The alarm went off at 1:50 am (!) and in a blind stupor we proceeded to throw on the clothes we had set aside - long johns, sweatshirts, sweatpants, jeans, hats, scarves, gloves. Ugh! Didn't we come to Hawai’i for the warm, balmy breezes, the sunny beaches? What are we doing up at this hour preparing for arctic freeze? Oh yeah, bike riding down some volcano, watching the sunrise, whatever. Whose idea was this?!? Well, we already paid for it, so we begrudgingly bundled up and went out to the front of the hotel at 2:15am. Damon lay on the ground and "looked at the stars." Yeah, right. Amy knew that was really an excuse to lie down and sneak in some shut-eye when she wasn't looking. They were quite a sight, though! A van picked us up a few minutes later and drove us to the bike place after a couple more stops to pick up some others. We watched a safety video and hopped on another van for the hour trip up to the top of Haleakala, the largest inactive volcano in the world. The ride was pretty brutal with lots of quick turns in the dark in a van. Damon has never gotten motion sickness before but that was the closest he had been in a long time. Amy actually enjoyed the ride (as much as one can enjoy anything at that brutal hour of the morning) and chatted a bit with Maryanne (Marian?) sitting beside her. The lights of the cities as we were going up and up and up were beautiful. The van radio was on and some of us even quietly sang along for a bit. It was cute.

Once at the top we bundled up with the last of our layers and went over to the look-out railings to watch the sunrise. It was probably in the low 40's and here we are, in the dark, waiting for the sun. And waiting. And waiting. Chatting, shivering, taking pictures of blackness, going into the bathroom structures to put our hands under the hand dryers, and waiting. We did get a nice view of the stars in the darkness. We brought the binoculars and looked at some constellations. They were so thick it looked like you could stick your hand up there and stir them around. As we started seeing the first subtle signs of light we could see that the clouds were pretty heavy but didn't completely cover the sky. The sky slowly lit up and we watched from a good spot as the view became more and more picturesque. With so many clouds we never did really see any actual sun peeking through, but it was still pretty. Finally, when the sunrise symphony had faded out we jumped on our assigned bikes and gave them a try around the parking lot. The bikes were about 50 lbs and had drum breaks rather that the usual caliper breaks. The drum breaks were noisy and slow but they were ideal for the task. The bikes only had a single speed and pedaling was only necessary for about 30 seconds out of the whole trip. After all, we were riding down a volcano! The ride down was taken at around 20 mph. We wove down the hairpin turns for a few hours, enjoying the scenery and the exercise. We were riding down the exact road we had taken in the van to get up there, but it had been dark so we couldn't see anything. It was cool to now be able to see all the stuff we had passed on the way up. After 45 minutes or so we all stopped at a lookout point for a break and to take pictures. This was a good time to start shedding clothes if starting to get warm, but most of us still stayed somewhat bundled, because the wind going by while moving on the bike could still get a bit nippy. It should be mentioned that the way they work this is that a tour guide rides at the head of the group, the rest of the group follows single file, and then a van follows behind us the entire way down. This relieves the riders of ever having to look behind in fear of any traffic because the van keeps cars from passing. A few times throughout the trip the crew would have us ride as close as possible to the right in order to let some vehicles go around us, but other than that we covered the middle of the lane (two lane road) all the way down. It was quite luxurious. Not like trying to ride our bikes around Winter Park. After the break we continued our way down for another hour or so. As our elevation decreased (started at about 10,000 feet), the landscape slowly changed from barren lava rocks and dry dirt and grass to more homes, green fields and flourishing vegetation. We even went by a pineapple plantation. It was invigorating to feel the pockets of various temperatures as we rode through them, as well as the different smells of eucalyptus trees, cut grass, flowers, lavender fields and an onslaught of other unidentifiable scents. Near the bottom we stopped at a nice restaurant for yet another yummy breakfast. We sat with Melissa and Paul, another newlywed couple from New York. We talked about our desire to live there and they gave us all kinds of helpful hints on where to look for an apartment. Although they were both born and raised in New York, they live in Hoboken, New Jersey now and they love it. But they also suggested Upper East Side, Upper West Side, TriBeCa, and also Hoboken, NJ. It sounds like the Village might be just right for us, but don't know if east or west. We'll just have to see. Talking about it was inspiring! After breakfast it was definitely safe to shed our layers to shorts and t-shirts. We finished off the rest of the ride, which finally concluded it at sea level at some beach, a total of 38 miles. We loaded the bikes in the van and were escorted back to the bike place, then back to the hotel. During this ride Amy gave Melissa and Paul some information on stuff we liked in Kaua’i, as they were headed there in a couple of days. Hope they had as wonderful time as we did!

