#150 kmh
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Im Regen mit 150 kmh über die Landstraße in der Hoffnung, die Kontrolle zu verlieren.
Mit Kippe im Mund und lauter Musik, damit ich wenigstens die letzten Minuten genießen kann, falls heute alles endet.
Vermissen wird mich eh keiner.
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Perez getting so close to getting DotD was ridiculous. Lando absolutely deserved it but it should have been Carlos up there neck & neck with him for it, not the guy who f*cked up his qualifying
lando deserves nothing but the best including this little nod to his awesome driving skills. and even though i think checo drove well and came back incredibly (you have to know how to drive even if your car is a rocket ship and other drivers were always praised for fighting their way back the field so let that be a good thing for perez too), carlos is somehow always the second or third choice in almost every situation, both in the eye of the public and for professionals. which is just fucking ridiculous. man couldn't even enjoy the day he dreamed of last year because his team wanted his teammate there instead but fucked everything up and blamed it on carlos. on carlos, who fights with his claws for every place every race, making decisions on strategy, tyre choice, when to attack who all the while driving a car 150 kmh average on a track that you cannot use fully. every time charles and him come close, commentators never fail to start the discussion on when should carlos leave space for charles like he was signed as a fucking attack dog for him. and every time it needs to be done for the greater good (for the team) and it's sensible for carlos, he backs off because he's above all a gentleman.
so honestly just fuck everything, he deserves so so so much better than the way he's always been treated.
#lot of things can be said about mclaren but one thing is for sure: they trusted and loved and respected carlos like no one else before#it will always be a home for him and i don't think it's only in my imagination#sorry for being aggressive or whatever anon it's not for you i'm just so fucking angry and disappointed at ferrari and f1 in general#this weekend peaked at thursday#carlos sainz#ask box box box#anon
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@mvrtogg
At the end of the day, it was relatively harmless fun, mild inconvenience at worst. It's not like he was injured from the frequent encounters, his pride...an another question.
Of course no one let Marcell visiting his family's grave in New York go alone, not since they became his new family. While Rozália (and mostly everyone) preferred warmer climates, she hadn't given up on exploring an causing just a tiny bit of trouble during their stay. Marcell must be in need of a few fresh stories anyways. The first time was a genuine accident, she almost apologized. Almost.
It sort of became a surprise visit after she figured out the coffee shop is indeed the police officer's favorite go to as a start of the day. And it pretty much ended the same, with him drenched in his morning coffee; at this point she wouldn't be surprised if she was reflexively shot on sight by now. She was slowly but steadily upping the speed, nowhere near the full power but more than enough to warrant a large fine.
The woman snickered under the devil helmet, the familiar rush of adrenaline attaching its tiny hooks into her better judgment. The bright red Ducati zipped through street with an astonishing 150 kmh, shamelessy taking advantage of the small pools from the rain at dawn, adding a graceful arch of water to the usual spillt coffee.
Tires screeched at the quick brake to study her handiwork, for the first time even unclasping her helmet to do so.
"Learn how to drive bitch!" the frustrated remark by an another biker was followed by a long tongued, vulgar display hinting at how she should be given oral sex, the gesture shocking enough for the man to drive straight into a lamppost. Rich alto laughter followed the scene, catlike green eyes focusing on the officer again with a playful grin playing on her lips.
#🏍 modern verse 🎸 | speed demon on the highway to hell#🏍 ic 🎸 | back in black leather; a crimson powerhouse thundering underneath her#🛡 mvrtogg 🤍 | you can be the knight; the hero l don't need: can't you see even flowers quiver upon my approach#(This little shit I swear)
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like this guy went and did the most edtwt coquette fucking challenge on me and thought i wouldnt notice and assume tehy had innocent intentions Ill fucking show you a """"weight""" """challenge"""""" when i slam into you full force at 150 kmh with a Truck
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Nebelleuchte! Man hat nicht die Garantie, dass man bei Verkehr über 130km/h fahren kann. Wegen diesen Minuten Unterschied zwischen 130 und 150 kmh nimmt man nicht den Weg durch die Stadt…
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Horseflies - amirite?
