I had a dream. It was not a big dream as far as dreams can go, but it was my dream. Sometimes dreams are conjured up and then forgotten. Sometimes they are held onto for a long time but they never leave the status of dreams. This is the story of a dream that got promoted to reality.

My dream goes back to childhood. So for as long as I can recall, I have had this thought that I would like to see the sun rise and set over the ocean in the same day. America is a very wide country in most places, and this is no simple task. When I lived in England, it would have been more feasible, but I just never got around to it. So here I was in Japan, a relatively narrow country, and suddenly the task was feasible once again.

The dream was reawakened. It was brought back from the depth of the place that old dreams, big and small, are stored. It passed from the realm of thought to one of conversation. I made mention of this to Vicki during a car ride we shared while we were preparing for the AJET Farewell Party last July. She took a liking to it and thought it would make an interesting event. Suddenly the dream, was promoted to an idea.

A couple of weeks later I got a call from Bobbie Jo, asking me to organize an event around this idea. She asked me to come up with a name for the event so she could publicize it for the new incoming JET teachers. I said I would call her back, and after only about 10 minutes, I did. The Aomori Sun Run was born.

The next step was for the idea to become a plan. I organized a car rally that went from the East Coast of Japan to the west coast, from sun rise to sun set, from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Japan. The amount of time it took to organize the rally proved to be considerable.

First a route had to be decided. I pulled out my Aomori map and made the choices, more or less arbitrarily. We would start in Hashikami-Cho, the southeastern-most town in Aomori-ken. The west coast finish of the rally was to be at Kodomari-mura, a mountainous outcropping of rock jutting out into the Sea of Japan above a village famous for squid fishing. The shrine at the top of the mountain has a tower with a spectacular view of the Mt. Iwaki, Hokkaido, and the Sea of Japan on a clear day. So, with the beginning and end points decided, the real planning and research began.

I enlisted the support of many JET friends to make this event happen. Jeff had offered to help. Via phone, map book, and fax we hashed out a route that we thought would be feasible within the span of one day's light. Jeff is more of a cultural traveler than I and he recommended many interesting sights to pass the route through. The next journey was onto the internet to seek out help.

This whole experience would have been a whole different challenge without the help I found online. I found a site maintained by a Virginia car rally association. A man who I only know as wmmjack@aol.com answered my initial query for information and through a brief but detailed correspondence offered me a great amount of help and advice to organize this rally. He steered me away from some pitfalls, and pointed out the difficulty of the event I was proposing. While he liked the idea, he pointed out to me that veteran organizers usually plan rallies over a route less than 75 kilometers, and any rally over 100 kilometers is a very long course. The rally route that I had already mostly charted out proved to be 275 kilometers.

I decided to would be critical to make the rally as user friendly as possible. Still, I had roughly 12 hours of daylight to use, and I didn't want to finish too early, nor too late. I also wanted to leave time to drive the route leisurely and not race.

Armed with this information, Andrea and her daughter Dale, age 7, and her son Connor, age 5, were press ganged into service...er...ah...I mean...they volunteered to help organize the rally. About a month prior to the event we drove about 5 hours from her home in Nakasato in the northwest to Hashikami-cho.

I wasn't sure how we were going to do, but there was a potentially bad omen when only a short way from her house as we started to enter the mountains at night Andrea failed to negotiate a corner. Fortunately, there was a small driveway right at the turn, so we didn't actually hit anything. I breathed deep, didn't say anything and then put my trust in her hands. I figured her self preservation and mother instincts would keep me safe, and if not, well, I guess there never is a good day to plunge over a cliff.

The trip was partially derailed into a McDonald's quest to satisfy two children to whom we had made the promise that we would go find burgers at some point. It was almost complete disaster when the designated McDonalds had closed at an unreasonably early hour of the evening, and there were no more McDonalds on the radar scope. They begrudgingly accepted KFC. Appetites suppressed we trekked on to Kristy's house. She was generous enough to let us use her house for the planning of the rally, as well as offering to host the pre-rally gathering.

The next morning we checked out the coast looking for a good spot to start the Sun Run. Then, we charted the distance between every intersection and traffic light along the way for the next 200 kilometers. I had decided early on that it would be too simple of a task to simply hand people a map, so this step proved to be necessary, although I would later learn to regret the staggering paperwork burden this would create.

That was not nearly interesting enough. We also needed to fill out the chart with copious amounts of trivia and objects to look out for to entertain our competitors and assure them they were on the correct route. On top of this we tried to visit most of the cultural sites that came up on the way.