Since the bike adventure started at the crack of dawn, we had the whole day left! After a few hours of nap time we were ready to go out again. Melissa and Paul had mentioned having a great meal at Roy's in Kihei. Having not experienced any pricey Maui restaurants yet, we felt it was time. Roy's calls itself "Hawai’ian Fusion." Any restaurant that uses the word "fusion" to describe itself must be expensive. We read up in the Maui Revealed trip book that Roy's was loud and the food was usually warm instead of hot (but it still got high ratings). Apparently Roy had read that too, as this time the food came out quite hot. We started with a crab cake appetizer that was absolutely delicious. Amy had a combination dish of salmon with rice and some sort of fish with a slice of potato. The kind of meal that is a nice presentation and no doggie bag required. Damon had meatloaf with mashed potatoes (had more doggie bag potential, but ultimately unnecessary). It was all quite good. We finished with a piping hot chocolate soufflé with ice cream. Damn good. DAMN GOOD! That dessert was worth flying back to Hawai’i for. It all came out to $100 even with tip.

After that we picked up a local paper and parsed through the entertainment section looking for dancing, as that worked out pretty well for us in Honolulu. We found a few options that looked interesting. First was at a hotel in Wailea that ended in about an hour. We swung by our condo and picked up Amy's shoes and continued on to the Fairview whatever hotel in Wailea. We parked in some temporary parking because we just wanted to just run in and have a look before committing to sticking around, but some valet guy came running over and said we had to valet. Well, no way. We made like we were leaving and he walked away, so Amy said she would just run in and then come back and report. Shortly after she left the car, Damon just locked it up and went in some back door to avoid the valet militia and joined Amy. We wandered the hotel and found nothing of interest as far as dancing was concerned, but the place was an extremely nice resort. Simply gorgeous. Verandas and lavish landscaping and pillars and marble, big open spaces with high ceilings, corridors, mirrors - just a beautiful, upscale, luxurious but tasteful beach resort. So anyway, we got out of there, and our next option was a hotel in Kihei just up the road. What a contrast from the place we just left. We got there and found this dumpy hotel with some noisy women out front chatting and smoking and looking like they were turning tricks. Turns out they were part of a bachelorette party that was hanging out in the same bar we were headed to. Oops, sorry girls.

The place was a typical 80s-90s hotel bar. It was empty except for the bachelorette party of 8 or 9 and maybe half a dozen other patrons. The band was a four-piece, playing straight-ahead jazz covers and pretty good. When they broke into something a bit more swingy, we got up and stretched our legs. A few songs later another couple gets up and does some Latin dancing. The band continued with a few classics such as "'A' Train" and that other couple stayed on the floor and did some swing. At some point another couple joined us, too, totaling three dancing couples. At 10pm the band wrapped it up and we settled our tab. On the way out, the couple who had done the Latin dancing earlier came up to us. The woman started saying, "Lindy Hoppers! Lindy Hoppers!"

As most people reading this already know, Amy and I were instrumental in running the Orlando Lindy Exchange back in October, 2004. When we went through the registration info to send out an invite for a future dance, we noticed there was one couple from Hawai’i that attended the exchange. That couple was Ida and Larry, the very same couple approaching us on the way out of the restaurant. Nice people. We couldn't have imagined the possibility of running into them outside of a strictly swing event. That was the closest we came to running into anyone we knew, 6,000 miles from home. We chatted for a few minutes and parted ways.

After that, we stopped a few times on the way home to do some star gazing, and then hit the bed.