Courtenay Brown

On Christmas day, almost everything on the North Shore was closed, and the waves were big. So we gawked at Sunset a bit and then drove over to Waimea to gawk there. It was pretty awesome. I’ve been swimming at Waimea before, normally it looks like a big beautiful bay. On Christmas the waves were so big that you couldn’t even tell it was a bay, it was just a big foaming cauldron of whitewater. We got there and my brother Than’s first comment was “it was bigger at the Eddie” (that day he called in “sick” and his co-workers sat in their offices watching the live feed and “looking for Than”), despite the paltry 25 ft waves we stayed and gawked with everyone else. It was amazing.

This whole week has been pretty amazing so far. Our place is right on the beach, and aside from a wet and stormy Christmas Day, the weather has been gorgeous. We all had grand plans of tourist activities but when you are staying in such an idyllic spot, it’s hard to get motivated to leave (except for training of course).

One good/bad thing about Oahu’s North Shore is there is basically one road, the King Kamehameha highway. Which, incidentally, is also the only road on the windward side of the island out of Kaneohe, and it’s the road that Ben and I rode last Wednesday to get up to Sunset. It’s pretty neat because you are right along the water, the downside is that there are a lot of cars because it’s the only road that goes where everyone wants to go. Yesterday on my ride, a truck pulled out in front of me really rapidly, I slammed on my brakes but got no traction on the grit- and sand-covered road and wound up hitting the deck. Now my butt area hurts. The truck driver didn’t stop, and the guys in the back of the truck (hello redneck, yes the truck had loud tires and souped-up shocks) just laughed. Then a few miles later on the climb up towards the Dole Pineapple Plantation, I got a big slash in my tire. Then I fixed it. There were so many cars and it was so hot. Then my bike was being mechanically, and completely, uncooperative. The stream of speeding cars was getting on my nerves. So I did what many a logical person has done: I threw my bike at the pineapples.

Today’s cycling involved a ride to the bike shop a few towns over .