The sunny morning-drizzly afternoon schedule was a little off from the week before, so as I arrived at the trailhead it was raining – not a little drizzle, but a full-on downpour. Root arrived, but stayed inside his car until the rain subsided a little. The rain had fully stopped, but everything was shiny wet when Jeff, Sara, Danny, and JT pulled in. They were all incredulous at our prospects, but I was pumped and ready to go come what may. The sky out to sea was pure blue, so I was sure there would be no more. JT apparently was too, since he walked into the trail a little way and came back with the verdict of “powdery dry”. This pretty much stopped all the bellyaching, and the ride was on. We had apparently broken Doctor Paul on the Luana ride the weekend before, as he was absent. Chris and Ckucke were also absent.

Save for some damp leaves on the ground, you would be hard pressed to tell that it had actually rained. I figured there would at least be a little dampness, considering it was a “wipers on high” downpour. After doing the side loop, we headed out along the Ditch to find that the open areas were dusty loose. That really did come as a surprise: There was literally no hint of moisture. A discussion led us to try going backwards up the new singletrack cut off of fat guy. A few pedal strokes in, it became apparent that the answer to our question as to whether the single-speeder crew had cut it as a means to ride up to the Norfolk plateau was a resounding “no”. Halfway up, it did become more rideable, but the narrow, off-camber track with shoulder-width trees made it frustratingly pointless. At the top, we ran into JT’s favorite commercial pilot and her crew coming down. She had to point out how much she had worked on these trails… of course.

After a rest at the big tree, we climbed up to the ironwood overlook and bombed the babyhead-strewn descent to the tail end of the Ditch. JT was commenting that for some reason (seeing what’s-her-name notwithstanding), the combination of conditions, weather, pace, and myriad intangible factors made this ride really “fun”. I wasn’t sure what the reasons were, but I had to agree with him – it was fun. Taro and I rode the singletrack back out, but everyone else took the backtrack to the cul-de-sac and rode back to the gate on the pavement.

Pictures here

D = 12.09 km (7.51-miles), Vavr = 11.7 km/h (7.3-mph), Vavr = 37.5 km/h (23.3-mph), T = 1-hour, 1-minute (actual trail time approximately 2-hours)

Highly recommended

Four out of four alcohol-vapor-buzzed gear monkeys

We did the normal ride out along Ditch, to the accompaniment of Vietnamese karaoke songs and smallarms fire, working our way up to the big tree. Root called when we were resting there, saying he was outbound on Ditch, so we chose a meeting place. Jeff, JT, and I went up to the ironwood hill then dropped in through the back door, while Sara, Danny, and Paul backtracked down cardiac hill. We met root along the Ditch, and he accompanied us on the return leg. Danny had a dinner to get to, so he made book for the gate and disappeared before the rest of us hooked back up with Sara and Paul. Everyone was game for burgers and beer after the ride, so we headed down to the Kailua Town Pub for eats. This reward seems to be steadily overtaking the riding itself in importance. I think Root showed up just for the food!

Pictures here

D = 12.25 km (7.61-miles), Vavr = 13.4 km/h (8.3-mph), Vmax = 40.0 km/h (25.1-mph)T = 55-minutes (actual trail time about 2-hours)

D = 12.86 km (7.99-miles), Vavr = 18.3 km/h (11.4-mph), Vmax = 36.7 km/h (22.8-mph), T = 42-minutes

Pictures here

D = 4.28 km (2.66-miles), Vavr = 13.0 km/h (8.1-mph), Vmax = 38.9 km/h (24.2-mph), T = 20-minutes

D = 11.91 km (7.40-miles), Vavr = 18.5 km/h (11.5-mph), Vmax = 36.4 km/h (22.6-mph), T = 38-minutes

The utensils are a little smaller than most tableware, but only by around 10 or 20 percent. The overall length of the utensils is about 17cm. The handles are narrow, but this generally doesn’t cause an issue unless you are really leaning into them (like trying to crack into a JDM 7-11 yuzu ice cake, but it’s still way better than a 5cm wooden spoon!). The titanium is mostly taste-free (I can taste it, but most people can’t). The knife edge isn’t terribly sharp, but then the metal isn’t treated to hold an edge either. It is possible to put a better edge on it, but since these utensils are destined for use on prepared food, it just doesn’t matter. As long as it is as sharp or sharper than a plastic knife, then it’s all good. The most wonderful thing about these is because they’re titanium, they’re only 52 grams for the set – very little weight penalty adding them to your EDC kit.

