I'm not a morning person. The plan was bike down the volcano the first full day in Maui because we'll still be on NJ time. You see, you have to arrive at the bike shop, which is an hour and 20 minutes away, before 4:00 a.m., so that means we have to get up at 1:30 a.m. Not so bad if you are on NJ time (6:30 a.m.), right? Sure, no problem. It doesn't matter. It's dark and I was sleeping...soundly. It's still hard! But I did it. We headed back the way we came, towards the airport, on that windy cliffside road, and then as we got closer to Haiku, where the bike shop is, it started to rain. Of course, the locals know this is normal in the North Shore. No need to panic. But i didn't know that yet. I really don't want to bike down a volcano in the rain, thank you. Can't back out now. We're the first ones to arrive and somehow the last ones to pay and get fitted with our gear. Well, actually, I was last. I went to the bathroom and when I came back, everyone was suited up: helmets, windbreakers, windpants (made that up), gloves. Tim, the main guy, was nice enough and loved to tell corny jokes, entertaining enough for the hour of day, but i couldn't help notice his fingernails. I've never seen such fungus. It was so gross and really distracted me from his jokes because I kept wondering why he doesn't do something about all that fungus. There must be something on the market to take care of it. Shannan didn't seem all that concerned when I told her about it...until she saw it. She got distracted too. Yes, it was that bad! And to make it worse, his nails were really long. Maybe if he trimmed them a bit, the greenness woudn't have been so noticeable. Note to self: Google fingernail fungus, avoid any activity, food, or other environmental factor that causes such a condition.
We pile onto a tour van and head up to Haleakala Volcano. It's dark, cold, rainy, and foggy. Yes, prime conditions for a bike ride, eh? Thank Jesus himself I couldn't see anything or i would have had a panic attack driving up. It was just switchback after switchback, winding and twisting, ascending up, up, up. I just kept telling myself, even though he has the worst case of fungus I've ever seen, he drives up and down this road every day several times a day. He knows it like the back of his hand...uh, maybe not a good cliche. He knows it. He must. It's going to be ok. Tim continues to tell corny jokes, a couple of politically incorrect jokes, a few stories, again not side-splitting comedy, but entertaining enough under the circumstances. (For what it's worth, I did have a minor panic attack going back down because i could see, and Tim's jokes did nothing to distract me. I was petrified!)
We finally arrive to the top of the volcano after about an hour drive. Ok, i knew it was going to be cold, but it was beyond cold. I would say it was 35 degrees. Now, 35 degrees skiing in Vermont is perfect, right? You've got long underwear on, ski pants, sweater, ski jacket, yadda, yadda, yadda. No, 35 degrees in Hawaii is unconstitutional! Ok, well, it should be. We wore layers, just like the tour book says. Maybe not enough but layers just the same, bike shorts, long stretchy pants (could pass for pajamas), a sleeveless T-shirt, long sleeve heavy T-shirt, sweatshirt and the windbreaker and pants they gave us and, oh, the crappy gloves that i thought were so great in the store and left my winter gloves that i lugged here from NJ in the Jeep only to find out their crappy gloves sucked and my fingers were numb after 2 minutes of being outside! See how cranky i get when it's cold?!
I wanted to be a trouper. I really did. I tried. I kept talking to myself: it's going to be so worth it when the sun comes up. Oh, i'm going to forget all about this *#(*!_@ cold (and rain; did i mention it was still raining? and fog) as soon as that sun starts to come up. It's going to be great...really...i swear...don't worry...stop thinking about it...you've been colder than this. Wait a minute! I'm in HAWAII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Why am I cold? Why do I want to be somewhere where it's cold? This is INSANE! Who's stupid idea was this? Do you know you can see the sun rise anywhere? You don't have to drive to the highest point of the freakin' island! We could have walked out of our condo and crossed the street. AHHH! And that would have been free! Ok, get a grip. There was shelter, by the way, a small structure, a museum? visitor's center? who the hell knows. There were 800 people in yellow and blue plastic suits huddled in there probably wondering the same thing I was: why are we here again?
