Wind and waves

Date: Jan. 14, 15 and 16
Mileage: 30.5, 55.1 and 34.2
January mileage: 429.5
Temperature upon departure: Low 80s

My Hawaii trip so far has been a comedy of errors, but I'm starting to settle into the flow. I feel perpetually lethargic because of all of the heat and sun and the Benadryl I'm sucking down (I seem to be allergic to a lot of different things down here.) But this island is nothing if not beautiful and an adventure in itself. True to my vacation record, even Hawaii managed to throw exciting weather my way.

The first thing we did after the car rental place opened for the morning Wednesday is drive around looking for the start of the Hurt 100. We ended up on a high bluff at sunrise, where I caught my first glimpse of downtown Honolulu. From a distance, it's breathtaking.

I rented a road bike from this place called The Bike Shop. It's light and fast and holds its own on gravel, but the traffic on this island takes some getting used to. It's been really windy, which has been great for my training in the limited time I have to ride. It helps me get my heartrate up without gaining too much speed, which can be scary and hard to control in tight traffic on a strange bike when you're used to none of it.

We camped the first two nights at a private campground on the edge of the North Shore. It was a beautiful spot and crawling with feral cats and chickens. We of course adopted one of the cats, feeding it pieces of ahi tuna and leftover cereal milk. While walking on the beach, Geoff randomly bumped into friends of his, Kelly and Adrian from Smithers, B.C. Neither had any idea the other would be in Oahu. Really, what are the chances?

The day we arrived, the National Weather Service issued a high surf warning, forecasting 25-35 foot waves on the North Shore. The beaches were all closed and I could see few people even braving walks on the shoreline as I rode by, hoping to catch a glimpse of monster wave surfers. I did see one windsurfer out in the roiling mass. His kite jolted wildly back and forth until it dipped low and I lost sight of it. I never did see it come back up.

On Thursday night, we were handed an voluntary evacuation notice with instructions for a nearby shelter that we could go to. We were a little confused about that, especially because our camp site was many hundreds of yards off the shore, so the high surf didn't threaten us. We're in a strange place and inclined to take weather warnings seriously, but there was nothing on the notice that raised any red flags. They were calling for 40 mph sustained winds with 50-60 mph gusts and heavy rain. Similar weather in Juneau is called "autumn." We reinforced our little backpacking tent and hunkered down.

On Friday, the island of Oahu closed all schools and told all non-essential government workers to stay home. I went for a bike ride. It was a little hurricaney, but hardly the kind of weather I think of as "extreme." It was still 75 degrees outside. The drenching felt good.

We headed back down to Honolulu today so Geoff can prepare to run that crazy hard 100-miler tomorrow. We decided to rent a hotel room because it's so much less of a headache than trying to camp close to the race start, which is right in town. A last-minute booking for a $60 room netted us an ocean-view setting on the 43rd floor of one of Waikiki's myriad high-rise hotels. I get a little light-headed if I spend too much time looking out the window, especially with the wind rattling the glass. But I'm excited for Geoff's race tomorrow, and certainly glad I don't have to run it.

Aloha ... can I come back?

I found this photo on an old post that I started writing but never finished. I'm not sure exactly when I took it. It looks so serene, so welcoming, so cold ... so very different from the place where I am at right now.

OK, so I'm killing some time in the nether regions of the Alaska Air check-in part of the Honolulu airport. It's 3:53 a.m. Honolulu time. There is some infuriatingly mellow island music blasting over the loudspeaker in this not-quite-inside, not-quite-outside kind of a room, and I'm already down to boxer shorts and a T-shirt, sticky with heat and sleep deprivation. Just need to make it until the Thrifty Car Rental place opens. Just a little longer ...

I know, I know. I'm in Hawaii on vacation and I'm not allowed to complain, especially since I haven't even escaped from the airport yet enough to give island life a chance. I guess it just feels good to vent after really bad flights. I know everyone has bad flights. This was the worst flight ever. I know everyone has worst flights ever. It's just that after 11 hours on a single leg of a flight between Anchorage and Honolulu, long after the foil-wrapped hamburgers ran out and the toilet seats were ringed in urine and the flight attendants were rationing water, sitting in 85-degree heat amidst a plane completely full of screaming children and adults whose good humor had pretty much worn out, I will say it was all a little too Superdome for my taste. And, having gone through and survived that flight, I will say that it's amazing the suffering so many people will endure to get themselves someplace warm on a vacation. I am pretty sure it is beyond any endurance I have ever exhibited to bike myself someplace cold.