Horseflies have been around for a very very long time, long enough to specialise into about 4,400 distinct species.
Horse flies first appeared in the fossil record about 150 million years ago, so they had to wait quite a long time for their English language namesakes to appear.
Horses to a modern eye have only been on Earth for about 50 million years.
Horseflies have got a pretty chequered reputation on account of their blood-sucking tendencies, incredible speed and relentless day-flying.
It is only the females of the species who have hardened mouth parts, as they need the protein of blood to fuel the growth of their eggs. In the main, they are nectar feeders except for a few very specific species who are evolutionarily hardwired to really annoy grazing livestock in East Africa.
Unfortunate livestock are not of course confined to East Africa, and after Europeans introduced certain families to North America in 1899 - they’ve gone on to spread widely - aggregating in large swarms.
Fly legend Erica McAlister estimates them costing the US economy up to $1 billion every year in control measures and cattle loss.
In general, the male mouth parts are comparatively soft - however they make up for their pathetic floppy gobs by being some of the fastest animals on earth. Some species are even capable of flying 145 kmh in pursuit of a female. Phoooar!
Up close, many species of Horsefly have strongly patterned eyes with kaleidoscopic colours created by colour filters on their cornea.
However internal juice slurping and psychedelic compound eyes aside, Horseflies, like most flies, are important pollinators. This is down to their taste for nectar and ability to travel widely in some cases travelling 40 km a day.
People love bees, but flies in all their bewildering diversity form immensely important links in ecosystems.
Sure, they might seem a bit gross, sure, they might on occasion harbour infectious diseases. Yes, their larvae might - as with the botfly - emerge from your lower leg alien-like after many months pupating under the skin, but arguably humans do much worse things to each other.
So hurray for flies.
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Stirling-electric hybrid vehicles are an idea that I keep coming back to, even though this is an idea people far smarter and better at engineering than I have been trying to tackle for a very long time. (The earliest example I can think of is the GMC Stir-Lec from 1969, but it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if someone was trying to build a Stirling electric hybrid when Stanley Steamers were still battling Ford Model Ts.) All the current trends – and regulatory frameworks – are toward full electrification based on giant batteries, but Stirling-electric still captivates my imagination.
A Stirling engine has a lower power-to-weight ratio than an internal combustion engine, but how bad is it? Well, the 1986 NASA project said they had gotten it to 3.35 kg/kW. (Has there been any progress since 1986 on Stirling engines? I don’t know. There have been some new developments with thermoacoustic Stirling engines and such, but I’m not sure they’d be any better than traditional Stirling engines for this application.) With a hybrid, the most sensible approach is to make the heavy Stirling engine as weak as it can be while sustaining a desired top cruising speed – bursts of acceleration are better handled by electrical motors with better power-to-weight ratios.
It’s commonly said that a car only needs maybe 20 hp (15 kW) to cruise at a highway speed of, say, 60 mph/100 kmh. That’s not very marketable, though. If we supposed that a top sustainable speed – the top speed at which you’re burning fuel, but not draining your batteries – should be more like 90 mph, then we might want 1.5^3 = 3.375 times that much power (this is on the pessimistic assumption that air resistance is basically all resistance, since it scales worst (cubically) with speed). Other situations besides speeding, like towing or going up a long-enough upward incline that it wouldn’t just be cleared on battery alone, might also be occasions for sustained power higher than the ~15 kW highway level. So maybe 50 kW. A stirling engine capable of producing that might weigh 170 kg.
For our electric motors, we might want, say, 150 kW, for a marketably peppy response. The motor of a Tesla Model 3 (cited in Wikipedia on a list of power densities) has got 6.26 kW/kg. That might require 30 kg. If we’re going for a serial hybrid rather than a parallel hybrid – with no direct connection between the Stirling engine and the drivetrain, only a connection that bypasses the battery to feed electrical power to the motors directly – then the power going to the tires is just from the electric motors, not the Stirling engine. This might simplify the engineering, though..
