Coffee anyone?

Thursday: Coffee farms in Kona
The people in Kona are very proud of their coffee.
Our ride started out on a quiet local road, where we passed coffee farms, and gorgeous flowers in peoples gardens.

I stopped and took pictures of this trumpet flower tree by the side of the road. All of the flowers are amazing, I had a hard time not stopping every few feet to take pictures.

We stopped part-way through our morning ride and took a tour of a coffee plantation / factory.
The guide showed us the bushes, berries, and the machines that sorted and peeled the coffee berries.
This next picture is of the little shop with everyone standing around tasting the 10 different kinds of coffee. We picked up a bit of coffee and also some of the other local products.


We left the coffee plantation and headed to Pu'uhonua O Honaunau - The Ancient "City of Refuge" -- which was a whole history lesson in itself!


The beach here was completely amazing -- The dirt road ended at a white coral sand beach which was behind a lava rock shore.
I took some pictures of mom with her bike on the lava rock. It was really odd to have the sand behind the rocks.

~ Abi

Volcano National Park

Wednesday: VOLCANOES!!

This morning we had breakfast at the "Volcano House" at Volcano National Park. Unfortunately it was pouring down rain, and there were clouds completely obscuring the view. This building was built in the early 1900's and then re-built in the 1950's so that people could come and watch the Kilauea volcano erupt in safety! There are amazing pictures all around the lobby. While we were in Hilo, we picked up a second van and started traveling everywhere in caravan. I couldn't resist taking pictures of our vans in the parking lot. Of course they are still completely covered in bikes.

After breakfast, most of the group rode in the Van to a trail head, and hiked across the smaller of the two volcano craters. This was the Kilauea Iki crater - which about 50 years ago was a lake of lava. Walking across this was completely amazing. There are even steam vents puffing away around the crater, the stone was of course safe, and completely solid... but somehow the stones seemed a little warm. I was at the back of the group, so I took this picture of everyone walking across the lava in their rain coats. Fortunately, the fog lifted so we were able to see the crater a bit better! From above, the lava really looked like a lake. but once we were really down on the surface, it was very rough, and had big peaks mixed with some smooth parts.

After the hike, some of the group biked 8 miles around both craters, seeing some amazing sights -- and then ended up back at the lava house for lunch in the park.

After lunch, we had the most amazing bike ride of the whole trip. 30 miles down to the ocean. I say this was an amazing ride, because it was the straightest, fastest, easiest downhill I have ever ridden in my life! The road had a few slight turns, but it was nothing like the winding down hill rides we have done on other days. I could pedal in my highest gear and not touch my breaks for miles. Because of the rain, my spedometer stopped working at some point, so I'm not sure how fast we were going... but I'm sure it was at least 35 mph. The most amazing part was watching the elevation markers count down from 4000 feet all the way to sea level.

~Abi

Lava Fields and Rainforest.

Tuesday: Hilo, Kea'au and the Puna District

We stayed the night at a great little hotel on Banyan drive in Hilo. Apparently each of the giant banyan trees were planted by famous people.

I was really impressed by the view out the dining room window at breakfast. It was a lovely cove with bridges and landscaping. I couldn't resist taking a picture.

We took the van to Pahoa to start our ride. We started out with a pretty fun slight downhill all the way to the coast. In the middle of the hill, we stopped to see a famous "painted church" which had been moved out of the way of the lava flow in the mid 1980's. Across from the Church was a little factory making Noni juice from the Noni fruit. This fruit is known for its anti-oxidant properties -- but it tastes HORRIBLE!! the fruit is a super crazy looking blob --

this picture is one I took of mom taking pictures of the Noni fruit.





After leaving the Church and the Noni juice factory, We actually got to ride all the way down the road to where the lava flowed over it!

It was amazing to be riding down a tree lined road and suddenly come upon a hill of black lava!
This Lava is pretty new, but already trees and little plants are starting to grow out of the cracks. A little further down the road there were more views of the lava fields. I stopped to take pictures of the expanse of black lava, and also of plants growing out of cracks. I thought that this picture of a monkey fruit tree growing out of the lava was particularly incredible.

After the lava fields, our path turned up the hill again and headed back towards Pahoa. This ride was uphill, and very much in the rain forest. All the way up the hill, we were sprinkled with small showers. Because the day was quite warm and humid the showers felt really great. I was feeling really great riding today, so I decided to ride some extra miles before lunch. I was at the lunch spot before lunch was ready, so I jumped back on my bike and rode 4 miles north through Pahoa and out to where the main road hit the big highway and turned around and came back to the lunch spot at Lava Tree State Monument park. (Trees fossilized by lava)

After lunch was a challenging downhill ride from the park back down to the coast. This ride was particularly challenging because the fun sprinkling rain turned into jungle showers! At the bottom of the hill we arrived at Ahalanui Beach Park - this is a public park, which has a hotspring right on the edge of the ocean - so close to the ocean that waves splash in one end and cool the water off. Yeah, that means that some fish are in the spring, pretty fun!