The children performed marvelously in the car considering we spent an entire Saturday in the car, but by the end of our twelve hour mapping marathon, I was ready to escape. I suppose they might have felt that way about me too. We had done a significant amount of work, and fleshed out the majority of the literally cross-country course. The west part was left untraveled, but I was sure I would get to it later.

Over the next two weekends, I took my motorcycle out to verify and flesh out the details of the first half of the course. The weather was a mix of misery and rain. It was slow and at times dangerous. At one point in the trip I had been traveling down dark, rain slicked, slamming, steep, fog covered, forested, mountain roads. It was nothing but black. The small headlight of the motorcycle was totally inadequate to the conditions, but I think any light would have been absorbed by the blackness in front of me. I had been going for about an hour at an excruciatingly slow pace. An occasional mad man on four wheels would appear from behind me and skid off into the mist to my front.

Then there was a Twilight Zone moment. Seemingly out of nowhere, a pizza restaurant with a neon pink sign appeared. In the middle of the mountains in remote northern Japan, and there it was, Pizza. Who was I to argue with fate? I went in, I expected Rod Serling to appear at any moment and start narrating my fate.

The restaurant had tables on the left side, and a wide, wooden staircase that stopped abruptly at the ceiling of the room, covered by a trap door. Next to the stairway on the right was an upright piano, and to the left, covering the dark wood floor were ceramic Disney characters. A single woman was standing behind a western style bar.

I was having the one having the surreal moment, but when I looked at her, she was staring at me like I was the alien. A soaking wet, black helmeted, gaijin, opens the door and looks around just before closing time. Suddenly it became a normal experience again. So I ordered a pizza. It was great stuff. The owner chatted with me a bit before I left. I went back the next week. I was riding the route for the third time and I stopped again. I then made the restaurant a part of the Sun Run.

The rain and slow going had prevented me from getting out to the western portion of the route. In the rain it was difficult to cover new terrain and stop to write down the results when I was on the motorcycle. On Andrea's birthday, I paid a visit to her home while I was doing a reconnaissance in her area. The whole gang jumped in the car and we trekked off again. A repeat of our earlier trip. It was a little more difficult this time. Her youngest had discovered the foot pedal to collapse the passenger seat, and I narrowly avoided whiplash on a few occasions participating in a bit of surprise fun. We made it to the end, but the route was still a bit convoluted, so I planned to straighten it out a bit, but now time was short. There were only three days left to Rally day.

The rain set in hard, as a slow moving Typhoon generated system was moving across Japan. I geared up to head out anyway, but a small electrical problem proved that it was not going to be possible. The light on my motorcycle display burned out, and it was not going to be a simple matter to check mileage as I rode on the motorcycle at night. At the edge of the expressway, in the driving rain, after narrowly misjudging the median strip I gave into sanity and turned around and went home. I did not know how I was going to make the finish happen, but I had put too much into it at this point.
 
Andrea volunteered to help again. She planned to drive down after school, drive the route, bring me home and then drive back home. I think that would have put her home, with her kids at about 2 am on a school night. I count myself lucky to have had another zealot among the planners of this rally.

Still on the night before the rally's Friday night trek to the start point, I called Jeff and asked if he could drive the rest of the way with me. It was going to be too much to ask of Andrea (well really, too much to ask of Dale and Connor) even though she was willing to go. Jeff and I headed out into the typhoon, with insane wind and rain, to tick off the kilometers. Mission accomplished, we got there perfectly, and then accidentally got misplaced in the rice fields on the way home.

Friday morning was a fury of last minute typing, desktop publishing, copying and stapling. My board of education never asked a single question even when I asked for every large sized envelope they had left in the office. Even when I hogged the copier for an hour at the Town hall. I think they have learned to just watch my insanity unfold on their quiet agricultural town. Then, I packed my backpack with my stuff and the rally paperwork, and headed east to Misawa airforce base to buy the prizes for the event, and then south to Kristy's house.

I was a wreck of nerves. I was asking a bunch of my friends and associates to go to bed late, wake up early, drive potentially treacherous mountain roads, look for a bunch of clues and scavenger hunt items, not get lost, and get there alive. I wasn't sure if anyone would enjoy it; I had fears that people would think it was silly and annoying.