Then there are the batteries. If we wanted four minutes of battery power at near-maximum power – making sure to compensate for any lag in the Stirling engine heating up – then we’d want ~100 kW * ~250 seconds = 25 MJ. This is also close to the minimum for an American tax-break eligible plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, which requires a battery of at least 7 kWh, or 25.2 MJ. If we got 0.4 MJ/kg then that’s another 65 kg. One question is whether the battery has enough power, not just enough energy. I am having a hard time finding sources on this. Wikipedia pages on power density seem too pessimistic given what we see out of electric vehicles like the Model S Plaid. (100 kWh battery, 1020 hp ~=760 kW, suggesting that a battery can discharge itself in 8 minutes at most, depending on whether the Plaid is basically designed with motors that are as powerful as possible given its battery.) We might need to double the size of the batteries to power the motors enough.
So we’re adding 265-340 kg to the vehicle so far. There will probably be a bit more – regenerative braking systems, power distributing linkages, etc. On the other hand, we’ve gotta remember that we’re also taking the internal combustion engine out.
Is 280 kg too much? I suppose a comparison might be plug-in hybrids, which are rather heavy on account of an ICE-electric hybrid energy system and a rather large battery. A Subaru Crosstrek conventional has a curb weight of 3298 lbs, while the PHEV weighs in at 3,717 lbs, a difference of 190 kg. The Kia Sportage has a curb weight of 3,373 lbs, while the PHEV version weighs 4211, a difference of 380 kg.
Perhaps with some sort of modular system could add versatility to the fueling types, with different modules for gasoline, compressed natural gas or hydrogen, waste vegetable oil (perhaps a preheater would be good for something that viscous). The Stirling engine might lose a little peak power on some fuels relative to gasoline, but for ordinary, not-too-fast, not-too-hilly cruising that might just mean it runs more and it doesn’t affect the performance too much – although in times of persistent high demand for power, like climbing up a hill, towing a trailer, or just speeding, you might notice the deficiency.
One possible issue is hydrogen embrittlement. If the Stirling engine has a working fluid other than hydrogen, it would be less efficient, while if it’s using materials that are resistant to hydrogen embrittlement, then that might make it less rugged and heavier. I think they used sufficiently embrittlement-resistant stainless steel and hydrogen as a working fluid in the 1986 NASA project, but one way to cheat for a short-term test of a relatively powerful, light Stirling engine would be to just use hydrogen as a working fluid and regular steel engine parts, and if they crack like a week later, that’s after your tests are done.
I don’t really know that much about the details of obstacles to alternative ideas for cars, though. I guess I’ve been a bit car-brained since I became a car owner almost a year ago. I suspect that when you first get a job as an engineer at Ford or Honda, the first thing in your inbox is a Powerpoint attachment titled “Here’s Why We’re Not Going to Consider Your Stupid Alternative Powertrain Ideas.” Maybe if someone could leak that to me that would give me some clarity.
I guess Dean Kamen tried to get some kind of Stirling-based car going, and there's some guy, Josh MacDowell, who turned a Ford F-150 into a Stirling-Electric hybrid? Given that there's no IP protection on Stirling engines, though, I think there must be more practical obstacles that I'm not considering.
Update: One consideration I omitted was volume. Although the batteries of battery electric vehicles are infamous for being heavy, they are convenient geometrically, being dense, mostly homogeneous, and capable of being fit in almost any shape so long as the final volume is the same.
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how much is 130 km/h that sounds fast 😳
it's about 80 mph I think? It's really not that fast. the german highway usually has speed limits that are either 100 kmh (62 mph), 120 kmh (75 mph) or 130 kmh (82 mph).
