SWIFT CAMP OUT 2023 Hokkaido Team Report Pt.2

Hey!

It’s Tommy from BL Yoyogi Park Store.

SWIFT CAMP OUT 2023 Compilation is now on YouTube!!

Please have a look at Pt.1 blog as well!

Many customers seemed to have enjoyed how I described the landscape there, had a lot of conversations about our trip at the store. Now I feel like I’m Bill Gates. Well, not quite.

Okay, let’s continue with our trip.

Oh, I think I haven’t wrote about it, but we did a 2-night trip this time, so we got one more night to cover.

It was actually my first ever time to camp for more than 2 days!

Let’s see how it all turned out…

DAY2

(6:30 am)

Early start of the day at camp…

San-chan “zzz…”

…well, not all members have to be early.

How Sub-chan peels his apple, looks like a villain planning for a wicked trick.

The sun feel sooo goooooood.

Now everyone starts to prepare their own breakfast.

↑↑↑love this photo very much

This aluminium frying pan from JETBOIL turned out to be brilliant.

It’s been a really helpful pal for me wherever I bring it.

Issue-san’s toastie was heavenly!

I came up with an innovative recipe, the “Tomato-Blackhole” (named by Sub-chan)

It’s a dish you can chunk in all the leftover ingredients, reducing food loss to its limits. And however you do it, it’s gonna be delicious. Woah! The best answer to a camping gourmet.

Now everyone’s awake, we’ve all had breakfast, and it’s time to leave!

Brad-san from Freewheeling will guide today as well!

Cycling along this huge Dam felt so good!

San-chan looks great after a goooooood long sleep.

Today, our touring was almost all on road.

We are going to make our way to Sumio Goto Museum.

Temperature above 30℃ in Biei, Furano area seems to be a rare thing. The locals were saying it wouldn’t be this hot, even during mid summer.

Let’s say that we were super lucky to get this fine weather!

Arrived!

The museum had bike stands, very kind of them✌

Everywhere you ride here is beautiful, so I bet there’s a lot of bike riders visiting here as well.

Although I did not know about Sumio Goto before arriving, but I was stunned by what I saw there. Looking at paintworks in a relaxed space, I enjoyed it.

I learnt that he used all sorts of pigments, and some works took about 10 years to complete. For me, the paint work of the Chinese mountains was the most astonishing. The scale and the depth of this painting was insane.

By the way, taking photos was allowed. Took so many of it!

Goto-san was born in Chiba, but he fell in love to Hokkaido’s nature and landscape, and decided to build his museum on this very place.

The museum staff who guided us around told us that he visited Biei and Furano whilst a motorcycle tour, and was so great, that he decided to move here.

True, it really is exceptional…

After a relaxing art viewing, we had lunch at a restaurant in the same building.

Furano Wagyu and north Furano pork mixed ground beef with seasonal vegetables.

Oh my, how great is it to have a delicious meal from local ingredients.

Thank you Brad-san for bringing us here! It was just amazing!

I think like a 10 year old, when I look at those stuff, I can help it.

Wait, why is it pitch black?

Did I spend 100 yen for nothing?

It is you again.

And why is Sub-chan taking photos of this! Am I the only one who missed out on all the fun?

We’ll now head to our campsite for the day, a bit early so that we can relax a bit more today.

It’s a perfect route, great views that I’m sure it’s not on any tourists maps. Brad-san knows it all!

The hills continues forever, was a bit hard but all the great views kept me going.

Arrived to camp!

Private Hill Jiyugaoka

We soon started setting up camp.

Let’s go have a look at each staff’s gears, and see how they packed them on their bikes.

I don’t know a awful lot about camping gears, but Sub-chan’s tent looked so cool.

Kari-Kari borrowed a tent from Cent, and seems like he’s really wanting to have his own now.

Issue-san brought a hammock.

He’d suffer without trees, so I wonder how useful it is. That said, sleeping in a hammock sounds relaxing for sure…

Santa bought a new tent very recently!

There’s a tiny tarp on it, and the external framework has style.

My tent is my favorite MSR Elixir 1.

Not feeling any inconvenience at all at the moment, but now I’m wanting a much lighter one. (calm down!)

Building the tent, and looking at all the fully-packed bikes, I cannot quite believe that we are actually doing all of this.

It’s so so dreamy…

By the way, what we can gaze from this camp really is like WINDOWS XP.

↑↑↑ Look right and this.

↓↓↓ Along the way was that.

Are we in the PC itself?

Because to this beautiful wheat fields, we are able to say Kanpai! everyday 🍺.

Gotta be thankful!

So, time for beer means time for food.

Brad’s dog, Jackson, can’t wait for it.

Kari-Kari, what are you gonna cook us today?

He’s gonna cook us Kari-Kari Curry. A summer treat!! (My pan featured here again!)

Issue the Rice Master, was cooking an infinite amount of rice, but sadly no photos of that lol

We were able to borrow all the BBQ equipments at the campsite, so it was all set!

Beer after beer after beer!

Chunked in BBQ cooked meat in Kari-Kari Curry, and it was the best one I had.

Now my pan is done with cooking curry, it’s my turn to cook!

Yes, you knew it, the Tomato Blackhole!

What’s inside is different from this morning, so no one gets bored.

Besides, by slow cooking and adding extra layers of ingredients, the acidity from the tomato will settle down, and will have more depth in flavor.

As the night goes on, when you look up…

Stars… so many that I thought it’s gonna fall down on us.

Simply magnificent.

With your own eyes we were able to see even more, even those tiny satellites!

There’s a important message that people share across the world at SWIFT CAMPOUT.

We believe that there’s little better than spending the longest day of the year on a bicycle and the shortest night of the year sleeping under the stars.

Think about it. Even we are far away, in Japan, we believed the same, we enjoyed this act together, and we spent time together. That touched me.