I was very atypically quiet that evening. When the hour became late and no one had gone to bed yet I started to panic. I thought of convoy missions in the army I have done. Sleep time is a critical factor in planning the safety of a convoy. If it were an army convoy, I would be outside of safety limits. Then I thought about delaying the start. Miss the sunrise? In an event whose stated purpose is to see the sunrise? Absurd. I had to leave. So I did. I left and went down to the start point to consult with my friend, the ocean, and ask it what the hell was I doing.

I woke to the rapid slapping of a tent flap in the wind, and looked west and in a moment of disorientation knew that all my plans had gone awry. The sun was rising in the west, a glowing ball of orange was there before my eyes, defying every understanding I have of astronomy, rising from the mountains. I knew I couldn't get this to come off right, the universe was conspiring against me.

Then clarity came to my mind, and I stared in awe at the moon setting, brilliant orange into the mountains and realized that the sky is not deepest blue when the sun is out. I laughed at my mind's incoherence, and my own supreme self doubt at this moment. Then went to fix my friend's tent before it became airborne.

A short 4 hours after I rest my head on my rolled up jacket to go to sleep I was up to watch the day creep slowly up from the horizon. I was not to be disappointed. I was alone for the first half-hour and then as the sun's glow announced its imminent rise, I woke the others who had chosen to camp at the start point. My day would begin as grandly as any I can recall.

We camped out on the pacific side at the rally start point on the grounds of the Kominato elementary school. The school has a view that rivals any schoolhouse view I have ever seen: light house, gazebo, a grassy field, gentle slope leading to the rocky coastline where surfers hang out to catch the waves, and a more than 180 degree view of the ocean. As a bonus the Japanese have yet to put a large concrete blockade in front of the view.

We were soon joined by the arriving rally participants. We were all dazzled by a brilliant sunrise. The sunrise was unbelievable. There was a thin line of clouds right at the horizon, which left black zebra streaks across the sun as it rose up from the ocean. It was a completely magical experience.

We just had four prior solid days of typhoon driven rain and wind, and the fog and lousy weather had been pervasive for the prior few weeks, but it looked as if we were going to be gifted this day with pristine weather. The results of all the planning proved to well worth it. Twelve cars and thirty-four people participated in the event. After the sunrise I handed out the paperwork, gave the pre-rally briefing and launched my friends, car by car, onto the course.

We-- save those who ran out of time, or got lost-- were treated to views of the Pacific Coast of Japan, Buddhist Temples, Shinto Shrines, the Burial place of Jesus (according to local legend), Lake Towadako, The Hakoda mountain range, autumn foliage, Sechu Kogen: a memorial to 199 soldiers who died in the winter of 1902 during a death march through the mountains, fresh hand made pizza at the lonely pizza place high up in the mountains, the largest Buddha in Japan, Sannaimaruyama: a Jomon, the ancient people of Japan, archeological site, numerous love hotels, golden rice fields and the ongoing harvest, the home of Osamu Dazai, a writer from Tsugaru who achieved a modest amount of international recognition, a memorial to the Cheseborough: a ship, built in Maine which sunk off of the coast of Shariki in the last century, but not before a heroic rescue effort by the inhabitants, the Takayama Inari Shrine, a fabulous Shinto site, lake Jusanko, and the heights of Gongenzaki.

The day long, cross-country, event left people tired, but exhilarated and wanting to go again. The rally timing worked well, as most of the competitors arrived at the final point in time to catch the sunset, and even those that didn't still were able to see it set over the Sea of Japan as they drove up the coast to the finish (a deliberate consideration in the planning of the rally).

All of my fears were put to rest when the last car safely arrived. The satisfaction was apparent on everyone's faces, and I was so very pleased with everyone's happiness. The feedback from the event has been wonderful. The events competitors encompassing many nationalities and national origins (World Peace through Car Rallying?) were very kind with their words following the event.

The sun, our companion the whole day, slipped grandly into the clouds at the horizon, spraying the sea, mountains, sky, and land with warm tones before graciously inviting the night once again to come to this place. Stuart became the real hero of the day by allowing a bunch of wound up Sun Runners trash his place in a festive Post Rally Party in Kodomari-mura. Much alcohol was consumed, as the driving was all done for the day, and then the rally was tallied, and the winners were awarded, and stories were told and experiences rehashed.

The moment had been there for everyone, the dream had spread, and I was treated to an element that had never been in the dream before, but made it all the greater, sharing the experience in the company of such a lively, wonderful, talented, and diverse group of people

Together, we saw the sun rise and set over the ocean in the same day... the day in between was one of the best ever