~ ABI

From Hawi to Hilo

Report from MONDAY

Hawi – Wamei – Honokaa – Waipio – Hilo

This was a pretty long day, with lots of stages, in and out of the van... but we ended up at an amazing little hotel.

Leg one: Van ride from our hotel in Hawi to Starbucks in Wamei. This was a beautiful drive, not particularly eventful… just some amazing views from the van.

Leg two: Van ride from Wamei out 5 miles to the drop off point. Technically we could have biked this part, but it was on a pretty fast highway so it was safer to drop us off at the first turn.

Leg three: Bike from the drop off to the Waipio lookout. This was a super fun ride, five miles of winding roads with rolling hills. We could see the Mauna Kao – the tallest mountain in Hawaii, This is the dry side of the Big Island, so the grass was pretty dry, I took a cool picture of the scenery, then Jim and Linda rode past, and I got a cool picture of them.

Our course took us down a five mile winding hill down into the town of Honokaa and then ten miles out to the Waipio lookout, which had a great view of a valley and black sand beach.

After spending some time at the lookout; we turned around and headed back to Honokaa for lunch. Lunch led quickly to jumping back into the van to go see a waterfall – followed quickly by another van ride to get smoothies.

Sunday: Adventure Day ONE

We have been having trouble getting Internet access the last few days – but now we are back in Kona and Internet is more accessible.

Report from Sunday:
From Hapuna Beach to Hawi:
This morning we got picked up at the King Kamahameha Hotel in Kona.

The van rolled up –And it’s completely covered in bikes!! This picture doesn't quite show the trailer with an equal number of bikes on top. We rolled our luggage over and it was loaded into the trailer. We picked up half the group at the King K. and then drove out on the Iron man bike route to a second hotel and picked up the second half of the group.

We piled into the van and drove off to the drop location.

We pulled into a parking lot and piled out. Our guides, Alissa & Mel shooed us off to the beach while they pulled the bikes down off the roof of the van and trailer. About 45 minutes later we straggled back to the van to find water and snacks set up on a table. Identical bikes were laid out all over the parking lot, we had to find the water bottle with our name on it to find our bike!

I wasn’t planning on going swimming, wearing bike clothing and all, but I had my swimsuit with me so I changed and jumped in. There are three sisters on our trip; Wendy, Lori, and Julie. they were very exciting about the beach and body surfing a few yards into shore. I can’t tell from this picture who is who.

The ride today was hot and north across the driest part of the island. We stopped for lunch after 21 miles, at the town of Hawi. We were on our own for lunch in Hawi, where we had BLT sandwiches and ice cream!

We had spent the last few hours riding into a strong headwind, so almost everyone elected to ride the van to our hike for the day. This picture is of Mel loading the bikes back onto the van after lunch. The van was parked on the un-even side of the road, so the angle was a little scary.

Our hike was down to a gorgeous black sand beach. The hike was quite steep, but totally worth it. The story about the beach is that the rocks were something special and used for building sacred places.

Below are some pictures of us on the beach, and also of the beach from the trail above.

~ Abi

Saturday in Hawaii

Saturday -- we arrived last night and had the day to chill at the Sheraton where we are staying.

This morning we took a shuttle over to watch the Ironman Race. We lucked out and found an intersection where we could listen to the announcers, and stand and watch the finish of the bike leg and the beginning of the run. It was totally amazing to see the athletes. We just happened to be standing there when the Elite women were riding in and transitioning to start their run.

It was SO cool.

After watching the Ironman for a while,

we grabbed lunch and headed back to the Sheraton. This hotel is great! There is a water slide into the pool, and since it was a pretty warm day, we spent a lot of time at the pool.

Yes, we got pictures at the top of the water slide.

We also spent time laying by the pool in these fun double lounge chairs with shade covers.

And of course we had to take pictures of those too!

We've Arrived in Hawaii!

Well its Sunday -- but the Internet was a little tricky last night, so I'm blogging now about traveling, and our first day here.

Getting here:
The flights here were pretty un-eventful, which is great -- I was able to sleep a little on the plane; and our shuttle was waiting with a sign to pick us up right at the airport.
I didn't take any pictures of the airport but it was quite shocking. The plane landed, and then taxied over like normal. However, we then exited the plane onto stairs, and just walked across the tarmac to our "gate" which wasn't really a gate, it was a roof on pillars with maybe one wall a few ropes and a x-ray scanning machine. I realized that all the gates and areas were basically little hut roofs in a cluster one larger roof covered the baggage claim area. It was a little shocking to realize that none of these places had walls-- Just roofs!!

