To begin

Let us first begin this blog by telling a little bit about who we are.



We are Kinya & Kao Hanada. We call ourselves Mumbreeze for various art/design activities we do. We also love riding our bikes. I (Kinya, the husband) must admit I'm quite a bike nerd. I've had a long on and off history with the bicycle. I will go into that more in later posts. I've found myself following more and more cycling related blogs lately and it only seemed natural that I should begin one myself. We have other Mumbreeze blogs (one in English & one in Japanese) and sometimes we talk about bike related stuff there, but I really wanted to start a cycling specific blog, so here it is.



Kao (my lovely wife) likes to ride the bike as well, but that is probably in large part due to my enthusiasm for the bicycle. It also has to do with the fact that we moved to Portland, Oregon two years ago and not having a car, our best option for getting around was the bicycle. We have quite a strange living arrangement though. While we are both of Japanese nationality, I have had US green card for a long time, Kao doesn't have any legal status here. We moved to Portland thinking that we would get her a residency or visa of some kind. However, that really hasn't worked out and we've been going back and forth between here and Japan where Kao lives most of the year. While I like living here in Portland a lot, it's getting a bit ridiculous living apart, so I most likely will move back to Japan. However, until then, I will try and enjoy my time here. Portland is definitely one of the most bicycle friendly cities in North America, so I think there will be no shortage of things to write about.

I'd been thinking about starting this blog for a while, but I decided finally to start it today because today is the first day of Pedalpalooza here in Portland. It's some kind of a cycling related festival. I've actually never been to it and know very little about it, but this year I'm actually aware of its happening thanks to the many informative blogs I'd been reading. I've seen pictures of it and it's like some people doing dances on little bikes and stuff, right? I actually don't enjoy big crowds so much, so while I am excited to see it, I am not sure I will enjoy all aspects of it. Anyway, I will report on what I see albeit with a slightly skeptic point of view.

So, I have plenty to write about at least for the immediate future. Kao says she will make some posts as well. Since she lived in Japan most of her life and never thought that she would need to speak English until she met me and we thought about living in the US, her English isn't good enough to write here, (at least so she thinks) but she likes taking pictures a lot, so she says she will be posting some pictures. She's quite a newbie to cycling, but she's getting quite the hang of it and is enjoying it a lot. We'll see if if her enthusiasm for it will continue or not. I hope it does as I enjoy going on rides with her a lot.

I wanted to quickly put this post up, so I haven't quite got around to adding other stuff like links to the blog yet, but I will be doing that little by little. If you have a cycling blog and want us to add it to our links, let us know. Thanks!