Well ya’ll, I guess if you’re reading this then you’re actually curious as
to the events of my little trip. I’m touched. I’ll try not to let you down but
experience has shown that I probably will so get ready. So grab yourself some
beers, put on some tunes (I recommend Ministry, gets the blood flowing), and
prepare for a rip-roaring, mind-blowing, international tale of intrigue, guerilla
warfare, monster trucks, and Gabbo Gabbo GABBO!!!!

..or sumpin ..

My story
begins on a regular old Saturday afternoon, ordinary except that I flew to Honolulu.
Uneventful, won’t bore you with details. After spending a night in an airport
hotel (which I’ve never actually done before, I wasn’t disappointed), we hopped
a short commuter flight to Maui, the land of something or other, they didn’t really
translate that bit of info from Hawaiian so I’m not really sure where I was. Anyhoo,
the only sore point of the introductory part of our journey was that we had to
lug our damn bikes all over various airports and while they’re damn light, they’re
awkward as all get-out.

First thing
to note about Hawaii is the language. I think a federal grant is in order to try
and get either some apostrophes, or some consonants over there. Aiea is the name
of a town there. How do you pronounce that? My favourite was something like Pioua’a,
like putting the apostrophe in at the last moment somehow makes it pronounceable.
Nice try but I don’t buy it.

Let me just give
you a brief description of this tropical paradise in which I found myself. The
island of Maui consists of two volcanos, one on each end of the island, which
got so big that the bottom of them touched and formed most of the livable section
of the island. These are BIG mountains, West Maui is around 5,000 feet, and Haleakala
is around 10,000 feet above sea-level, or roughly 2 and a half times taller than
our friendly coastal mounts here in Vancouver. From the bottom of the sea to the
top it’s the third largest mountain in the world, after the two peaks on the big
island of Hawaii. Now, what we find living on this beautiful little volcanic death
trap (Mona Loa on the neighboring island has been spewing lava for like 10 years,
who’s to say Maui’s not next) is an interesting assortment of varied people.

The tourists are all either newly-wed or nearly-dead. No joke folks, all of them are like this, and they comprise probably 90% of the population at any given time. The other 10% are locals who have smoked too much pot to have a really good grasp of what’s going on around them. The other astonishing thing there is that I’d say a good healthy 30-40% of the people are obese. I don’t mean fat I mean O-B-E-S-E. Not that this would normally be a problem but Hawaii is a hot climate and people tend to be rather scantily clad. Now imagine this particular crowd of people, and then imagine 300 bran eatin, carrot juice drinkin, 0.5% body fat, could run your sorry ass into the ground, triathletes being unleashed to clog up the highways with their mad biking/running ways, and fill the ocean with their mad swimming. You certainly saw some interesting looks being cast about, it was sorta like I’d imagine would happen if aliens landed and started swimming across the Pacific. This was the sort of culture barrier we’re looking at here. Anyways, the first week went quickly, training in some form or another every morning. Some tennis in the afternoon, followed by some touring, some eatin, some drinkin, and so on. Vacation stuff … except for the 40km bike rides .. too bad that isn’t standard cause some of those folks could sure sure use it. The week passes quickly, and the Saturday arrives …..

He arrives
at the staring beach. All around him are people who obviously have been training
for a much longer amount of time. Even in the vague predawn light he can see their
rib-cages, standing out in a stark contrast to the sinewy muscles above. The other
competitors stretch, consume energy-filled granola bars, discuss the proper balance
between front and back gear ratios on their bikes. Dave gazes around in wonderment
and weighs his odds of surviving this event, and tries to remember if he has a
back gear on his bike. Physics says he must for the bike to go forward, but he
really hasn’t tested this theory much yet, so he hopes it works out. Suddenly
a hush falls over the speedo-clad crowd, and he notices the organiser of the event,
starting gun in hand, stride to the water’s edge. Dave is momentarily confused
by the size of the gun, it seems a bit large just to start the race but hey, this
is America, he’s surprised they didn’t bring out a tank to start the damn race.
He also wonders at the mask the organiser is wearing, but again, his knowledge
of triathlons is weak, this could be standard procedure. Ane then the masked man
speaks:

“Remember people, triathlons aren’t about time-management, they’re about PAIN-management.”

Dave files this away for future consideration, perhaps he should learn bridge
the next time he gets restless. Then he notices an older lady near the front with
her hand raised.

“What is it?” the race director bellows through the holes in his mask.

“I need to pee, could you delay the start of the race for a second?”

The race director
does not even blink, he raises his gun a BAAWHHHHOOOMMMMM, and the lady falls
to the sand. And they’re off. As he runs by the women’s lifeless body Dave wonders
if perhaps he has severely underestimated the seriousness of his endeavour. Perhaps
he has bitten off more than he can chew. Perhaps he should of trained. Perhaps
perhaps perhaps. The water is chilly as he first starts on his swim, but as he
relaxes and gains confidence it actually becomes quite comfortable. Then he hears
the announcement over the loudspeaker:

“The pirahnas will be released in 10 minutes people, lets get moving!”

