Honeymoon Part 3: Pump the Brakes!

If you've been following along during parts 1 and 2 of the Honeymoon Saga, you'll remember that Brian and I made a conscious effort to continue to have fun on our trip, despite having our money, IDs, phones, and camera stolen. One of the activities that we had already paid for was a bike ride down Haleakala, the dormant volcano on Maui.

I had been wanting to do this ever since I first heard about it, about 4 or 5 years ago. Brian agreed to take on the challenge with me, despite the wake up call of 1:00 AM. If we hadn't already booked and paid for it, I'm not sure that both of us would have still wanted to be startled by an alarm just a measly 12 hours after being robbed, but Brian was definitely a trooper, and we bounced out of bed, ready to make this island our bitch.

Now, you might be thinking, "Kristen, you sucker, the sun does not rise at 1:00 am in Maui!" And you would be correct. This is what that morning looked like:
1:00-1:30 = Get up, get dressed, get on the road
1:30-2:45 = Drive from the west si-eeeeeede of the island to the middle-ish base of Haleakala
2:45-3:00 = Wait in the parking lot with a bunch of other crazy mainlanders
3:00-3:45 = Check in and get fitted for bikes and warm weather gear.
      *Side note: We were the second ones to finish signing our waivers that we will probably die or at the very least inflict serious bodily harm on ourselves as we rode speeding, run-away bikes down the blind curves of a volcano on a 2 lane highway where the locals have no regard for the rules of the road. However, the douchebag accepting the waivers Bill wouldn't take ours because we didn't have a credit card to give him as a deposit or to purchase insurance. I told him all of our stuff was stolen and even offered to show him our police report number for him to record, but he just said to wait off to the side and he would let us know if we would be able to participate. I was MAD... nobody wakes me up at 1:00 in the morning for no reason! So we waited around for the better part of an hour, and then realized that we wouldn't need a credit card- we only had to purchase the stupid insurance for $3.95 each. So we put those purchases on one of those life-saving credit card gift cards.
3:45-4:45ish = driving up the volcano on a tour bus with a silly, dope-smoking, mullet-wearing Hawaiian brah named Brian C. (LOL) He kept talking to me because I was either the only one still awake, or the only one to give a shit.

Some cool highlights- I saw a deer on the side of the road. (Apparently Maui is way over run by deer. No natural enemies on the island and Hawaiians are "more about Aloha than guns.") Brian C. told me I had a good eye and warned the other Brian C. that he better be careful because I must always be watching him... yeah... Anyway, we also saw a white rainbow, which was creepy and awesome all at the same time.

Not the one we saw, but you get the idea...

White rainbows are awesome- they appear at night (or reealllly f*cking early in the morning) and are created by the light from the moon, so they're really faint and colorless. They're like ghost rainbows. You're not even sure if you're really seeing it, like you're eyes are playing tricks on you. It's really cool, and apparently very rare, so we were pretty lucky!

Anyway, we pulled up to the top of Haleakala right as the sun was starting to turn orange. And it was freeeeeeeeeeeeeezing.

  This is the self portrait that I attempted with my beat up camera (which was the only camera we had- I had ironically left it at the hotel the day before because the battery was about to die and it sucks, so I didn't want to have the extra weight). See the weird shadow across the top of my head? Not sure why that's there... Then a nice girl offered to take our picture, so we got this one:

This whole time, I was afraid my camera would die, but I snapped away, as many pictures as I could...

Finally, the sun came all the way up, but Brian finally agreed to put his warm weather gear on. And we took another picture...

Self portraits are not my strong point... 
Anyway, since the sun was up, we were on top of a volcano, and my camera was still chugging along, we had Brian C. take a few more pictures of us up there...

 And then it was time to descend... Our only warnings were to stay as far to the right as possible, and when you squeeze your hand brakes, squeeze both at the same time, or you will flip over your handle bars. Schweet.

This bike ride was scary! You're basically gripping the brakes the entire time, which isn't easy when your hands are frozen. Even when the road felt flat, as soon as you let up, your bike takes off! Cars are constantly passing you and there's no bike lane or anything civilized like that. Every time you hit a bump in the road, you're pretty sure it's asphalt for breakfast. And then some little fat 12 year old flies past you and makes you feel like a loser.


I exaggerate... but only about the bike lane- there was one for about 1/3 of the way down. (According to Brian C.)

It was pretty cool though. Brian and I stopped twice- once to let a group (including the fat 12 year old) pass and again to shred off some of the extra gear because it was starting to get warm. Towards the end, it started raining pretty good and I asked Brian if he wanted to stop at this park and wait it out. He declined since we were almost back to the bike shop, so on we rolled. It sucked because water and wet gravel kept flying into my eyes, and it stung and it was hard to see. But we finished and we felt awesome afterward! 


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After we got back to our side of the island, we ignored our scheduled nap time in favor of going over to the police department and picking up those police reports. These reports would serve as our identification to get home and our proof that we were not scam artists looking for hand outs, in case people like Bill the douche bag waiver collector didn't believe us. We also ended up researching and locating places where my incredible in-laws could wire us some money for the rest of our trip. Thank you Tom and Pennie!