Sunday, 15 August 2010
The weather was perfect and the crew willing, so we turned out a little earlier than normal for a full Luana loop. JT was finishing up some artwork, and Dr. Paul had family business, so they were missing, but Chris, Ckucke, Danny, Jeff, Sara, Root, and I made the roll-out. Jeff started out pushing pretty hard on the initial road climb. I was trying to take it easy so I’d still have something left for the rest of the ride, but I ended up pushing hard near the front regardless. We entered the woods quite a ways further down than normal, climbing through the ironwood forest below the telephone pole hill. This entry made for a little less climbing. After a food and rest break at the big tree with rope-throwing and camera-swinging antics, we dropped to the Ditch via fat guy and took it all the way to the top of Government road before another break. Ckucke, Root and I were off the back going up the road. I’m not sure what everyone else was on, but it was full of “climb”.
Danny had gone on a little further when we were taking a break at the normal spot at the top. Where was everyone pulling this extra energy from? At the rock block, there was a large, old albizia tree with “Ikaika loves Sara” carved into it. Sara, of course, took some ribbing about this. I was dragging up the hill, but once on the singletrack, I was feeling more in my element. I stopped to take pictures at the roll-out where the workaround for the fallen tree rejoined the original line. When I caught up to the group, Root was at the top of the first climb on the singletrack. Jeff, Ckucke, and Chris had gone ahead. Root said that Danny had continued down the doubletrack following Sara, who had not taken the turnoff. Some time passed, and we figured something had to be done about the situation. I rode down the track until it widened out, but didn’t see anyone. Returning to the singletrack, we discussed it further. Ckucke and Chris tried calling Sara and Danny on their cell phones, but didn’t get through. I told them to go down to the T-junction, and took Root to go all the way down the road to find the missing pair.
We found Danny and Sara riding back up the road pretty far down. Apparently, she had not run into Ikaika along the way. I guess I didn’t go far enough down the first time to find them. Descending all the way down the road to the bottom, we entered the trees and took the singletrack up to the bottom of the T-junction. The climb up seemed much shorter than I remember it being from when Root, Ckucke, and I first explored the area. Heading down the cutoff, we found that the trail builders had piled stuff up on the left side of the fallen tree to make a ride-over. This would have been a good place for the people who have been building bridges on the Ditch side to build a stunt, but I don’t think they are able to build something that isn’t half-buried in the ground.
With Jeff on his speed trip, the ride progressed quickly with few rest stops. My power was coming on, so I was doing fine on this singletrack part. We took a break at the fiddlewood clearing, where Chris discovered that his naughty bondage girl mojo had lost her head. Although it was out in the sun, at least there was a slight breeze to cool things down a little. We pressed on at a pace that was just at the edge of painful. The surface was nice, and the trail had been groomed superficially out to about the rest stop at the top of the second endless climb. I managed to clean the entire section through the weird clearing and the rocky climb right after without going into burn. At the top of the third endless climb, Ckucke hooked his pedal on the stump at the apex and went down. That is just a difficult spot.
After a break at the top of the ferny climb, we made the mad descent to the road. The clay was dry and the traction excellent, but I made a few poor line selections along the way, so it wasn’t as flowy as the last time down, especially the last rooty section to the paved road. Somewhere along the way, Danny’s jersey found ALL the d-shaped-velcro-plant seeds – almost the entirety of the right side was covered. The road return to the park was uneventful save for wrong-way-Prius versus minivan at the curve just past the gate. Post ride dinner of course was at the Kailua Town Pub. Ckucke had family dinner at home, and Chris had a developing child-related crisis brewing at home, so they both bowed out.
Pictures here
D = 17.17 km (10.67-miles), Vavr = 11.3 km/h (7.0-mph), Vmax = 43.0 km/h (26.7-mph), T = 1-hour, 31-minutes (actual trail time about 3-hours)
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