Earlier last week, Chris let us know that Vince “Akron” was in town on a surfing trip with his friend, so we put together a ride this Sunday afternoon. The word went out, and surprisingly, everybody showed up. 10 riders! That’s the biggest turnout we’ve had in a while. After gearing up, we headed up Government Road and did the side loop. Ckucke and Akron immediately got into their classic banter as if no time had elapsed since the last time they had seen each other. Akron got to ride Chris’ long forgotten Planet X freeride hardtail. There were no problems as he adapted readily to it and kept the pace with the group.
After popping back out onto the road, we climbed back up the road to the Ditch and rode out to the end. We ran across four lady bikers, including JT’s favorite aviatrix from back in the Mililani days. On the way back along the upper trail, Ckucke was given the choice of going straight or up cardiac hill, and to our brief dismay, he turned right up the hill. It was all good: Suffering was fun. As expected, it was still rutted out and the grass had grown in so as to make it virtually unrideable. At the top, Akron was doing fine, so we took him down the short mystery singletrack then returned to the big tree.
Dropping into flailing fat guy we found that some fallen branches had resulted in some changes to the route. The trail now intercepted an old contour cut and dropped onto the upper trail further makai than before. Retracing our way past the cardiac hill junction, we continued straight and took a forced left down one of the connectors between the main and upper trails, bypassing the washout. With the end in sight, we made quick work of the return along the Ditch, expending all the reserve energy remaining in our legs.
It was nice seeing Vince and getting to take a spin with him. He added a long missing dynamic back to our group. Hopefully he makes it back down in the future for more Hawaii dirt time!
Pictures here
D = 11.54 km (7.17-miles), Vavr = 10.5 km/h (6.5-mph), Vmax = 34.0 km/h (21.1=mph), T = 1-hour, 6-minutes
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