And then you have sections where there is no speed limit (those are usually the majority and limits are only in place if there is road work or something). No speed limit means you can drive as fast as your car can manage. I usually drive about 150 kmh (93 mph) but there are alwats people who drive 200+ kmh (125+ mph)
I'm annoyed bc today there were more restrictions than usual and so we couldn't drive as fast as we wanted
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Des couleurs très jolies . Modèle du vent en direct . Une rafale à 72 kmh à 14H à Nîmes. Le vent va continuer à souffler toute la journée 150 Kmh vers Tuchan. 122K Kmh Perpignan https://www.instagram.com/p/CpxY2LitABd/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
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After Nate won the race by drifting like a boss through all the other cars 150 kmH
One of our crazy night drives
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Sigma sport mc 8 bedienungsanleitung pdf printer
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Sigma sport bc 1200 kabellos bedienungsanleitung siemens
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Off Road All Terrain e-scooter Market : Technological Growth Map over Time
The global off road all terrain e-scooter market is predicted to witness a moderate growth rate of 4.8% during the forecast years. The net worth of the off road all terrain e-scooter market share is expected to reach US$ 2.5 Billion by the year 2032, increasing from US$ 1.53 Billion in the year 2021.
Global concern over the increasing amount of polluting emission gases and deteriorating urban air quality have ushered in a new era for electric scooter and vehicles in the global market. In line with such encouragement, there has also been a growing trend in sales of electric scooter for rough terrains across the world in recent times.
Greater performance parameters and lightweight design are the precursors to the growing demand for off road all terrain e-scooter in the global market. The popularity of off road biking events is poised to be an instrumental factor in determining the off road all terrain e-scooter market opportunities in the coming days.
Several government incentives for greater sales of off road all terrain e-scooter have favoured the overall growth of the business in the regional markets. The establishment of suitable infrastructure for the adoption of electric vehicles is anticipated to create conducive off road all terrain e-scooter market key trends and opportunities in the future.
Key Takeaways
The current day net worth of global off road all terrain e-scooter market size is estimated to be around US$ 1.56 Billion by 2032.
The overall year-on-year growth rate of the off road all terrain e-scooter market share is found out to be 4.8% for the forecast years of 2022 to 2032.
The gross forecasted value of the global market is predicted to reach US$ 2.5 Billion by the year 2032 as per the off road all terrain e-scooter market analysis.
Two wheeler off road electric scooters have always remained the top performing segment and is expected to continue as it is in the coming year.
Competitive Landscape
All the prominent market players of the global off road all terrain e-scooter market are increasingly focussing on designing best all terrain e-scooters according to the customer requirement of specific regions to achieve market penetration. However, adoption of recent development to provide better features with the existing models is also a key strategy popularizing the off road all terrain e-scooter market.
Global Off Road All Terrain E-scooter Market Key Players
Xiaomi Corporation
Voro Motors
Segway
Apollo Scooters
GOTRAX
Aovopra
INOKIM
KAABO
Kugoo
Techlife
Evercross
Dualtron
Key Segments
By Type:
Unicycle
Two Wheel
Three Wheel
By Speed:
20 to 30 Kmh
30 to 50 Kmh
50 to 70 Kmh
Above 70 Kmh
By Range:
Below 40 Km
40 to 60 Km
60 to 80 Km
80 to 100 Km
Above 100 Km
By Distribution Channel:
OEM
E-commerce
Others
By Motors:
Single Motor
Twin Motor
By Region:
North America
Latin America
Europe
Asia Pacific
Middle East and Africa (MEA)
Recent Developments in Off Road All Terrain E-Scooter Market
After absorbing the Amsterdam-based e-scooter manufacturer ETERGO, Ola Electric announced plans to establish the world's largest electric scooter facility in December 2020. It intends to build this massive factory in India in order to grab the regional market.
NIU technologies, a smart urban mobility solutions company, has announced the debut of a new product called 'G0' by the end of May 2020. It's a sort of e-bike from the Gova series designed for the Chinese market.
In June 2019, Li-ions Elecktric Solutions unveiled the Spock electric scooter, which is powered by 72V 40AH lithium-ion batteries. The main benefit of this newly introduced model is its roughly 150-kilometer range on a single battery charge.