More updates coming soon!

~ Abi

Gorgeous Friday!

I totally lucked out on my ride home! - It didn't start raining, and I was able to get some amazing photographs. It was even sunny and amazing at the beginning of my ride. Even with the sun, the weather was pretty cold, especially as the sun set more and more.

On this particular ride, I was so excited that it was nice weather, that I stopped a lot to take pictures. The weather report says its going to rain for the next full week -- by the time its nice again, all the leaves that are turning colors now will be completely gone!

When I got to the I-90 bridge there was a strong headwind, and it was very cold! I was really glad I had leg warmers and a long sleeved jersey! The bridge was more empty today than it normally is, which I was really glad about; I have been rather nervous about crossing the bridge-deck lately when there are lots of cyclists coming the other direction, or people walking or jogging on the bridge. Once I was across the bridge, I started to see the gorgeous vines on the walls I blogged about earlier.

I think these vines are amazing.

By the time I got to these vines, the sun was almost down and they were in shadow, so I didn't get quite the gorgeous photo's that I had gotten at the beginning of the ride.

Still, amazing.

First pictures of FALL!

I remembered my camera today!

This picture is of some of the first leaves to turn yellow outside my building. Expect more pictures tonight... well maybe tomorrow.

Hopefully it won't be raining on my ride home, I really wished I had a camera yesterday, the ride was SO GORGEOUS!! The I-90 trail crosses a couple of tree lined streets where the colors are just starting to change. Also, there are some amazing vines growing on the I-90 walls.

Ok -- enough about what I wished I could take pictures of -- I promise to take some tonight!

The funniest thing happened....

Last night on my ride home...

I was just doing my thing, about halfway across Mercer Island, when I encountered a rider that I was about to pass, I called "on your left" and then came around him. We smiled at each other, I took off up the hill and didn't really think much of it.

A mile or so later, when I crossed a street I realized that he was right behind me. A few minutes later, he called out "on your left" and wanted to pass me... I jokingly said: "how about I race you instead?" I don't remember exactly what he said, but indicated that having a girl pass him 'hurt his pride' I told him that he should become a bike racer, he responded "at my age?" and then took off.

I don't consider myself particularly fast... but to be upset that a girl on an official race team is passing you?? Oh PLEASE!

~ Abi

I love fall!

Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous, leaves just starting to change colors... I can see a few yellow leaves on the trees across from my cubical. When I ride across I-90 the vines are starting to turn red; and the bushes on Capital Hill are this insane bright red!

I didn't have my camera yesterday, so I couldn't take any pictures; I left it at home again today, so keep your fingers crossed for Friday.

The picture above is one that I took last year. Last year the weather was perfect. Super cold at night, and not much rain, so the leaves turned really bright colors. I hope this year is just as gorgeous.

Bus Tunnel Day

The bus tunnel opened this week!
Last week I was totally excited to be using the tunnel -- 5 stops instead of 10... no street traffic & hopefully a much faster commute!

Well... its not that great.

The buses have to go 30 miles an hour in the tunnels, which is way slower than they used to go, and today the lights weren't working properly so my bus got stuck for like 5 minutes. Aside from being underground, its really not any faster than it was before. There are still the same restrictions on bikes -- you can only transfer them on and off the bus at the first stop, the International District station, and the last stop, the Convention Place station. That doesn't really bother me, because those two stops are where I want to put my bike on or off anyway.

On the way in, there is an escalator to get out of the tunnel, which is a pretty easy way to get a bike out of the tunnel. But on the way HOME, I have to carry my bike down the stairs. OK, honestly its not that big of a deal, and I saw some guy carrying his bike down the stairs today -- but I'm already writing a post complaining about the tunnel, so I might as well complain about that too :)

Other than the tunnel -- I'm really getting this commute thing figured out!
I use this tiny camel back backpack, which holds a magazine, my ZUNE, my 'purse', and any small random things I need, like my slip-on shoes, or the travel pants I wear on the bus. Travel pants you ask? well, you see, I feel totally uncomfortable sitting on the bus, wearing just bike shorts when I ride in to work - but I have this pair of super light zip off pants that coordinate with my team gear. So I wear the zip off pants and either roll up the right leg, or zip it off to ride into work. On the way home, the bike shorts don't bother me so much -- so I roll up the 'travel pants' and put them in my backpack.

Oh, I should explain about my 'purse' -- its not really a purse, its a travel bag that holds my wallet, bus tickets, cell phone, a checkbook, and a pen or two. Sometimes I stick my ZUNE inside too. It works GREAT -- It maybe looks a little wierd carying it around for shopping, but hey - so does wearing bike gear at the grocery store.