hand what it is like to drive through NYC morning rush hour trying to get to JFK airport. Upon check-in, my camera/equipment case was way over weight and the airline was going to charge us an extra fee of $385. Well AC and I were not going to let that happen, so we had to repack and move some of the gear around into other bags in front of the other people waiting in line. Then my Park three-way tool (the one I stole from Lars Tribus) was taken from me at the security checkpoint (sorry Lars). Once on the plane we found ourselves to be two of the very few non-Asian people aboard. All of the announcements and printed material are in Japanese so the in-flight reading material is limited. The coolest thing about the trip so far is the personal on-board entertainment center in our seats. We have 14 movies, various TV show, news, video games to choose from. It gets better, we have our own control over what & when we watch, plus pause, rewind & fast forward controls, just incase. I don’t know, maybe this is normal, but I don’t fly international much and AC and I thought it was dope. Sorry for all of the details, but give us a break, it’s the 13.5 hour flight.

After we arrived, Cannondale checked us into our plush hotel in downtown Tokyo. This place kicks ass. It’s full of all of these suit and tie guys conducting big business deals and then us white trash bikers conducting monkey business. Yoshi and Watase from Cannondale Japan took us to this killer Japanese restaurant and we tried all of this crazy food. It was not much fun eating with chopsticks for the first time ever while I was starving, but I survived and made it to bed with a full belly.