Five of us lined up, four jumped... she needed a minute to get the nerve up.

It's hard to find just the right rash guard, and when you do, you can expect to pay for it, so I made my own. This was my second time surfing since returning from serving my mission: 2.5 years of no ocean. It's good to be back! This was a beautiful day to boot!

This was a 6 hour hike but we took a lot of down time, it could have been done at a dedicated pace in about 2.5-3 hours by serious hikers without time to play in the falls. This is the nicest place to jump off into the water. I'm not sure on just how high the tallest rock that I'm about to jump from in the above picture is; it's arround 30 feet though. The lower rock with the woman on it is the typical and nicer place to jump from and she jumped from there just after I jumped off the high rock. Click here to see it in action: The Jump

Here we are reneacting a little scene from a movie, this is the part that I tell her "No matter what happens, I will find you!" and then I jump down the waterfall. Click here to see the moving Video rendition: "The Last Of The MoWhiteboys"

No really, it was fun! On the way up the mountain there were a lot of Strawberry Guava bushes and many of them were a little fermented, thus the look on my face.

THis link is to a silent movie of my desending the mount the most efficient and fastest way I know how: Like A Lemur! (click here for Take Two)

Directly behind me is where we were jumping off the above pictured waterfall late September '06.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Tuesday morning dawned early. I was up at my usual 5:50am and I drove my sisters to seminary. I came home and donned the spandex and gear and hopped on my vintage Motobecane: Motobecane Photo
 (for those not familiar, it's a pretty sweet racing bicycle) and tore down the road towards town. Hawi is about 4 miles from my door and it's dang small, it takes less than a minute to drive through it slowly. I turned off the road I live on to head op the mountain form Hawi. The grade is 30% (for those who may not know, that's 3 feet of rise over every 10 feet, about as steep of a grade you will find on any public road. That climb is 2 miles. Then the grade mellows out to between 10% and 20% for the rest of the climb. Hawi is at 500ft above sea level. I spent 70 minutes climbing to an elevation of 2500ft before I decided to com back down.
               
The trees were not growing at that height and the wind was very strong, so I opted not to go farther, and from the trip back down, I think that was wise. As I began my descent I had to ride in the middle of the lane because the gusts of wind would carry me a couple feet in either direction; the good news is that I was going the speed limit (40mph) so I was not holding up traffic. I averaged 37mph on the return trip. I was already going 30mph when I hit the hill above Hawi with the 30% grade. I had to brake pretty hard to no hit the truck in front of me on the hill, my max speed was 49.7mph. I know that I could have gone over 55mph, possibly even 60mph were it not for the truck. There is nothing quite like feeling the wind fly by and knowing that 21lbs of steel and rubber is all that separates you from pavement moving as fast as a train. Sometimes I think about getting body armor for such times, but then I snap out of it. No, seriously, I would like to but it's going to take some effort and time, and until then I can't promise that I won't be taking those hills as fast as is reasonably safe. Maybe I should ride with a parachute; I've seen some close calls that that would have been nice in!
 
Total trip time: 90 minutes
Ascent time: 70 minutes
Descent  time: 20 minutes
Total trip Distance: 21 miles
Total climb and descent: 2000+ feet

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