Riding a bike down a volcano

In the months preceeding the trip to Maui, my friend Chris and I had been excited about doing a bike ride trip down a volcano.  There are several companies that run these trips, and the general idea is that they put you in a van, bus you to the top of Mount Haleakala, and from there you ride a bike down the volcano from a high elevation without having to pedal.

My bike at an elevation of 6,400 feet, still in the clouds

In the weeks before the trip, I spent a considerable amount of time researching which downhill tour we should go on.  Due to the dangerous nature of this tour, in 2007 the National Park suspended use of commercial downhill tours from the summit at 10,000 feet elevation.  To adapt, commercial tours now typically take you to the crater top in a van, then bus you down to 6,400 feet elevation right outside the national park.  If you really want to ride down from 10,000 feet, you do have options.  You can rent bikes and a bike rack, get someone to volunteer to drive, and do your own downhill tour at your own risk from the summit.  You can also ride all the way up the volcano and turn back around and go down (Now, I think that one sounds really fun, but not on a cruiser).

Check your head.

Chris and I determined that we had no interest in going to the summit in a van with a bunch of other people and that that could be done in a vehicle by ourselves, and so we were interested only in the riding a bike down a big hill part.  Further, most of these tours start very early in the morning in order to view the sunrise; we had no delusions of getting up early, we were out to find the tour that started the latest.  Also, I started to notice that a lot of these tours don't actually end up at the beach, and some end towns before the beach.  To top it off, we didn't want to get picked up and dropped off at a hotel by a tour van; I've ridden enough airport shuttles to know that this sucks.

After considerable research, calling companies with misinformation on their websites, and a great deal of help from Tom Barefoot, I finally found Maui Easy Riders.  This ride had the whole package: meet at the beach in Paia at 1:30 PM, ride to 6,500 feet elevation, and end back at the beach in Paia.

We got to wear these awesome helmets.

We left Ka'anapali at around 10:30, in Chris' rental jeep that we took the roof off, and had a scenic ride through the northern portion of West Maui, and got to Paia around 12:30.  We spent an hour walking around and getting burgers.  (Doesn't this already sound better than an 8 AM leave for the tour time?).  At 1:30 we found the Billy's (Maui Easy Riders is run by two dudes named Billy and Billy) and got in the van.  The van was nice, and had air conditioning vents on every row.  They drove us up taking the route we would be taking down, telling us about the plants, history of the area, famous people whose houses we passed, etc.   When we got to the 6,500 foot elevation point, it was in the 60's and we were in the clouds.  (At the beach it was a hot sunny day).

We got bikes, which were single speed cruisers with hand brakes, and each was named after a Phish song.  I want to say I rode Guyute, but I know that's a lie and an artifact of waiting too long to write this.  When I looked at all the bikes' names, Guyute was the song I got stuck in my head.  It turned out one of the Billy's is a huge Phish fan, so that gave us something to talk about.  Here's Phish fan in Hawaii trivia I learned: you gotta go to San Fran or something to see them, which is what Billy is doing this summer.

We also each got these awesome full head helmets to wear, and were offered windbreakers.  One advantage of the afternoon tour was that it was much warmer up at the high elevation than in the morning, but my sleeves were perfect for the ride.

We got on our bikes, one of the Billy's leading with a walky talky and Phish Billy driving the van behind us.  There were hand signals about what to do to let cars go by, and to know when we were going to stop.  The first stop was at about 6,400 foot elevation, where we were still in the clouds but were low enough to see all of Maui.  I could really see how in thousands of years it's going to be two islands.

The ride downhill was amazing.  Maui is the best smelling place, and just taking deep breaths and looking around at everything was an incredible experience.  We were going at a real slow pace, so there was plenty of time to look and ride at the same time.  At some point, this couple on their honeymoon was set to lead us behind Billy, because they were getting dropped, and that sort of changed the quality of the descent.  The new husband was the worst cyclist I've ridden with in just about ever.  I have no idea how I kept coasting into him on my brakes when he was peddling almost the entire time.  And his front wheel was wobbling all over the place.  I started giving him about 20 feet because it just wasn't fun riding any closer behind him.

Church we stopped at in Paia town

One stop we made near the bottom was at a church just at the Paia town outskirts sign.  There was a statue for Saint Damien there, which excited Chris a little.  He was very interested in the island of Molokai where they put the lepers back in the day.

Father Damien

The ride went all the way through the beach town of Paia and ended at the beach:

We loaded up the bikes into the van and said good bye to the Billy's:

The ride was really fun, and I recommend taking the Billys' bike tour to y'all if you head out to Maui and want to ride a bike down the volcano on a tour.  If you're heading out to Maui to ride a nice bike up the volcano and then back down a little, you should invite me to come along.  Except now my new dream is to become a professional surfer, so I may go surfing instead...