Tour of the Big Island: Stage 3

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This route roughly covered the South west part of the island, starting from the most tourisy town of the island, Kona. (The tourisy indicators were the several ABC stores, which was a popular chain in Hawaii for souvenirs) My first part of the ride was a challenging Cat-2 climb up to the coffee shop and back until I reached the highway. I got back on the van to avoid the high-traffic area and also to take a break (I didn't sleep well the night before with only ~2 hours) The 2nd part, a Cat-3 climb, started from Captain Cook (honoring the first Westerner who visited Hawaii) and ended at the Painted church. The heat made it more challenging than it should. For the day I rode a combined 20 miles only. We drove back to the Honaunau beach for snorkeling (which I skipped and visited the nearby Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park instead, where a couple of totem poles and outrigger canoes were preserved) Then we headed to the Airbnb house we stayed for this night in Woodvalley, near the Southern part of the island. The host, Matt, was also our cook for the night. He made delicious fish and pork tacos with home-made tortillas. And the quiet and peaceful surroundings of the house simply look surreal.

The road from Captain Cook

The Painted Church

Honaunau

Tour of the Big island: Stage 2

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This stage roughly covered the North-central and North shore of the island, starting from Waimea, near the headquarter of the tour company. We stopped briefly at the Hawaiian Vanilla Company for its delicious milk shake. Then rode to the beautiful Waipio valley lookout. Alex and I got back on the van at that point but the rest of the tour (3 members) continued back to the starting point. The "after-ride treat" was at the Big Island Brewhaus. I enjoyed its own White Mountain Porter, which contains less alcohol than usual for a Porter. The fish tacos tasted awesome too. The tour didn't provide dinner this night but I was already quite full from the brewery food so I just had a roast beef sandwich from the hotel's cafe as dinner.

Waipio Valley

Tour of the Big Island: Stage 1

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This is the first day of riding and it covered roughly the Northwest part of the island. (BTW, I arrived at noon the day before and ended up just relaxing in the hotel room and the beach. Alex told me the tour has deal with the Mauna Kea Beach folks for water activity but I wasn't able to find them. Too tired anyway. The first dinner was at the Coast Grille of the hotel. The seafood was decent but not special) The first part of the ride was the Northern half of the world-famous Big Island Ironman biking route, between Hapuna beach (we started from the Hapuna Prince hotel) and Hawi. We actually continue riding to Pololu valley lookout for a total 29 miles. Hiked down the valley all the way to the beach side. It was a challenging hike! Then we rode back to Hawi and took the van back to the hotel (Alex has just recovered from his back injury and he suggested me not to go all-out on the first day too.) Rested at the hotel for a bit and then headed to Mauna Kea beach to paddle an authentic Hawaiian outrigger canoe. Dinner was at the Mauna Kea hotel restaurant.Very high quality seafood.

The statue of the first king who unified the whole Hawaii at Hawi

Pololu Valley

Challenging hikes

I am hoping to try these trails in the near feature:
The Black Mountain: This should be the hardest trail in Rancho San Antonio. One possible starting point is the Duveneck Windmill Trailhead on Rhus Ridge Trail. The parking lot is kinda small. If it's full, try parking on the street near Bledsoe Ct on Moody Rd. 
Windy Hill: This one also go up to Skyline Blvd. 
Mount Diablo State Park: This is gotta be one of the most famous mountains in the area. (My buddy did it with his son last year starting from Rock City Park, S Gate Rd, Danville. Total was 8.6 miles. It costs ~$10 per car for parking)
Mount Hamilton Antler Point: This is probably as famous as Diablo.

Map on Garmin Vivoactive

My 5-year old Garmin Forerunner 305 was on its last leg: its battery couldn't even last a 1.5 hr ride last time I tried. So I need a replacement. And I found the Garmin Vivoactive released in 2015 quite interesting: Garmin marketed it as a smart-watch (think Apple Watch) as well as an activity-tracking device (think FitBit) And the battery is supposed to last for 10 hours with GPS on (Yes, I did 3 10+ hour rides in the last 5 years) I just got it tonight and immediately paired it with the phone (installation of the Garmin Connect mobile app was required and I created a new Garmin account) and my old heart rate monitor from the 305. I also linked my MapMyRide account to Garmin Connect. Then I did a quick indoor ride just to test its HR tracking ability. That ride was sync-ed to Garmin Connect right after (via my phone) and also to MapMyRide as a workout. So the activity tracking part of the watch seems not bad (wish it doesn't require a chest-strap HRM though) Next task was to prepare for my weekend ride. Forerunner 305 allowed me to load a route to it and display as a map on screen to provide some "rough" navigation utilizing the GPS. (I would manually create the route on MapMyRide, export the route and convert to GPX, import to the PC software and then finally sync to watch. Yes, I know those are a lot of steps) I was hoping Vivoactive would support the same (if not better) out of the box but it doesn't. Fortunately, the smart-watch side of Vivoactive allows third-party developers to create app for it. And one such app seems to fit the bill: dwMap. First, open your Garmin Connect mobile app and enter the Connect IQ store. Search for dwMap and download it. It will sync the app to your watch eventually. Second, go to dwMap's website dynamic.watch. Click 'Link to watch' and open the app on your watch to see the code to be entered to the website. Then log on using your MapMyRide (UnderArmour) account. The website will show 20 of the routes you bookmarked in MapMyRide. You could "star" one of those route and next time you open the app on your watch. This will be the route to be displayed. Hopefully my Vivoactive experience will get better and better and I could share more here.

(BTW, found a pretty good page that compare all watches for running.)

Hicks Road

As you could see from my previous posts, I learned about a lot of those routes from books, e.g. Big Basin, Clayton, Mt. Diablo, Calaveras Rd....... Hicks Road is one of the few left that I always wanted to try but didn't get a chance to for some reason, until this labor day (I rode Big Basin with my buddy on the 2012 Labor Day weekend)  Maybe it's kinda down south and hard to gauge the time needed to finish the ride because of the climb. Also, I had no idea where to park in Los Gatos (It seems like there are plenty available in the residential area on the streets near Los Gatos Blvd.) The 2 Cat-5 and Cat-4 sections (Shannon and Kennedy, respectively) in and out of Los Gatos were actually quite good for warmup/cooloff. Of course, the biggest "attraction" was from the bottom of Hicks Rd to the summit (before getting up Mt. Umunhum. The Mt. Umunhum climb was one of the hardest in the area and was NOT part of my route) And both sides of Hicks Rd from the summit is kinda symmetric: one steep 1.5 mile stretch on each side so you could pick your own "poison" To me it's a pretty good challenge since I got too familiar with the routes in the peninsula already. The steep downhill is long enough to "re-train" my descending skill without scaring me too much. The shortened version could easily become a 2.5 hour routine weekend ride with my SJ friends.

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Wunderlich County Park

I got a request to blog about this hike we did on Sunday. I think it satisfied the 4 criteria I mentioned before: (1) shades (2) elevation change ~950ft (3) ~5 miles, i.e., 2.5 hr (4) good scenery.
The parking lot (right off Woodside Rd) is kinda small and luckily we got the last 2 spots. However, people could still easily park close by, outside on Woodside Rd. Compared to Rancho San Antonio, this trail seems much less crowded even though the parking lot was full. And people ride horses on the trails (no bike though) so hikers need to beware of horse manure. It could get a bit dusty too. Still, it's a pretty good trail for those who likes to hike with less people around.

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