Two words to describe today: tough climb! But first let me back pedal to the start of the day. One of the messages we received from the group was to have breakfast at the Arise Kona Bakery. Alan and I decided we would walk there and come back for our bikes and load our luggage. We walked to the bakery and it was closed. The next nearby option was Hico Hawaiian Coffee, so we walked there. It was a disappointment as they said we would have to wait 15-20 minutes for a banana toast. We bought a coffee and pastry and headed back. Needless to say, we had a late start to the ride. Big mistake. We started riding at 10:15 for what was supposed to be a 32 mile ride. When we got to the first, and longest climb of the day, it was a gain of about 1100 feet in about 3 miles. That was tough!! Alan and I walked up part of the climb for about 25 minutes, stopping along the way to hydrate. With the asphalt and direct sun, my Garmin thought it was over 90 degrees, even reaching 100. I’m sure the local weather didn’t indicate that intensity. We were not the only ones who had to walk. However, hats off to the riders who cycled the whole way up!!! We stopped in Holualoa for a coffee at the White Nene Coffee Roasters that had a food truck along the road. We also ate our peanut butter sandwiches that we took on our bikes. (The night before each ride we can choose to make a sandwich to take on our bikes). After that it was pretty much all down hill to the hotel, the Outrigger Kona Resort. Today’s ride was less miles, but took us longer to cycle due to the climb five miles into the ride. Put another way, we could have biked about 8 or 9 miles, from this morning’s hotel, down Ali’i drive and avoided all the fun of the climb! We ended up with about 28 miles as we did shorten the ride a bit at the end of the route. After the ride we met for our rider meeting at 4pm and then had dinner at the hotel with three other riders.
We weren’t to the top of the climb yet, but we were still pedaling here and just stopped for water.
I managed to snap a photo of my Garmin as I climbed the hill.
A look towards the direction we had just biked.
At one water stop we saw local roosters wandering.
A glimpse of the climb. The summary showed a maximum grade of 9.8%, but all of the riders saw their Garmins, as they were pedaling, top at about 15% grade.
Just an interesting piece of information.
The White Nene Coffee stop.
The Nene is a Hawaiian goose and the state bird of Hawaii.
At a scenic overlook you could see the town of Kailua-Kona in one direction…
And in the other direction, the Outrigger hotel (the large white building in the center of the photo).
View of the pool from the fourth floor.
The pool has a waterfall feature.
Snorkelers looking for and swimming with manta rays.