For More Info@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/off-road-all-terrain-e-scooter-market
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"SOUTHERN 100" Road Races ISLE OF MAN
Joey's Gate 150-Kmh/ 95-MPH
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Shapeshifter Travel Speed Notes
Because apparently I feel like being THAT person tonight :P First some base human per dium stats (assuming about 8hrs a day, 5 days a week)
Travel on foot, with luggage: 15 km / 9 miles. (75 km / 46 miles per week)
Travel on foot, minimum luggage: 20-22 km / 12.5-14 miles. (100-110 km, 65 miles per week)
Travel on horseback, no spare horse: 30-40 km, 19-25 miles. (150-200 km, 95-125 miles per week)
Travel on horseback, with a spare horse: 40-60 km, 25-37 miles. (200-300 km, 125-185 miles per week)
Now, some randomly googled average bird stats
Peregrin falcon: 65-90 kmh / 40-55mph
Golden Eagle: 45-50 kmh / 30 mph
gyrfalcon: 80-110 kmh / 50-70 mph (that's highway speed baybee!)
generic crow 30-60 mph (real helpful there google)
generic raven 50-70 mph (so like crow but bigger--makes sense)
And my own personal, need-all-these-numbers-in-one-place, basic ass just walking to get somewhere we’ll say 5mph for easy math
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Knights in White Lycra
Words by Susan Burton
Why a group of foreigners bicycle to Fukushima every year – and what this says about charitable giving in Japan
The Knights ride out from Tokyo on the Friday evening bullet train, their bicycles dismantled and stowed in the obligatory rinko carry-on bags. They overnight in Takasaki city in Gunma Prefecture and the following morning they rise early to begin their quest – to ride 500 kilometres in four days to the Aiikuen Children’s Home in Fukushima prefecture and to raise money for the 72 children who live there.
In the peloton this year there are 42 riders from 14 different countries, ranging in age from 23 to 63. Twenty-six are attempting the ride for the first time. They are grouped together in seven teams of six, by experience, ability and willingness to stop for lunch. Each group is led by an able, veteran Knight.
Rob Williams (53, works in finance) is the Knights’ spiritual leader. In 2012, he and a group of fellow British expatriates were slumped disconsolately in the Hobgoblin pub in Tokyo staring at their beer guts. They concluded that they either needed to stop drinking or take up some form of exercise. They chose cycling because, “Brits are good at sport that involves sitting down.” There was also a more serious side to their quest. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake and nuclear disaster in March 2011, several of them had made repeated trips into the disaster area delivering emergency aid and public donations. But a year on, many places still lacked even basic necessities. One of these was Minamisoma, a city 25 kilometres north of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Minamisoma was partially destroyed by the tsunami and most of the surviving residents were forced to relocate outside the 30-kilometre mandated radiation evacuation zone. In April 2012, when the zone was reduced to 20 kilometres, some residents had been allowed to return but many still had no electricity, running water or medical facilities.
That evening in the Hobgoblin pub, Rob and his friends decided they would cycle to Minamisoma to raise money to supply the residents of the city’s temporary accommodation with food and drinking water. Later in a karaoke bar someone stood up and sang the Moody Blues song, and the Knights in White Lycra (KIWL) were born. Their motto: get fit and give back.
Rob is also one of the ride’s team leaders this year. His team are strictly A to B cyclists, speeding to their destination in the shortest possible time. For lunch he allows them eight minutes to grab rice balls and Pocari Sweat drinks from the local convenience store.
Andy Abbey’s group prefer to stop for a sit-down lunch at a café or roadside noodle bar. Andy (British, 47, works in management consultancy) joined the Knights in its second year. Hours after the earthquake, a Facebook page called Foreigner Volunteers (now Foreign Volunteers Japan) appeared calling for contributions and helpers. Their first donation was a case of baked beans. When they had filled six two-tonne trucks, Andy and several other foreigners drove north. Recalls Andy, “Everything was just flat. It was terrifying.” The tsunami had swept away houses, cars and people up to 5 kilometres inland and 200 kilometres all the way up the east coast of Japan. Compounding the catastrophe was the nuclear radiation which was spewing from three exploded reactors and spreading unchecked on the spring winds and coastal currents. “It was very obvious that this was an unmanageable situation,” says Andy. Some foreigners went north only once, too traumatised by what they had seen to go back. Andy made repeated trips to the disaster areas. But he wanted to do more. He’s now a member of the KIWL committee.
