2008 Honolulu Century Ride...

Today was the 2008 Century Ride...and I DIDN'T do it...along with about 400 LESS people compared to last year. According to my Japan friend, Kushima san, the air fares were really affecting the participation of Nihonjin with fares costing a crazy $1,000!!! ($600 with an ADDED fuel surcharge of $400!!!) Hopefully by this Febuary, the airfares will come down!!!

So, I woke up late again today and headed out the door at 2pm. Rode to Sandy Beach and there were still lots of riders (many girls) riding in at 3:30ish. The weather was really hot and but nice for the ride, as you can see from this shot above the world famous Bamboo Ridge - you could clearly see Molokai and Lanai in the distance today.


Although I didn't do the ride this year, I sort of did my own "Century" - yesterday I rode over 2.5 hours and today I did over 3.5 hours, so, I guess I must have done close to 100 miles over 2 days. An "unofficial" finishers picture of myself with the "real" finish in the background...

Sun Line....

Took this short lived picture while riding home this afternoon.
Location: Under Nimitz Highway near Puuloa Road.

Tokyo Wankei and ビッグエコー

Just go through watching about 10 hours or so of Tokyo Wankei last week. A story about Nihonjin and Kankokujin living in Japan. It was sort of corny, but even though, I really enjoyed it...but, I'm a jdorama neophyte. I really liked Yukie Nakama - who wouldn't!!!

http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x38ff_hopelessfanboi_tokyo-wankei/1

This drama was done in 2004, the first year I ever visited Japan. Luckily my friend Randal had his Japan friend, Yoosun, show us around Tokyo. One night, we ended up singing and drinking at a BigEcho karaoke box. These BigEchos http://www.clubdam.com/be are EVERYWHERE in Japan and we spent 3 hours or so in one near the Ginza / Shinbashi area.



Yoosun in the BigEcho - where she sang Yuki no Hana (my kind of music - tag).

Yoosun is an awesome AWESOME singer and we could have listened to her sing all night. She kind of reminds me of Miki chan in the drama. And exactly like in Tokyo Wankei, Yoosun always used her Japanese name while living in Japan.....

Yokohama Ferriswheel...

Yokohama Ferriswheel, originally uploaded by dancedream2002.

ロード　サン　took this beautiful nite picture about a month ago in Yokohama. He should be coming home next week sometime.

Although not the same ferriswheel, I rode a big one like this in Osaka in 2004. http://serikaku.blogspot.com/search?q=osaka+ferriswheel

2008 Cycle to the Sun...Haleakala

A...Long Time No See...

It's been several weeks since the 2008 Cycle to the Sun and even today I still feel like I've got some semi-permanent brain damage from the thin and COLDISH air at 10,000 feet.

It was a really hard ride, and I rode as hard as I could until I couldn't beat my best time of 3:39...no sense in inducing a brain aneurysm if I'm not going to be setting a record. So for the next 10 minutes or so I brought it down several notches and got passed by probably about 5 or 8 people (senior citizens included!)...but at that point...I couldn't give a cr@p...

At the top, I asked myself, "Was I ever going to do this race again???" It was the WORST I've ever felt in the last 3 years and I just wanted to get the h#ll off that mountain ASAP! I didn't even get to enjoy any of the finishing drinks and snacks cause I felt so bad...and my legs were just killing me, I could hardly even sit to take off my shoes. Luckily I didn't need to wait for a bus cause I got to catch a ride down with one of my teammates. By the time we got back to sea level, I felt a whole lot better...

Results: http://www.cycletothesun.com/reports2008/ResultsCombined.PDF


Cycle to the Sun 2003 VS 2008 by Heart Rate. Notice I was on the road suffering for 40 minutes more in 2003.

Cycle to the Sun 2003 VS 2008 by Distance.

In 2003, I had ANOTHER terrible terrible ride and did it in 4:28. This year, I still felt bad, but probably not as bad as in 2003 because my fueling plan went exactly as planned, but, I still took 3:50. Must have been in better shape though, cause I could still keep the heart rate up during the last 2ok of the race vs. 2003.

Would I do this race again....????? My brain still ain't functioning right...