Thursday morning was so socked in rainy on the Windward side that when stopped at a traffic light, I couldn’t even see the next intersection. When I got over the mountain, town-side was all blue skies and sunrise. It looked like good weather for a ride. Of course, by mid morning, the clouds had worked their way over the Ko’olau summit and were raining down all kinds of evil from Pacific Palisades to way past ‘Ainakoa. Things were suddenly looking grim. Thankfully, the trades continued to blow, and the clouds exhausted their precipitable moisture, so by noon, the rains were tapering and the clouds were dissipating. When work was done, the blue skies had returned, and the remaining clouds were calm and non-threatening.
I drove on over to the meeting place. Inexplicably, the base of Makiki Heights Drive was again infested with roadies. I still haven’t figured out the pattern to this periodic event. The regular parking area was already filled, so I went up the road and turned around to come back down the hill. On the way up there was some older, bulky woman standing straddling her bike in the center of the downhill lane, kicking at her clipless pedal – not with the cleat area of her shoe, but just kicking at it. When I came back down, she was still there in the middle of the roadway, oblivious to the bike and automobile traffic around her. Not wanting to piss-off someone who easily outweighed me by a factor of at least 150%, I didn’t FIAMM her, but waited a bit then went around her. The police officer in the blue-and-white behind me stopped and I could see him throw up his hands in disgust. I almost expected him to either flash her with the blue lights, or give her a little peep of the siren, but he just waited for an opening in uphill traffic and roared around her. All the while, the barrel-bodied pedal kicker held her ground in the middle of the road. Really.
Scat showed up, followed shortly after by Root, Ckucke and Kevyn. Some unknown generic Caucasian dude parked in front of JT before everyone else arrived. I told JT to not forget to say hello to Chris. He’s never going to hear the end of that! With the group gathered, we started up the hill. Everyone was pretty tapped, so the pace was slow and easy. I ended up at the front by the first turn at the Nature Center, so Ckucke said that I should set the pace. I wasn’t going the same speed we would have been doing along this stretch had Ckucke and JT been pushing off the start. My pain level was well below normal. Of course as things always go, Ckucke and JT had passed me around Euco. JT stopped for a restroom break at the first trailhead, so I regained the lead. My pace at the bottom was so slow that there was no way to break last time’s climbing time. If the time passed 40-minutes before the one lane bridge, I was just going to downshift and drop into cruise mode. I reached the bridge by 37-minutes, so I kept on it to the top. I tried pushing a little harder, but it was too little too late and my lower back was exploding with pain, so I reached the top in the same 40-minutes as last time.
After a rest, we backtracked down the sunny side. The new pavement allowed for higher speeds, but the damp conditions moderated that. Ckucke and I blasted down until around Euco, when we ended up behind a pair of riders. There was no room to pass them through the turns to the bottom, so we ended up riding our brakes all the way down. It was not a problem though, since it gave us ample opportunity to look at the beautiful sunset.
D = 15.73 km (9.77-miles), Vavr = 17.3 km/h (10.8-mph), Vmax = 66 km/h (41.0- mph) ,T = 53-minutes (climb = 40-minutes, descent = 13-minutes)
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