Wandering 'round Hawai'i

The race was over on Sunday morning...the meetings were over by mid-day on Monday...and I finally got to explore and sight-see around Hawai'i! I mentioned in my previous post that I drove up to the North Shore with some friends.

On Tuesday morning I woke up late (relatively to the 3 and 4am alarms of previous days) and ate some breakfast in front of the TV. When I got motivated, I hoped on my bike to go practice on the race course for next year's race. In April of next year, I will be racing in Honolulu again...in that race, the first American finisher will qualify for the OLYMPIC GAMES!!

At the meetings on Monday, the race director came in and described next year's race course. Since it IS an Olympic qualifier, they wanted a course that is as much like the Beijing course as possible. So, in '08, we will be doing a 2 loop swim on the other end of Waikiki Beach...biking 5 loops out-and-back over the Diamond Head hill...and finishing on Ala Moana Boulevard for a 3 lap hot and flat run. The women's race will start somewhere between 12 noon and 1pm...yikes! It's going to be hot and humid...just like Beijing...so the best person for the course should qualify.

While I was exploring the Diamond Head road, I saw Jarrod (he got 4th in the men's race) and we decided to meet at Ala Moana Park to swim together...so I finished my ride to the park and swam the race course with some company.

When Jarrod headed home, I asked some of the lifeguards if they could point me in the direction of a guard named Bill. He went to high school with my mother...and when my parents stopped in Honolulu in January, they visited with him. So I introduced myself and we chatted for a bit on the beach in front of his guard tower.

It was already a hot day by 10am so I headed back to my hotel to shower, pack, and check out of my room. I left my bike box at the front desk and loaded up into my rental car for some more exploring outside of downtown Honolulu! I chose to drive east because there is a crater and some beaches that are beautiful. Unfortunately, the sign said the crater was closed on Tuesday (bummer) so i just decided to keep driving along the coast and stop at every Scenic Point and Overlook that I came across. It turned out to be a pretty neat day. Every few miles I pulled off the road and enjoyed the island sights...bright blue water, bare lava rock at the shore, white waves crashing onto everything, yellow sandy beaches full of locals and tourists...I also enjoyed looking inland at the huge mountains blanketed with tropical rain-forest plants, the peaks still hanging onto a heavy fog at mid-day.

I packed all my leftover food from the weekend and it turned into a bit of a picnic lunch at each stop. After spending a few hours along the coast, I turned inland on highway 61 which took me straight back to Honolulu...THROUGH the mountains! There were actually 2 tunnels that the road wound through and then it dropped right out at the main city. I drove right back to the rental car lot, returned my grey, power-less, economy car and prepared for a long night of traveling back to the mainland.