Honolulu Century Ride 2009

A little late, but here's the ride report for the Honolulu Century Ride we did at the end of September. It was an early start, I think we left the house at 4:30 or some very early hour like that to drive downtown. We met up with the Hawaii On Tandems group and we headed out at 5:50am, a little before the mass start. It was still dark heading out:
We had a little rain early on in the ride, but we didn't get too wet. It cleared up quickly to a rather nice day. It was kind of crazy windy early on in the day, we were riding into it for portions of the ride out. Somehow I don't remember having a tailwind on the way back though...
The scenery was spectacular as always. Looking out over Manana island in the morning sun:
Everyone got to the first rest stop at Sandy beach in good spirits. We had a few snacks and generated a lot of interest on the triple. A couple from India stopped us to take our picture there, his wife stood by us and grabbed onto my arm like we were old buddies.

We hit every rest stop along the way to make sure everyone was happy. They had oranges, pretzels, sports drink and bananas at pretty much all the stops. The kids filled up on LOTS of oranges. More comments and pictures at the second rest stop. At least we got someone to take our picture with my camera:

Here we are at the rest stop that is the 75 mile turnaround. Everyone still in good spirits and there really has been no whining up to this point.
We found a nice little playground park tucked in amidst some condos. The kids really had a good time on the equipment they had here since it was different from the rest of the playgrounds around.

We did 75 miles and the kids did absolutely great. Nobody complained and I didn't even break out the bribery snacks (suckers and fruit snacks) until literally the last few miles of the ride. Adam chatted away the entire ride and sang the entire repertoire of songs he has learned in Kindergarten (over and over). We met the goal I was shooting for and so I was very happy with the ride. I was a little disappointed in the pictures that the ride photographer took, but he got great shots of us last year.
Now maybe soon I'll catch up on some more blogging!