Miho Inosaki (Malaysian-Japanese, works in public relations) is in Andy’s group. At 23, she is the youngest and least experienced rider and one of only five women in the peloton. She first encountered the Knights when she was tasked by her company Custom Media, one of the Knights’ sponsors, with filming their annual promotional video. Before becoming a ‘Knightess’, she had never cycled before and she averages one crash every third time she gets in the saddle. Within five minutes of picking up her new bicycle for this year’s ride she collided with a motorcycle. (During the ride, she somersaults over her handlebars and hits her head on a fence post.)
Egon Boettcher (New Zealander, 48, works in banking) leads another group and plans the Knight’s route, a difficult task due to Japan’s mountainous terrain and the fact that the ride takes place during the rainy season. Japan also has the world’s highest incidence of earthquakes, but the Knights have been fortunate. Earthquakes tend to strike in areas Egon has just left. This year, a magnitude 6 rattles Niigata two days after the Knights’ departure.
In previous years, the Knights had started their quest in Nihonbashi in central Tokyo but with heavily congested streets and numerous traffic lights it took more than three hours to clear the metropolis. Now they take the train and begin in another prefecture. This also enables them to vary the journey every year and to make it a challenge worth sponsoring. Tokyo is only 300 kilometres from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, a distance that has been imprinted on every Tokyo resident’s mind since the plant’s meltdown. (By comparison, Chernobyl is over 2,000 kilometres from London.)
On the first day, the Knights cycle from Takasaki to Yuzawa in Niigata prefecture, a distance of 55 kilometres in 27-degree Celsius heat under a sun unobstructed by a single cloud. The journey takes them through the Japanese countryside in early summer, past flooded rice fields sprouting green shoots and to a height of 1,200 metres, in sight of mountains from which the snow has yet to melt.
They spend the first night in the town of Yuzawa, in a mountainous region of Niigata prefecture known as ‘snow country’. Their lodgings, a resort called Twin Towers, is a complex of privately-owned apartments developed during the economic boom in the 1980s. More than two decades into an economic recession, many of the owners are unable to sell and now rent out the rooms to cover exorbitant maintenance charges. There are few guests in green season. Andy appears to have the 11th floor to himself. Egon rattles round a duplex penthouse that he learns was refurbished for the Emperor and Empress during the 1998 winter Olympics in nearby Nagano (but they never stayed there). “We never saw a soul who wasn’t with us,” says Egon. “It was like the Shining.”
On the second day, they pedal further north to Niigata city on the Sea of Japan along routes lined with lush spring greenery and across wide bridges spanning streams that will swell into torrents in a matter of hours. With the rainy season approaching, a searing heat reflects off the tarmacked roads and a thick, stifling humidity envelops the riders.
Rainy season arrives on the morning of the third day, bringing 50-kmh head and cross winds. Three riders are blown off their bikes on the 150-kilometre journey to Aizu Wakamatsu, where the riders ease their aching limbs in the steaming onsen (volcanic hot spring). In case of accidents, injuries and punctures, the riders are followed by two support cars. Padded cycle shorts and ‘bum butter’ are essential on the road. But a soak in a hot spring eases the muscles at the end of the day. And that’s one good thing about having so few women on the ride, notes Miho. There’s always plenty of room in the women’s onsen.
