Friday, May 16, vog haze is super strong, to me it looks worse then past weeks strong vog. Anyway, the weather aside from that has been clear so the Friday night ride is on! This time I scram from work on time. 5PM on a friday, I expect the traffic getting onto the freeway from the Lunalilo to be a mess, but instead its moving. In fact once on freeway it’s flowing right along and I cruise along to Pali. Dang, it takes me only about 25 minutes to get to the Castle fountain and park! Jeff, Sara, and Chris are here, and Jeff rubs his eyes in disbelief that I’m so early.
I notice the trees in the park have shed all their pink flowers. Dave is out with some illness, Scat is off smoozing on the mainland. So all that left is Chuck, who soon arrives. Dang, by 6PM were ready to roll, there’s still plenty of light out! We head up Kalanianaole toward Norfolks. Wow, my legs still feel some of last weekends punishment! Turn off on Old Kal, this time we wisely bypass the trailhead we took last time and ride the road further in. I don’t know the area well enough to really describe where we’re going, but it’s less confusing with daylight. Yes we had some steep climbs, but nothing like the heinously steep trail we tried to climb. In fact, before we knew it, we were at the big tree clearing.
Still got some sunlight, we hit the fat guy single track downhill that spits us out onto the upper ditch trail. The air is alive with the jungle sounds of the bird activity in the twilight. Tookie tookie! I actually take the new little trail that bypasses the rocky rain rut that brings us out onto the main Maunawili trail.
I setup for a photo op and Chris proceeds to wheelie into the side of the trail. I know you have been off the bike for a while, but still…. We’re hitting a good pace and quickly reach the ironwood climb to the upper loop cutoff. Not even a moment to catch breath and everyone heads up the steep climb. Geeze, no one stops at the usual clearing halfway up the climb and just keep motoring on to where it levels. Finally we stop and take a break. The climb was hard, but spirits are high. It’s good to be out. The winds are still, so it’s rather humid and hot, but with coming of night the temperature is dropping.
We head down the trail as the last bits of daylight hang on and cruise through the Playground. Finally hit the lights on the bumpy drop to the dip before the off camber climb out. Tricky as usual, even harder with darkness! We make it to the top, and with just a brief breather ride the welcome downhill along the mini ridge back down to the main trail. The trail now wide and smooth, a quick pace is set as we ride to Government road, with the echos of ‘poop left’ and ‘poop right’ as we dodge mounds of horse dung.
I don’t think there’s much debate as with barely a pause we head up Government road. As we near the mango tree the question goes out to take the dropin, or continue on the road. Grinding up the road does not sound like much fun, we drop into the loop trail. The added factor of dark makes the more technical trail even more interesting. 
It kind of brings back memories of riding Tantalus trails at night, although these newfangled lights clearly outdistance the puny little four AA flashlights we used back then. Hey Sonny, back in our days, it was uphill both ways!
As we head through the ti grove, I see Chucky suddenly go down. WTF? It is off camber, maybe he slid out on some extra slippery leaves? I caught up to him as he was picking himself & bike off side of trail. “Chucky, you okay? What the hell happened?” This is probably the smoothest least technical part of this whole loop trail. 
It turns out one of the many wrong way pointed branch ends on this trail had jousted Chucky right in the ribcage and off the trail. He did manage to snap said branch off, so we won’t have to worry about it next time, but Chucky, this is not the prefered way to do trail clearing!
We weave through the rest of loop trail uneventfully. The darkness has a way of compressing things and altering perceptions, we seem to finish the loop quicker than usual and find ourselves back at Government road. No one wants to relive last week’s heinous road ride grind back up Kalanianaole, so we head back onto Maunawili Ditch. The trail is bone dry and the amount of traffic has smoothed out the trail considerably. There should be no worries about equestrians on the trail. It’s quite enjoyable and a fast pace is set. The whole group is tightly clustered, there’s some friendly jockying going around, there’s that kinda a bmx vibe going. Jeff and Chuck are up front. In one of the open outside turns where the dirt is loose, Chuck skids the back and roosts a cloud of poopy dust, just in time for Sarah and myself to ride into. I hear an exclamation from Sarah, and then I see her pour on the gas. Damn girl, look at her go! One thing with night riding with lights, you know when someone is coming up on you. Chucky and Jeff have to up the pace to stay ahead, everyone’s now hammering good! I dare say this sure feels faster than when we ride this trail during the day. I find myself midring stand climbing up to the Love Toy corner.
A short break is in order here. Whew! The mosquitoes aren’t too bad, but the termites are swarming us with our alien abduction lights. The momentum has been set and we head down the trail at almost the same pace. There are more patches of horseshoed bumbly spots now, definitely feeling those as the sole hardtail rider. Nearing the intersection where we usually turn around, I’m feeling the burn. Hitting some climbing, then the short downhill and I can tell fatigue is setting in, I miss the cut around the downed tree. Damn, someone needs to build a ramp over this! Soon we are at the base of Cardiac Hill. Chuck is the climbing fiend and heads up the climb. I don’t even bother and walk it from the bottom. Looks like its seen a fair amount of traffic, the sides of the water gully are getting scraped away making it a tiny bit wider and that tiny bit easier to push the bike up. The grass has also been pushed back. It’s still Cardiac Hill. Everyone makes it to the Big Tree clearing. After that hill, rest is definitely in order. And that last bit has sucked the power out of me. The moon is out, we like the moon!
We’ve had our share of fun, it’s time to get out of here. We head down the moonscape area, wander some of the Norfolk trails trying to find a way out. We find a jump track where a set of pretty large doubles have been built. And the road is right along side. We clamber out onto the road. The road ride back to the fountain is thankfully much shorter, and not a constant climb which makes it much more bearable. When we get back to the cars, I’m tired, but it’s one of those good tired. Dinner is Taco Bell. You know, you’d think there’d be someplace better to eat on a Friday night in Kailua, but we know they’re open, and the parking is readily visible. We could do worse, and a good ride makes it taste better!
Distance: I dunno, if you’re really curious, you could figure a good approximation from the measurements of our other trail rides.
Time: something like three hours. You can figure that one out by looking at the time of my pics.
Speed: fast; Max speed: faster.
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