A nylon webbing sheath is included to keep all the utensils together. All three utensils stack and fit inside and are held in by a flap with a Velcro closure. It is perfectly possible to store any one or two utensils in the sheath (except maybe the knife alone, which gets a tad loose) and still have the flap work. The nylon webbing the sheath is constructed from is 30mm wide, so it will slip behind MOLLE webbing. You can do this if you have a bag with internal webbing, but it’s probably not a good idea to have them outside where they’re exposed to pathogens and other weird contaminants. My set is in a small plastic resealable bag inside my pack. There are various webbing colors for the sheath. When I stopped by the store, there was gray (lighter than foliage green) and OD green. If you order online (even from Snow Peak themselves), you generally get a mystery random color.

Highly Recommended

2919-yen (around $33 USD, Los Chaparros bread pudding not included)

Four out of four grinning gear monkeys

When the group gathered at the park before the roll-out, the pavement still showed signs of recent rainfall. The air temperature was hot though, so I figured the ground would be moist at most, and would be progressively drying out. I left as if I was going all the way into Waimanalo, so I got there really early. Chris must have been giving himself lots of time to resolve the kinds of things that preempted him from the rolls of the previous weeks’ rides, since he showed up soon after I did. We had a lot of time to go over some of my latest tactical gear purchases before Jeff, Sara, Doctor Paul, and Danny rolled up, followed shortly by Root in his rice probe. I’m not exactly sure how Jeff coerced Paul to come on this ride, but considering how fast he can do the Tantalus climb and how regularly he rides, I figured he would have little problem with this 11-mile loop. Sara had previously balked at this ride, but I was pretty confident it was well within everyone’s capabilities.

The climb up and over the footbridge immediately set the legs burning. Last year’s pre-winter fitness level was definitely more elusive this year with the terrible weekend and post-work weather throughout spring, resulting in very little saddle time until recently. The headwinds up Kalani’ana’ole were lower than last weekend, but we were also not doing the “small group dynamics” pacing. Traversing the old highway and climbing the first pitch up into the woods, I felt the same gasping lack of cardio-pulmonary conditioning that I felt last week. We took the traditional route through Norfolk and took a rest break at the big tree. After that it was all business until the end of Government Road. I took Chris up the tail end of the inner loop so he could see all the funny wooden features, then we sprinted to catch up to everybody. Root was waiting for us by the Ditch junction, and I could see the last of the rest of the group just going out of sight up the road. Having pushed a little harder than normal to catch back up to the group meant that the long climb would suck that much more. 

Near the top, we passed four pedestrians on the way back down. After complaining about sitting pains at the rest stop, Dr. Paul said we should have asked one of the hikers, who was in fact a proctologist! Danny asked how far along we were at that point, so I checked the computer. We were about 11 km and a little over an hour into an 18 km, hour-and-a-half ride, so we were well over halfway done. All the riding we had done up to that point was just to get us here – the rest was the reward. Into the Luana contour trail we went, finding slightly less deadfall than last weekend. Everyone was enjoying the downhill sections, but the climbs were beginning to take their toll. A lone dude on a hardtail passed us at the tight right turn when Chris was trying to diagnose a mysteriously loose rear skewer. Several kilometers later, we ran into him again at the open grassy section when we were redistributing water and trying to find something to alleviate Paul’s leg cramping.

The ground conditions were ideal – slightly moist and grippy – just up until around the ferny chicane when a light drizzle started to fall. The rain brought a welcome coolness, but as the surface dampened, the exposed rocks then the hardpacked earth became progressively more slippery. By the time we junctioned the Mt. ‘Olomana hiking trail where the ground went from decomposed basalt to red clay, we were operating on greased ice. I gave up trying to ride after going sideways into a bunch of broken branches while running, straddling the fallen, lowsided bike and nicking my knee. This was not long after Chris overtook me in the erosion groove, sliding on his side, still somewhat in the normal riding position on his bike. Even walking was difficult – maybe just marginally less dangerous than trying to ride this surface. Thankfully I had Sidi spikes. The last pitch to the road after the old pump house was somewhat more ridable, probably because of the reduced angle and better tree coverage. It was still drizzling, but as we descended the road and headed back up to the park, the rain subsided and the sun came out once again.

Pictures here

D = 18.04 km (11.21-miles), Vavr = 8.9 km/h (5.5-mph), Vmax = 44.1 km/h (27.4-mph), T = 2-hours, 1-minute (total ride time about 3.5 hours)