The countdown is on...couple minutes. here it comes. It was so foggy -- no, actually we were so high up that we were in the clouds. Tim said it would burn off; it did yesterday. Well, it kind of did, but it was still pretty cloudy when the sun came up. People ooh'ed and ahh'ed and snapped their cameras like crazy people. It was nice. It was pretty. It was pretty amazing, with the crater and all, but was it worth it? Shannan thinks so. 799 other people probably thought so, especially the 700 that drove back down afterwards...in a car! But I didn't think so. I was cold:(
Ok, maybe it was woth it:)
Enough whining. Oh, that was Tim's number one rule: no whining. I didn't whine. I'm whining now, but he's not here so i'm allowed. Back in the van. He drives us out of the national park and down just a bit to where our bikes have been dropped off. We all get a bike and start to head down. It was really scary at first. I wasn't familiar with the bike; my seat was too low; I couldn't figure out how to work the gears. I almost crashed in the first five minutes. It's funny now but at the time I wasn't laughing! Once i got used to my bike, it was a lot of fun. There wasn't much pedaling. There was a lot of riding the brakes, all those switchbacks, twisting and turning and trying not to get hit by a car (there were no shoulders for the first 20 miles, I'd say). I don't even know how far the whole ride was, but I'm guessing it was 25-30 miles. We stopped several times to take in the views or say hello to a cow. We broke for snacks at the Kula Lodge, opting to sit on a log outside rather than eat in the restaurant with the rest of the pack. At that point, it was beautiful out. We stripped down to some respectable clothing that didn't consist of plastic or something you'd wear in the arctic.
We somehow found our way back to the bike shop. Tim went over the directions several times, the group reciting back "Left, Right, Left, Right, Right, Right" each time he'd ask. I shouted along in synch, confident I knew where all the turns were. In my defense that was in the middle of the night. By the time we actually had to navigate those turns, I was completely clueless. I think we were the last ones back, not that it was a race, but we took our time. We took the top off the Jeep and it immediately began to rain (remember, it's the North Shore; try to keep up, people). We ignored it and it stopped before we could complain.
We made a pit stop in Pa'ia and walked around looking for lunch, finally settling on a cute place that offers boxed lunches for Road to Hana folks (for us that comes in a couple days). Hummus and sprouts...mmm...our favorite. "Is there somewhere we can sit outside and eat?" I asked innocently. "The beach," the nice girl behind the counter said without making me feel stupid. Shannan filled that role nicely. We walked down the street a bit until we found access, parked our rumps in the sand, and ate the best sandwich in all of Maui, I'm sure, while taking in the gorgeous view of the ocean. It was a perfect moment.
We stopped at the popular surfing spot of Ho'okipa Beach. There were lots of surfers and windsurfers. It was fun to watch.
When we got back to the condo, it was around 2:00 (?). We were beat. Nap time! But I just couldn't fall asleep, so we decided to just shower and get an early dinner and just go to bed early (again!). Good thing we're not into clubbing; we'd never make it.
We found out every nice restaurant in Lahaina required a reservation, so we chose the Hula Grill. It's on the beach so we could catch the sunset. We were jonesing for a pina colada and so we had 2 each! It was fun. But what's up with people taking their kids to Maui?! and taking them out to dinner at (relatively) expensive restaurants? I became quite annoyed at this. Good thing we don't have kids, because I discovered I don't like them much. But i do. It's kind of like this. I never liked dogs until I got dogs. But really, i only like my dogs. No, i like some other dogs, cute dogs mostly. Dogs that don't smell and don't drool. See, i like other dogs. If i had kids, i'm sure i'd like my own kids. I like cute kids and kids that don't drool. But mostly i like kids in kid situations. I don't like kids in Hawaii. All i have been saying all week is, Why aren't these kids in school?! Sorry in advance to all my friends who have kids. Don't take it personally, but when I go somewhere romantic, I kinda expect to see other people being romantic, you know, toasting wine glasses, drinking tropical drinks with umbrellas in them, not force-feeding chicken fingers to their tots! And how can anyone afford to take a family of four to an expensive restaurant in Maui? Me and Shannan do ok, ya know, but we still gasp at the bill in the end. With a couple extra Shirley Temples and orders of spaghettios, we'd be breaking the bank! Ok, i just had to get that off my chest.
After dinner, we watched the sunset and then walked around Whaler's Village. There's tons of shops, all that touristy stuff. Mrs. Smith (Gertrude Petunia Smith, aka GPS) navigated us through the maze of timeshares and condos and delivered us safely back to our condo for the week. By the way, you can rent a GPS with your rental vehicle now. It is the best decision we have made on this trip. She can be a bit of a nag at times ("Recalculating. Recalculating") but overall she's a cool chick. I highly recommend it.
Th crashing waves lulled me to sleep at 8:30 p.m. I'm almost on Maui time...
J.Bo.
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