EXCALIBUR

Q: Has this ever happened to you? It's 6:00 AM in Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm cruising down Kalakaua Avenue heading to Kapiolani Park for the start of the Honolulu Century Ride 2005. I'm in the right lane and since the sun is only just beginning to rise, I still have my front and rear blinkies blazing. There is virtually no traffic on the streets. Uh-oh, I spoke too soon. I hear a car honking its horn behind me. The next thing I know, a lady driving an old Mazda RX-7 pulls up on my left. She yells, "In Hawaii, it is against the law to ride on the road. You have to ride on the sidewalk!" I ignore her and continue riding. The lady then tries to run me into the sidwalk with her car. I brake, go around her, and keep riding. She then pulls up to me again and demands, "Don't you understand English?" I reply, "No habla." Mistake on my part. She starts yelling in Spanish. I switch to Thai, and yell back, "Mai kow jai, phom phuut phassaa Thai dai thao nan." This is starting to get ridiculous. Luckily at this point, we're approching the Waikiki Police Station. I quickly hail down a police officer in his cruiser. I tell the police officer, "I'm on my way to the Honolulu Century Ride 2005. The lady in the car behind me is trying to run me off the road." The police officer pulls the lady over and gives me the go ahead to make it to the start of the Century ride. Sometimes there is justice indeed. Little did that lady know that in a few moments, she would come upon 3,000 bicycle riders riding on the road, with full police escort and traffic control. Lucky you live Hawaii!!!

chipcom 

Hey bra! Here I thought the locals just tried to run down us military types...nice to see equal opportunity harrassment! Mahalo!

lilHinault

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Hawaii is a pit, a hole, a slimeheap.

EXCALIBUR

Shaka! Semper fi, carry on.

EXCALIBUR

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Yes, and Alooooooha!!!

jyossarian

Ahhh...Hawai'i. Just thinking about it makes me crave spam...As for the crazy woman in the RX-7, that's a nice car. I wonder if she'll sell it to me when they take away her license.

EXCALIBUR

Hawaii is the biggest consumer of Spam per capita. All while this hysterical lady was yelling and trying to *educate* me about the *law,* I just couldn't believe it was actually happening. Except for the part where she tried to run me into the sidewalk with her car, I thought her actions were kind of funny. The Honolulu Century Ride 2005 is the one day out of the year, the bicycle riders get to rule the road and the police are your true *friends.*

sbhikes

You asked, Has this ever happened to you?, then you said, It's 6:00 AM in Honolulu, Hawaii...
Nope. Mmmmm...Hawaii...

Glad to hear the cops were on our side this time!

EXCALIBUR

You can try and shoot for next year's Honolulu Century Ride. It's usually held on the last Sunday in September. There were 1,400+ riders that came all the way from Japan for the ride. Aloha a hui ho!

CB HI

6:00 AM + Waikiki Police Station = rookie HPD cop
Yes, something similar has happened to me before. Out of all the times I have called or flagged down HPD, they have only helped 3 times.

Two times the HPD officer was a rookie assigned in the downtown area. It seems rookies are more willing to help cyclist out in Hawaii than the old timers.

The 3rd time was a HPD Sargent that had no plans of helping out until I asked him “How would you fell if this guy did the same thing to one of your kids?” That hit a nerve. The Sargent then became best of buds with me and explained he had been riding with his daughter a month before on a trail. As they crossed a road, a driver blew the crosswalk, almost hit the girl and then yelled for them to stay off the road. The cop went home, had the plate run to get the drivers address, put his uniform on and went to the drivers home to have a talk.

EXCALIBUR

Bicyclists get enough grief from irate motorists, macho joggers clogging up the bike paths, etc. This is not to say all bicyclists are saints. We need all the help we can get. It's nice to know that there are HPD offiicers sympathetic to our plight. I really don't know what the hysterical lady's agenda was in my encounter this morning. I am glad the police officer was there and responded accordingly. Take care. I hope to see you on the road. Aloha.

TheRCF

Well, the lady is certainly an idiot since Waikiki is one place you are forbidden to ride on the sidewalk!