On the fourth and final day, the winds have blown themselves out but the rain continues to trickle down the backs of windcheaters and seep into microfibre shoes. The morning begins with a long climb to a plateau on which sits Lake Inawashiro, the fourth-largest lake in Japan, also known as the Heavenly Mirror Lake because of the glass-like clearness of the water. The sun reappears just as the riders reach the Aiikuen Children’s Home which is situated south of Fukushima city and, gallingly for the exhausted riders, at the summit of one of the ride’s steepest hills. As they round the final bend, the excited children are waiting to greet them, waving flags of the Knights’ home countries and stretching out their hands for high fives. “It was just a wonderful moment,” says Miho later. “Just this overwhelming feeling of emotion where you went, ‘Oh my god, that’s why we do it.’” The riders dismount and the children, aged from 2 to 18, rush up. They want to know all about the Knights’ road bicycles. One little boy tries on Andy’s cycling helmet. “He decided I was his best friend and would show me the children’s home,” Andy recalls. The riders are led by the children into the gymnasium where they sit cross-legged on the floor to listen to a speech of thanks.
Aiikuen was founded in 1893 by Uryū Iwako (1829-1897), an orphaned daughter from a merchant family who dedicated her life to the improvement of living conditions for ordinary people. Situated 49 kilometres away from Daiichi, the orphanage is outside the evacuation zone. But because it stands on a hill facing the plant, when the reactors blew, its seven hectares of thickly-forested grounds – sports field, campsite and lawn – were coated in caesium-137. The prefectural government paid to have Aiikuen cleaned, hosing down the modern concrete buildings, removing grass and chopping down trees. But hotspots remained and for several years after the disaster Aiikuen staff (like many parents in the Tohoku region) limited the children’s outdoor playtime. They also tested food for contamination and regularly checked the children’s health. The immediate danger may have passed but Aiikuen still needs more support, which the government is slow to provide.
Nationwide, only ten per cent of approximately 30,000 children in care are orphans. The rest have been removed from neglected or abusive homes or given up by families who are unable to care for them financially. Fostering and adoption remain rare in Japan because parents must give legal permission for their child to be cared for by someone else and for cultural reasons – predominantly loss of face – they are unlikely to agree to this. Adoption is registered on the koseki (the family register) which is a publicly available document, and the stigma of having an adoption in the family bloodline (suggesting an unplanned pregnancy or a lack of financial stability) can affect job and marriage prospects. Less than ten per cent of children in welfare are fostered or adopted. Most remain within the welfare system long-term (just under half live in children’s homes for more than five years), sometimes with little or no parental contact. They are termed ‘throwaway children’, trapped in a legal limbo until they must leave at 17 or 18.
The attitude of some Japanese towards marginalised and disadvantaged groups is not always sympathetic, and the needs of children in care homes is not an issue that many Japanese wish to look at too closely. Says Andy, “I think there’s a blanket assumption here that the government takes care of everything. That’s good in some respects because generally the government kind of does but when something goes wrong – and the Tohoku earthquake was a perfect example – the government literally couldn’t take care of everything. No government could take care of that. It was impossible.” This is why KIWL has focused its money-raising efforts on children’s charities, in particular grassroots organisations for whom even a small amount of money can make a big difference.
In the gymnasium, the children present the Knights with certificates of appreciation printed by Aiikuen’s Digital Citizenship Club on its laser printer. With little or no parental support, a university education is impossible for young people coming out of the care system and they risk falling into low level work in factories or the sex industry. One goal of Aiikuen is to educate the children in skills that may enable them to find fulfilling jobs when they leave, particularly in the technology industry. During the ceremony, word arrives that the Knights’ cycle ride has raised just over ten million Yen (£75,000) for YouMeWe, the charity which supports the home. It will help to pay for more computing equipment and training in digital skills such as coding and video editing.
