Neither Wind nor Rain...

Ride Day
time- 5:30
distance- 84.48

...nor pain of knee nor crappy screws can keep me from my goal. The Dirtbag must go through!
Today was a tough one. Tons of headwind all the way out made it a strugglefest to maintain 15mph. As a result my time today was somewhat slower than previous rides. But that's ok, wind makes me strong.
Leaving the house today is sprinkled. All that really means is I was covered in mud spray from minute one. Nice to get that out of the way. I'm a dirty dirty Dirtbag. 
Pupukea was easier. Not easy. Not fast. But easier. It's coming along.
It's knid of a headtrip, being out this long. To put it in perspective, today I rode for longer than it used to take me to drive from the University of the Pacific (Go Tigers!) in Stockon, CA, home to Palmdale, CA. That kind of blows my mind because that drive always took forever.
I did have some fail today. Fail number one was the rear-mounted bottle cage. Oh, it held bottle just fine. Not one rocket. What it didn't hold was the screws it came with. Hawaii is not known for the smoothness of our roads. They are not veeery niiice (that joke will be gotten by exactly three people and it was completely worth it). So the jiggling and jouncing loosened the screws to the point where one at some point came out. I only noticed because I had been reaching back to check on the condition of the bottle and it seemed to be making quite a racket. And it was sideways. But still in the cage! See, bright side. So I pulled the bottle out, back in my jersey pocket it went, and I went clink clink clinking on down the road. Yeah, that never got the lease bit annoying. Time to head to City Mill for repairs.

Yeah...that's not right

 Interesting to note, my turn around point was in Ka'a'awa, which, if you look at this map of next week's ride, intersects with that ride's course. So I'll be covering some of the same ground, which tells you how small the island really is, I guess. And in the Too Much Information category, I stopped to pee at the actual turn-around point in Ka'a'awa, Swanzy Beach Park.

Awww, a whale!

It rained some on the way back. Actually, to be specific, it rained at Sharks Cove, right where I planned to stop and stretch before making the run at Pineapple Hill. I still stopped, I still stretched and, because it was a tropical blessing, it only rained for a few minutes. I caught back up to it later, or it caught back up with me, but it was never too bad. A little downpour never hurt nobody.
Pineapple Hill was an adventure. It hurt, of course, but not in the normal way. My left knee went sore as soon as I hit the grade. Just a little tight spot on the outside of my knee. But as the climb went on, the soreness spread and occasionally flared to pain. Maybe a 5 on the scale at some really heavy points. This makes the climb extra long and extra slow because I spent some strokes trying to do more work with the other leg, avoiding putting too much pressure. I don't think its anything serious and it went away nearly completely as soon as the ground leveled back out, I probably have overdone it a little and am getting complaints. To be safe I'm going to dial way back for the next week. I'm considering taking the next two days off, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow morning. Running shouldn't hurt, its a different use of the joint, but Monday might be a total rest day. You would think swimming would be ok, but I push hard off the walls and that is basically a squat jump. We'll see. I'd rather rest it and be better for Sunday than be a tough guy and hurt for six hours.
Standing in the shower after my ride I couldn't help but smile. 85 miles, man. That's a long way in a car. If someone grabbed you right now and said, "Hey, let's take a drive. There's this cool place I know," and you asked how far it was and they said, "Eh, 'bout 85 miles," would you go? I fuckin' did that today on a bicycle. How cool is that? Of course, I've been pretty useless since I got home, but I earned it.