Ride in paradise (short report)

I figure this will be just a tiny ride report. But since they closed down our racetrack, the bike hasn't seen much daylight, so any little ride is a joyous occasion.

Kakaako Park. Chad's Euro SS


On a local forum someone organized a Euro bike ride for this past Sunday. We met at a local park. For me all previous contact had been just forum screen names. It was nice to see some of the faces behind the names. It ended up not being all Euro, but it was all good.

I had been riding on this tiny island for over a decade, and thought I knew most of the riding spots. But our leader/organizer led us through a suburban area just above a glen, which turns out to be only a few minutes away from where I work. And I never knew about it. It was a residential area (can't really get away from that on this island), but with lots of nice flowing turns and elevation changes.

We then headed east, past Hanauma Bay, through the short winding road (made popular by the opening scenes of Magnum PI), and stopped to rest at Sandy Beach. We decided we'd go to Norfolk (a nice twisty road near Mt Olomana), then another place called 13 turns. Everyone was to take it easy at these next two destinations, as we suspected rains from previous days may have made the roads a little dirty.

IMHO:
Riding > Surfing


Sandy Beach aka Sandy's


We went around the point toward Makapuu, then got stuck in traffic in Waimanalo town (with its one traffic light). Everyone knows what a joy a Duc is in traffic.

Then we entered Norfolk. I was third in the group, following the ride organizer (998) and a Buell XB12R. We locked in a brisk but controlled pace, and immediately noticed that there was indeed some dirt on the road. So we hand signalled dirt/debris to the rest of the group. About 2/3 of the way through, the Buell apparently slipped a bit on some of the dirt and went wide in a medium left and just barely stayed on the pavement. I hit the same dirt, but luckily I had just seen what happened, so I also went wide but stayed on the road. We stopped at the small makeshift parking area at the end of Norfolk, but it was just the three of us. There were supposed to be 9 bikes. Oh crap. So about half a minute later, one more guy appears and says the GSXR guy went down. It turns out he crashed in the same spot the Buell and I slipped. He seemed unhurt, but he's probably sore today. His family came with a trailer for the bike.

So we were too bummed to finish off the ride through 13 turns, so we just went to the Big Mac factory.

Would you like fries with that?