A sunrise bike ride down Hawaii's Haleakala volcano

After watching dawn break from the lip of the Hawaiian volcano, a brave writer joins other bicycle adventurers for a 27-mile whoosh down to the sea, hairpin turns, singing spokes and all.

November 07, 2010|By Christopher Reynolds | Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

As we saddled up again below Makawao for the last seven miles or so, Sisson told us to keep our mouths shut. Bugs, he said, are attracted to the neighboring cane and pineapple fields, and it's never fun to swallow one at 20 mph. Sure enough, zipping past the open fields and the stone walls of an old church, I felt little winged creatures bouncing off my cheeks.

And then, in what seemed like no time at all, it was 9:45 a.m., and we were pulling into the parking lot of the Holy Rosary Church in Paia, about a mile from the beach. We were done. Subtracting standing-around time, we had averaged 24 mph.

"Normally, I do a hard cycle to work, commuting through London traffic," said fellow rider Tim Clark. "Not pedaling, you just feel like a kid again, grinning side to side for 28 miles."

As the crew loaded the bikes into the trailer and sorted helmets, we were free to check out the church shrine to Father Damien (who tended the lepers on Molokai in the late 19th century). Then we went on to choose breakfast places in the T-shaped tourist-and-surfer town of Paia. I went with crêpes on the patio of Café Des Amis.

But what I really wanted was 20 more miles of empty upcountry roads and an encore from those singing spokes.

chris.reynolds@latimes.com

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