(click on thumbnail images to enlarge)

Adventurous Bike Ride

HAWAII, Sep 12 - After my high altitude adventure yesterday, I figured I'd try a ground level exercise today.  It was supposed to be a routine bike ride.  It turned into an another adventure, this time through the Hawaiian desert and along its coastline. 

Basically, I wanted to go back to that nice and picturesque neighborhood, the town of Puako, through which I hiked the other day.  The girl that rents bikes at the Fairmont tennis shop did not know how to get there except by car from the main highway.  So I set out to try to find another, more scenic way...

I turned left off the exit road from Fairmont in the direction of, where I thought would be Puako.  I passed a cute local elementary school.  After about a mile, I also passed some road signs warning that "authorized personnel only" should proceed beyond that point.  I pretended not to see them.  After about a mile, I ran out of the paved road. 

"Well, this is a dirt bike, sort of... let's see what it can do," I tried to rationalize my living dangerously and looking for trouble while not admitting it to myself.

Except this was not the usual dirt road.  It was a rocky path with occasional patches of sand.  Big rocks at times... 6 to 8 inches in diameter.  It was also hilly, so it gave me just what I needed, lots of aerobic exercise after the thin air experience on Mauna Kea yesterday.  I skidded on sand a few times, but luckily did not crash.

After a while, I ran out of that road, too.  I was in the middle of the Hawaiian desert now (the right photo shows the terrain over which I was biking and hiking), having to chose between about four different prongs.  I tried one of them that seem to go up the hill toward the main highway.  It stopped short a few hundred yards from it at what looked like some sort of a utility or telephone box.

I headed back downhill... an even more dangerous experience, if anyone ever tried to bike over rough terrain with sandy patches or unstable soil.  But bike Gods were smiling on me today.  No crashes.

When I got down to that branching point, I decided to try another path toward the highway.  This one ended at a big electrical box.  I began to understand the reason for that "authorized personnel" sign.  But this branch of the desert path got me a little closer to the main road.  So I decided to hoof it on foot from there on, pushing my bike up the hill through the bushes and over the lava moguls.

It was hard going with frequent stops, gasping for air, but also enjoying the lovely scenery in the distance - an ocean view to the west and Mt Kohala to the north.  During one of those breaks, I took a few pictures so you can see the "quality" of the "bike path" I was navigating.

By the time I made it finally to the main road, the Hwy 19, which is kind of like an interstate in Hawaiian terms, I discovered another problem.  When I mounted the bike, the pedals wouldn't turn.  I looked down.  The chain had fallen off while I was struggling through the brush and over the desert bumps.

I am certainly no mechanic, but "necessity is a mother of invention," as they say.  After a few minutes, I did manage to fix the bike while the traffic whizzed by me on the busy highway.  Ironically, that was the highway the girl at the tennis shop had suggested I take in the first place.  And I tried to avoid it while searching for a scenic shortcut.  :-)

Live and learn?  Except some of us never do... No regrets, either.  The whole time, I had been listening to Rachmaninoff's concertos and rhapsodies on my iPod (whose white cord you may recognize in the above pictures).  That plus the scenery and a hearty exercise made it all worthwhile.  "As long as you survive it," as a character in my play "The Professional," says before checking into a hospital.

Also, in the process of fixing the chain, I learned that I actually had a really fancy bike.  At least by my standards.  It had two sets of gear shifts, for a total of 21 speeds.  Wow!  I have never been on a bike like this before.  Up until now, I had been using only 2 or 3 of the gears, as I do on my own 6-speed bike.

Finally, I was on my way again, pedaling northward toward Puako along the Hwy 19.  I felt like a kid, fooling around with different gears to see what they felt like.  Then I looked down at the handlebars.  My hands were like that of a grease monkey.  "Oh well... I'll wash them in the ocean when I get to Puako," I figured.

Shortly after I had turned off Hwy 19 on the Puako road, I stopped to take in some more of the beautiful scenery (above pics).  By this time, I was about half way down from the main road.  You can see above roughly the vertical elevation I had had to cover through the desert, starting at the Fairmont (at ocean level) up to the Hwy 19.

But now I was going downhill.  I felt as fast as the wind.  Except that I was facing a head wind.  It felt good, though, cooling... after all the hard work going up the hill.

Once in Puako, I did stop to wash my hands in the ocean and to cool off my head.  A wave surprised me, as they are so good at doing, and soaked my shoes and socks.  No worries... Leaving the beachfront I noticed a pretty old building that I missed on my first hike through Puako (right photo).

I biked southward all the way to the start of Puako road, which is only a mile away from my hotel.  I had intended to go all the way back, then up that big hill to Hwy 19, and then back to the hotel that way.  But my thigh muscles objected.  And my right knee felt creeky.

So instead, I turned left toward the beach and started to ride my bike over a mixture of sand, coral and lava.  If anyone has ever attempted that, you will appreciate how much one prefers big stones to sandy patches. 

My chain fell off again at one point.  No worries... By now, I felt like an expert at fixing it.  It only took a minute.

When I got back to the hotel, only 90 minutes had elapsed since I had started out on my bike ride.  It felt like 9 hours, based on the amount of effort the adventure had exerted.  It was fun though.  And I felt very lucky... not a scratch anywhere after all that "bushwhacking."  At home, I get cuts and bruises when I ride my bike even on paved roads. 

Just how seriously harsh this desert was can be seen from the picture of two of five thorns that I found embedded in the bottom of my shoes (right).  I put a dime there to give  you an idea of their sizes.  And these were two midsize thorns, not the biggest ones I took out earlier and I did not save.  It took a knife to pry them out.  But the thorns never penetrated the Nike soles to stab my soles.  Yeah for Nike!

Also, thank God that some such thorns didn't puncture one of my bike tires.  They are not as tough as Nike shoes.  I had no pump and no patches with which to fix a leak.  It would have been interesting trying to describe my location in the middle of the desert to someone over the phone.  If I were able to get a signal, that is...

Luckily, I didn't have to.  Bike Gods were smiling on me today.

Epilogue

Back at the hotel and recovering from my heavy bike workout in the spa, I recognized some Aussie accents.  They were a part of the group of some 450 people from Australia and New Zealand attending a convention here.  The "mate" I talked to, Mick [not the "Crocodile Dundee!" :-) ], turned out to be from Perth.  He and I gabbed for about half an hour about all the familiar hangouts down in the Dunsborough-Margaret River area where my Bolt Hole was.  And about other things, too.

A small world... (this Fairmont beachfront spa thing is starting to get quite interesting for global pow-wow's).  :-)

To be continued... CLICK HERE to go to CHAPTER 8...

Back to Hawaii Twenty-O-Seven Index

Back to Home