bicycle commuter!

This morning, Beth and I skipped sunrise at Honul's beach to ride our bikes out to Cellana.  Once we snuck out of town, avoiding the major streets, we got up onto Queen Kahumanu Highway, and it was a quick little ride along the relatively flat road.  There is a very wide shoulder, but it is a little scary riding next to the 50 mph traffic. It was a quick 40 minute ride, door to door.  Little did we realize that our journey was eased, like so many before us, by strong SE trade winds!  I'm sure that by the time she has to ride home, the wind will have switched to her favor... grumble grumble.

I stopped by Wawaloli Beach Park on the way home.  It is situated on the same 1801 lava flow as the airport and Cellana, and has lots of rocky shoreline.  A little reminiscent of the North Shore of Lake Superior.  Only a little.  The rocks are both basalt, yes, but they are way younger and more rugged here.  Also, the waves are a lot bigger.  Pretty impressive to this flatlander.  I was impressed with the power and size of the waves and the amount of water they pushed up onto the rocks.

The big peach rock in the middle is covered by about 6 feet more water in the bottom picture than the top!  (sorry no scale).

One place, the waves would slam into the porous, fissured rock, and force air and water through the spaces.  The rocks would hiss and sputter with each wave crest.  Almost like they were alive.  It was very cool.  I was spooked the first time I heard it, until I figured out what was going on.  I even saw one little geyser that would shoot 3 feet in the air! neat.

Here is some of the pahoehoe (ropey lava) I saw.  groovy.

 Rainbow! Wavebow?

 The lil geyser.  Ok, maybe not 3 feet.

One of the funny parts about walking on the rocks was that the little rock crabs would go scurrying away like crazy, usually before I even saw them.  Often with so much vigor that they would fling themselves off the 6' cliffs and go spinning into the sea.  I suppose it is so they wouldn't end up like this:

Here is a Honul's Beach crab, so you can see what the living ones look like: well camouflaged.