This doesn’t bother Dave much, as he knows he’s a strong swimmer, and he knows
that as long as he can stay ahead of enough people the hungry fish shouldn’t bother
him. He feels the first twitch of his old Slanty reflexes kicking in, but he ignores
them for now. Soon he thinks, soon I’ll need them. He reaches the shore just as
the fish set upon the back of the pack. Screams fill the air, and Dave looks back
at the water, which keeps him from noticing the troubles ahead of him. Namely
the German style machinegun bunker on the beach. As the first bullets skim past
him he thinks to himself: this is certainly unexpected. Now the Slanty reflexes
kick in and Dave finds himself facedown in the sand, crawling towards his bike.
He considers what lesson he can pull from this, perhaps don’t look back? As he
slowly gets near his bike, he notices everyone else donning hockey equipment and
picking up sticks before they head out. He decides to emulate them out for safety
reasons, and whips out his always handy hockey gear. Grabbing a few stray sticks
and coconuts he embarks for his ride. He remembers from his childhood that it
is easy to take down others on bikes by placing sticks into their moving spokes.
However, after taking out some competitors that way he discovers that some have
solid wheels, but the coconuts solve that problem. Too soon he finds that he must
move off the safety of the bike, and begin to run. And run he does. And run, and
run, and run. Everything from then on is a blur.

This, at least, is what would have happened in Dave’s World …

The real world, however, sucks donkeys…..

In the real world, the race was canceled two days before the event was supposed
to occur. No joke, we flew 2000 miles for a race that was canceled only two days
before. And we weren’t the worst by far. One girl had come from South Africa for
the race. Apparently, and reports are varied regarding the cancellation, the race
director was unable to supply adequate funds to cover the overtime costs for the
police on the course. Since there were to be no police there would be no race.
The county got an injunction stopping the whole affair, and the race was off.
Now, according to the race director, he only paid $1700 last year, and the same
amount of coverage this year was going to cost $30,000. As well, even though he
changed the route so the cost would only be $14,000, the county didn’t give him
adequate time to raise the funds. The county says that he has a history of being
delinquent on his payments, and that he knew a year in advance that this was coming
and for the life of them the county can’t figure out why he left it so late. Bunch
o’ crap if you ask me. Got time on your hands and you don’t believe me (and that
wouldn’t surprise me, you’re a bunch of shifty ones, shifty I say), check out
the news story here.
Anyhoo, a
large bunch of triathletes ended up meeting the day before and organising a sort
of impromptu race. Nothing official, just a bunch of people “training together”
with no outside monitoring. They couldn’t stop us from using the county roads
for running or biking, and they couldn’t stop us from swimming in the ocean …
could they?

Ahhhh innocence (read: stupidity). It’s the States, they’re mighty clever down there when it comes to lowering the long arm of the law. They figured that something like this might be tried and they did they’re best to make it difficult. They figured out that to get into and out of the ocean you have to use public beaches (all beaches in Maui are public, like Australia I hear). And the beaches don’t open until 7:00am. Not a problem for most normal humans, but these triathletes are a nutty bunch, and since some of them would be going for over twelve hours in the heat of the day this was a severe annoyance, as they wanted to start at 5:30am. So, probably for the first and last time ever on Maui, Polo Beach (the starting and ending point for the race) was kept closed until 7:00 by EIGHT police cars. No joke, what do they think triathletes are a rowdy bunch? I thinking running far far away is more of their forte. Mebbe I’m wrong though, it’s happened before.

The police form a wall with their shields and slowly move forward, swingin they’re batons forcefully. Behind them several other officers begin to fire tear gasover the line. Most of the triathletes scatter quickly but Dave stands firm, fist in the air, defiant as the line of police in riot gear crashes around him. In the chaos all the press can see is his fist, a rock in the sea of blue uniforms and yellow gas. Then it all clears, the line has passed on but Dave remains. Then the amoured cars roll in…

Anyways,
after the cops let is into the park we proceeded to get on with a bit of exercise.
Tom and I were pretty much the only ones doing the Olympic distance (1.5k swim,
40k bike, 10k run) most others were doing longer distances. So we went by ourselves
through the course, which had been laid out in a pamphlet that had been mailed
to us. I finished in 2 hours and 49 minutes, which was 7 minutes faster than Tom
;) , which I think is all that matters. After that, we settled down for two days,
and headed back on Sunday night. Took 15 hours to get home and the first call
I get is from Dan. Shoulda stayed in Maui….

As he settles in on the flight home, a stewardess approaches him.

“A couple of the girls and I wanted to know if you’ve ever heard of the mile
high club.”

“Sure, I’m a card carrying member.”

“We thought you might be. You know, membership has its privileges…”

“So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard. Let me finish this Creme Brulee and 1956 Chateauneuf
Du Pape and I’ll be right with you ladies…”