Now I am sitting cross-legged on a floor near the only electric outlet I could find and observing how embarrassingly white my legs are, having seen no significant amount of sun in about three years, and wanting to put something on to cover them up, but I just can't deal with more sitting and sweating quite yet. I need to find a refrigerator to go sit in. Did I really think I was going to be able ride a bike in this climate? Ha ha ha. Maybe after I finally get some sleep, we shall see.

I really shouldn't complain. It's all good for me. Food, water and sleep deprivation training at its finest. I need to get past it, though, because I'm having strong urges to go somewhere quiet and be really lazy.

I guess I just need to think of that distant place I left 24 hours ago - seems so far in the past - with 2 inches of rainfall and an untold accumulation of snowmelt backing up behind several feet of snow base, driving my car to the gym through standing water deep enough to splash in through the closed door, running for two hours on an eliptical machine before getting in the dungeon-like shower only to have the power go out two minutes in, groping around a strange room wet and naked in the dark and thinking, "Wow. Here we go again." Snow. Rain. Avalanche. The city's only connection to its power plant gets taken out for months. Again. All in a day's life in Juneau.

Could be worse. Could be here.

I feel so fast

Date: Jan. 11
Mileage: 41.3
January mileage: 309.7
Temperature upon departure: 35

Ever have days when you would rather do just about anything besides drag yourself outside? I actually have lots of days like this. I can usually overcome the feeling, and was nearly to the point of beginning the suit-up process when Geoff returned from his morning run and said, "Do not go out there. It's nasty out there." What, you might wonder, could possibly be so bad? Deep subzero temperatures? 50 mph winds? Whiteout blizzard? No, in the case that statement was a warning that it was warm outside. 35 degrees warm. Warm and wet and sloppy.

Still, I reluctantly persisted. I dug my rain gear out from the bottom of the pile - first time it's been above freezing in more than a month. I left Pugsley at home in favor of studded tires, knowing that rain quickly turns packed snow into the slipperiest substance on Earth.

I put set the wheels down on wet ice and pointed north. As the studs scraped over the slick surface, I accelerated at a rate I could hardly fathom, and I was riding uphill, with no wind. The breeze of my own momentum flowed around my bare hands and bare face. The air was moist and almost warm in a familiar but distant way. I felt like I was flying. For the first time in weeks, I was pedaling a surface free of snow, free of sand, free of churned up sandy powder and chunks of ice. For the first time in weeks, I was pedaling without resistance. It was just me and rubber and studs on ice, and nothing could stop us.

The point of the ride was to climb, but I rode all the way to the end of North Douglas because I suddenly possessed so much extra time usually reserved for churning out slow miles. I reached the end of the road, 15 miles out, in one hour. If it were summer, I'd be ashamed of 15 mph. But today, I felt like I had pounded out a personal best time trial.

After that, I did the five-mile climb. It was way too easy.

I'd need to ride for six hours and 45 minutes Monday to complete my 10-day goal of 40 hours. That is certainly not going to happen, but overall I'm not disappointed about how the current training binge went down. In the past nine days, I battled two days of subzero temperatures, one all the way down to -18, 50 mph wind gusts, frigid wind chills, 40 inches of snow ... I ran the hard winter gamut, basically. And what does the NWS weather forecast call for the last day of binge training? Lets see ... ooo, a flood warning!

HEAVY RAIN WILL BEGIN LATE TONIGHT SPREADING NORTH OVER THE
PANHANDLE. TEMPERATURES WILL REMAIN ABOVE FREEZING AND WATER WILL
INCREASE THE WEIGHT AND DENSITY OF THE SNOWPACK. MANY DRAINS ARE
LIKELY TO BE BLOCKED WITH SNOW. THE IMPACTS WILL BE STANDING WATER
INCREASED SNOWLOADS ON ROOFS AND THE POTENTIAL OF SNOW CAPSIZING
BOATS. STREAMS WILL RISE AS THE FREEZING LEVELS GET HIGHER. SOME
AREAS COULD RECEIVE UP TO TWO INCHES OF RAINFALL.

This winter is nothing if not harsh.