We are SO fun!!!

Our alarm went off this morning at 2:30am. No fluke. We went to bed around 7:30pm, and I think we were able to fall asleep by around 8:30pm or so in order to be up early for our Haleakala bike ride. I’m well versed in the get-ready-in-25-minutes-plan but you should have seen mom this morning! We had to meet the van at 3am in front of the hotel, and when our alarm went of at 2:30am, she shot out of bed like a rocket. I turned on the light, and played with my phone for a few minutes. By the time I decided to get out of bed, she had her clothes on and had already finished in the bathroom. It was like a whirlwind! By 2:40 she was standing around twiddling her thumbs. Apparently the 25 minute thing is a gift I have (which I practice five days a week…).

The van picked us up, and after we picked up three other people, we drove to their shop in Paia to get gear and such. I was sort of in and out of consciousness at this point, so I can’t tell you much about this stretch of the trip except for the moments when Dudley Do Right behind me thought that whistling at 4am was a great move. Argh.

We got to the top of Haleakala at around 5:50. The goal was to see the sunrise over the volcano before we biked the rest of the way down. Unfortunately, the summit (10,023 ft) was completely socked in (and freezing), so when the sun came up at 6:15, it just sort of got light, with no spectacular sunrise.

You aren’t allowed to bike from the top anymore, so we drove down to 6,500 feet where we started our bike journey. It was still chilly enough to need all the gear we had on: sweatshirt, fleece jacket, gortex jacket (Briana, if you are reading this, I needed a parka in Hawaii!!!), gortex pants and gloves.

The perk of going on a tour was that they handled the cars completely. We had a guide on a bike in front and a van in the back. We rode in the middle of the lane until the cars backed up behind the van and then they signaled us to move to the side. It was slick and required almost no thinking.

The bikes had excellent seats (wide and squishy), no gears, and were made for smurf sized people (which is funny because we were all in blue gortex!!). The first bike I had was SO small. My knees were nearly knocking my teeth out. After I switched out, my knees were happier, but I had a somewhat terrifying brake situation. I found as we were going around the turns (the road zig zags at a fairly steep incline the whole way) that I had my brakes pulled all the way in and I was still hauling. Our guide made the signal to stop, and I had a frightening moment when I didn’t think I could stop. After they adjusted my brakes, I had SO much fun. This was definitely something that mom wanted to do, but I loved it too!!

When we got home, we were famished, and inhaled our leftover pizza (Rhonda, it’s even better cold!!), and I promptly fell in to bed for nearly three hours.

And then to complete a completely fabulous day, we went snorkeling. I mean where else can you be at the top of a volcano in the morning, and following fishies in the afternoon? We LOVE it here!!!