Honolulu Century Ride

We had a really good time at the Honolulu Century Ride today. There aren't a lot of club rides like there were in St. Louis, so we jumped on the chance to sign up for this one. I think this was actually the largest ride we've ever been in, over 4000 cyclists. It started from Diamond Head and the start was at 6:15, which meant we had to leave the house at 5am to drive there, find a parking spot, and get the bike ready.

I don't think I've ever been photographed so many times in my life. We were a bit of a curiosity in St. Louis, but here we were definite head-turners. A LOT of Japanese tourists took our picture (this ride draws a large number of riders from Japan).

They sent us off in stages, so it took quite a while just to get going. Here are some pictures from the start:

The weather was gorgeous (no rain showers) and the scenery was spectacular. We had driven some of these stretches before, but there's nothing like touring them by bike.

The kids were fantastic too. Adam started getting a little whiny just before we got to the turnaround point for the 50mile option. We stopped at the rest stop for quite a while, fueled him up with oranges and cookies and he was good to go.
He got his second wind and really didn't complain much at all on the whole way back until we got within 5 miles of the finish. I never heard a single complaint out of Cole, he enjoyed the scenery and took a short nap. We did a total of 50 miles today and everybody was in good spirits. I think we could have done the 75 mile, but it would have led to lots of whining and bribery. The last time we did 70 miles with Adam, I had to whip out the suckers I had stashed in my pocket from the hotel lobby for the last hour of the ride. Since I didn't have any bribery candy, I didn't want to push it :)

A photographer was taking photos along the route for purchase , so I'm hoping that once the photos are up on his website there will be some good ones of us all on the bike. If I get some good ones, I'll post them later.

So a good day of riding and two happy bikers...