Yesterday, as I waited for a bus to take me to Waikiki to sign up for the ride (needed to save my energy for the ride!), a guy was crossing the street, in the crosswalk. He had to cross 4 lanes of traffic plus a turning lane. He was just starting to cross the last lane when this oblivious guy came zooming up and had to slam on his brakes (smoke came out). Then he starts yelling at the guy who had the rightofway to cross.

One of the guys at the bus stop with me, across the street, started yelling at the driver: "It's a crosswalk, stupid". Took several times before the guy noticed - then he started yelling at him too. Not too bright to make it an issue because its a $98 fine!

Bob

lilHinault

That place is just an utter slime pit, and I utterly refuse to use any Hawaiian words. I'll say Semper Fi, I'll say "git some!" I'll say Booyacka, and I only wish I knew some good Old Norse, I gotta work on that. No hawaiian words.

EXCALIBUR

It's a jungle out there. That intersection at Kalakaua Avenue and Atkinson Drive...the one near the Convention Center has got to be one of the deadliest on the island for bicyclists and pedestrians. Let's be careful out there and live to ride another day.

EXCALIBUR

Pelu mele iki bo bo. Hana hou y'all.

jyossarian

Hell yeah! I hope to see you too cuz that'll mean I'm in Hawai'i! I'll be the one eating a spam sandwich while riding around in flip flops and bathing trunks!

genec

Isn't it just amazing that some of the places with the nicest climates for cycling in the US have the worst cases of "car culture."

Florida, Southern California and Hawaii should be a wonderland for outdoor activities such as running and cycling... and while certainly there is some good cycling in So Cal, car culture does rule, and the result is that cyclists often get the short end of any situation when pitted against motorists.

lilHinault

Yes it's amazing, for instance, where I live now, this place is surrounded by trees. Big trees. They're a constant headache and expense as far as the apartment owners are concerned, constantly dropping leaves, branches, roots getting into pipes and messing up the water, breaking pipes, etc. 75% of the maintenance crew's job here is cleaning up after the trees and fixing stuff they've broke. Yet, and this is important, the trees stay. They provide shade, give a home to the squirrels (cute!!) and make the place much nicer to live. They are beautiful.

However, if this place were in Hawaii, the owners would have cut down all the trees long ago, and I'd say 50/50 chance there'd be grass! A real Hawaii type apt. owner would never had grass if they could have green-painted concrete instead.

I have seen the people there fishing the last, finger-sized fish out of tide pools, picking the last green fruit, basically stripping the ecology bare. The idea of ecology does not exist in the culture there, do not confuse King Kamehameha with Black Elk! The idea of Mother Earth and ecology just does not exist in Pacific cultures with the possible exception of one freak (in a good way) culture on the tiny island of tikopia thousands and thousands of mi. away from Hawaii.

Where you see any kind of lushness and decent care for the land there, you can be sure you're looking at a cluster of Mainland people. Land owned by them, or tied up in lawsuits etc by them to keep it from being ravaged and turned into desert.

It's the most car-obsessed culture I've ever seen. Makes Los Angeles seem like a bikin' vegan hangout.

EXCALIBUR

Be sure to slap a runny fried egg with lots of mayonaise and ketchup between those two pieces of white bread and fried spam. "Broke da mouth."

jyossarian

Oh baby! Just add some fish sauce and I'm in heaven!

lilHinault

No, no, fish sauce is too traditional/local. It's all about the white bread 'n' spam there.

jyossarian

It's a tradition in my house back in Brooklyn! Fish sauce on everything!

jhota

it's because they are also the nicest places for cars. convertibles, eh?

Cadd

It's so weird in HI. I was in Wakiki a few months ago and it's just amazing how much police presence there is. And what amazes me most is the fact that it looks like officers use their own PERSONAL vehicles as police vehicles (their own personal vehicles are fitted with lights & sirens). Pretty cool in my book.

Another thing, I've never seen so many Japanese people in my life before. I guess aside from Japan, Waikiki is the next place Japanese people live/visit?

So how did the century go?

genec

You really don't see that many... "it messes up your hair... "

Sigh...