Sarcasm with a side of optimism.

Crazy Volcano Bike Ride!

While we were on Maui, I convinced everyone that it would be a great idea to ride bikes down a volcano. To be more specific, you coast on a well traveled paved road that has numerous switchbacks on the outside of an extinct volcano. Here's a photo before we had to start pedaling.

You basically go with a tourgroup, and the coordinator of the trip has a giant passenger van towing a trailer full of bikes. If you can't go on for some reason, you can always bail and hitch a ride in the sag wagon. I must admit, coasting down the side of a volcano was a little scary but only because you gain a lot of speed from doing nothing. To make it worse, the road is only two lanes, one lane each way, and there are giant Greyhound-like tour buses careening up the side of the turns and swerving into your lane.

After the volcano part, we went on some side roads to the only vineyard in Maui. This was the absolute best part of the trip! (Note: there was a lot of whining because of the need to pedal some, but Mom kicked ass.)

If this photo had a caption, it would probably have at least one f-word in it. I'll skip the whole Dad-almost-passing-out-part, and we'll move onto the scenery!

We had lunch at the vineyard. It was the prettiest vineyard because of all the greenery. Hawaii is very luscious. After lunch, we checked out the tasting room and had other random fun.

After the vineyard, we were still very close to the volcano park, so we drove back up to see the crater. The weather changes quickly up there, so by the time we passed through the front gate, and got to the top, the fog had rolled in and we were barely able to see three feet in front of us.

We usually were able to go to the beach for a little bit every day. That evening we went to Sansei for sushi. We killed $120 worth of happy hour priced sushi in oh, 20 minutes. Oink!


More Hawaii stories later!

posted by v @ 5:03 PM