Poboy rides a bike: Cycling in Maui

West Maui Cycles

I went to Maui for a week for a wedding (congratulations, James and Jamie!) with about 20 of my closest friends from New Orleans. It ended up our condos were about 2.5 miles apart along the coastline on West Maui. My perfect solution was to check out the bike rental scene for the week. It seemed that there were bike rentals all over the place where we were all staying. After making some phone calls, I decided I wanted to rent a bike from the West Maui bike shop, where I got a beach cruiser with a basket for one week costing a grand total of $52.80.

Bike lanes in Maui: wide shoulder with
Bike route signs periodically placed.

One question I asked when first calling the bike shop was about the cycling conditions on the roads. The person I spoke with informed me that the main highway (Hwy 30), which connected our condos, had 9 foot wide bike lanes. It ended up that all the major roads in Maui had wide shoulders with bike route signs placed along them. Here is an example:

By the pool at Ka'anapali Beach hotel (KBH!) with Mikey

At some sticky right turn only lanes, there were bike lanes explicitly painted on the road.

When I arrived in Maui, after 35 hours of traveling (thanks, United airlines), Newbs really had my back. He took me to the bike shop, where I got the cruiser. I promptly rode it to the Ka'anapali Beach Hotel (KBH) where the wedding was to take place, and it hung out by the pool. We hung out by the Tikki bar.

Downtown Lahaina - check out the bikes!

I saw lots of bikes throughout the week in Maui, but very rarely did I see any hybrids, mountain bikes or commuting road bikes like my Schwinn Traveler. Instead, bikes were either all beach cruisers, like you can see parked here in Lahaina, or carbon forked or framed road bikes with spandex clad riders. Especially when Chris and I drove along the Northern part of West Maui, where the road is a single lane with a lot of uphill, we saw cyclists taking the challenge.