Most of the ten million Yen comes from corporate sponsorship. The Knights’ major sponsors are the international companies for which many of the riders work. This year, alongside the Knights’ logo (a plumed helmet and a shield depicting linked hands) there are 26 sponsor names on the riders’ jackets including Netflix, World Family, Land Rover, Boyd & Moore Executive Search and Allied Pickfords, companies which reflect the transient nature of expatriate life in Japan. In western countries, sponsoring someone to do a sporting challenge is a recognised way of raising money for charity. Egon’s first sponsored event at age 8 was cycling round and round a school track on a Raleigh bicycle. But in Japan there is no concept of the sponsored event. When Miho asked friends to sponsor her they were confused. “I got questions like, ‘Why would I pay you to do sports?’” In Japan, charitable giving more commonly takes the form of volunteering in the local community and doing chores – such as managing rubbish collections, street cleaning and watching over elderly residents – for your neighbourhood association. “It’s not that there’s no charitable spirit,” says Andy. “It’s just expressed in a different way.” 3/11 was a disaster on an unprecedented scale and many Japanese reacted immediately, collecting donations from friends and neighbours and forming residents’ groups to travel to the disaster area to provide volunteer labour. But paying foreigners to bicycle there was perplexing. Toru Akiyama, one of the five Japanese riders and at 63 the group’s oldest Knight, had to work hard for the money he raised from friends and colleagues. “He had to explain individually, this is what a sponsored event is,” says Miho. One result of the Fukushima disaster is that the number of charities seems to be increasing along with a shift in understanding about the many ways that donations can be raised. The 500-kilometre sponsored ride is not the only sporting challenge the Knights take on. There are marathons, pub quizzes, golf, futsal and even motorcycling. Once a year Andy organises a walk around the Imperial Palace and gives participants a KIWL t-shirt in return for a donation. “And for Japanese people that’s much more manageable psychologically than sponsoring Egon to ride 500 kilometres,” admits Rob.
In the days after the disaster, it was noticed by the Japanese media that some foreigners (known as ‘gaijin’ in Japanese) were attempting to leave, heading straight to Narita airport which was – ironically – marginally closer to the nuclear power plant. They were termed ‘flyjin’ and accused of ditching Japan in its time of need. In fact, just as many Japanese fled to southern parts of Japan where they had relatives. Most foreigners didn’t have that option. And many, like Andy and other future Knights, were driving in the opposite direction, right into the disaster area and risking their health, if not their lives, in the process. Andy says he never breached the 30-kilometre evacuation zone around the power plant. He drove around it. Nevertheless, he and the others were aware of the implications of a sudden rainfall or a change in the direction of the wind. Andy also took the iodine tablets the British embassy were offering. “He snorted them recreationally,” jokes Egon. The Knights are a good-humoured bunch but there is no denying the dangers present during those first weeks. While tourism (particularly foreign tourism) to the Tohoku region has since recovered, it should not be forgotten that the half-life of caesium-137 is 35 years. Wandering in the Aiikuen grounds after the ceremony the Knights come across a large radiation monitoring station. A nearby golf course appears deserted.
The Knights’ first sponsored ride, from Tokyo to Minamisoma in 2013, was abandoned when for the first time in ten years the region was hit by a blizzard. The highway was closed and several of the riders suffered hypothermic symptoms. Six of the original ten Knights returned two months later to finish the ride. That year they raised 2.7 million Yen (£20,000). Year on year they have doubled the number of riders and consequently the amount raised. In subsequent years, they have cycled to and on behalf of several different children’s charities in the Tohoku area. By riding to the charitable organisation the Knights can see first-hand where their money is going, which Rob observes has a greater impact on the riders. There are tears and, when the Knights move on to a new charity, some riders continue their support for a place they have visited. For two years, the Knights rode for Place to Grow (a charity supporting children and their families in Minamisanriku, a town that was 95 per cent destroyed by the tsunami). Andy and Egon continue to act as cycling Santas for them, delivering gifts to the children at Christmas. The Knights’ support for Mirai no Mori (a charity which offers American summer camps to disadvantaged children) has been maintained by BNP Paribas, a KIWL sponsor.
KIWL is a small group with a big impact. They have raised 62.3 million Yen (£469,000) since they first came together to “get fit and give back.” Says Miho, “The beautiful scenery, the challenge, the camaraderie, the drinking are all very nice bonuses but nothing really compares. Even the sensation of knowing that you’ve cycled 500 kilometres doesn’t come close to what you feel when you see all those kids look so excited to see you.” And Rob Williams has achieved another goal. ‘Fat Rob’ (as the others jokingly call him) has lost 10 kilogrammes since that drunken evening in the Hobgoblin.
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