A day in the life: Haleiwa Metric Century

Last Sunday we headed on up to Haleiwa on the North Shore to do the Haleiwa Metric Century Ride. We got there early to get the bike set up and get us all ready to ride. We started to draw quite a bit of attention right from the start. We headed out before the mass start, not wanting to deal with all the riders in close proximity to our big bike. It was a nice cool morning, in fact the boys were a little chilly but I thought it was perfect riding temperature.

We stopped at the first rest stop (we stopped at every rest stop to keep the kids happy...) had snacks and drinks and had more admirers of the bike. I got someone to snap this photo of us all on the bike.

Things were going well and the kids were entertained with all the new things to see since this is not a route we normally ride, so at each rest stop we decided to keep going instead of turning around to go back and finish. Here we are at the final turnaround point, the halfway mark of the ride in Swanzy Beach Park. Beautiful views of the mountains and the quad leaning against the fence below.

The ride didn't quite go so smoothly after that, we broke a spoke shortly after the turnaround point and had to stop for repairs, and cookies for the boys. We got going again after it was all fixed up and had a pretty smooth ride after that. I really didn't hear any complaints out of Adam and Cole until we got to around 53 miles (out of 58). So at that point I got out the stash of suckers that I had hidden away and that kept them preoccupied for the last 5 miles.

So this was Cole's first big ride and he did great. 58 miles in total (so it was actually a little shy of a true metric century, which would be 62 miles). Not quite up to Adam's longest ride - he did 75 miles in the century ride last Sept. So we'll have to see how many miles we can do this year in the Honolulu Century - I guess we'll shoot for 75 with Cole and see how it goes.

Here are a few more photos from the ride...

Cole with cookies from the rest stop