travellingbennetts

Riding all 50 USA states has long taken up a large volume of the list bucket for Cindy and me. Quick retraction; that statement is a total fabrication and only just occurred to us as something we could achieve having now ridden both non-contiguous bits – Alaska and Hawaii – in 2019. With Washington, Idaho, Montana and Utah already conquered on the mainland it seems that it will be a quick doddle to finish the other 44 off.

The week long family holiday in mid-December with children and grandchildren was used as a front to tick off the Hawaiian ride, as well as doing a few other things including a trip to the Gun Club smack bang in the middle of Waikiki to tick off a true bucket list item – firing an AK47. Travels especially into Africa and South-East Asia have shown how rife these assault rifles still are in the world, a tragic testament to an incredibly fit-for-purpose and robust design with its famous “banana” magazine first developed in the USSR in 1947. After our son Tim and I sort of shared 60 rounds (I fired 50 rounds and Tim grudgingly got 10 when my shoulder started to hurt), the list was removed from the bucket and the AK47 item was crossed off.

With spending of time with the family successfully marginalised, the first task was to find a motorcycle hire establishment of repute. Which turned out to be more difficult than expected due to the almost binary nature of the available bikes on Hawaii – if we wanted a scooter or a Harley we were fine, but otherwise the pickings were slim. One establishment had a good range of BMW’s, but the constant refrain throughout their reviews were; never answering the phone, never being open, and possibly being permanently closed, so I decided a physical visit strategy to potential hirers was required. Walking into Chase Hawaii Rentals in downtown Waikiki, an easy 7.62mm AK47 bullet flight from the Gun Club, the flavour was naturally H-D but a nice Triumph Speed Twin parked out the front created a more hopeful scenario. A quick check of their motorcycle inventory list revealed that their website had not been recently updated; happily a solitary BMW R nineT Urban GS had wedged itself into a space between the Harleys, Indians, and Triumphs.

The deal for my ride of the R nineT and a Triumph Street Twin for Cindy was done quickly, and the date was organised around weather and family activity constraints. Hawaii has some good stuff to do to kill time around motorcycling events – the Kualoa Ranch was visited to see the scenes of many big film moments including the log that Sam Neill and kids hid behind as a Tyrannosaurus Rex charged over the top in Jurassic Park, the Arizona memorial is a must at Pearl Harbour, and the Hanauma Bay snorkelling was surprisingly good even with the crowds of tourists flogging the water to a foam.

So up early on Saturday, we arrived at Chase precisely at the 8am opening time in light drizzly rain, bearing some cheap “one size fits all” plastic ponchos to counter the poor weather rolling into Waikiki from the mountains to the north-west. Some small people on big Harleys were first out, before we had our turn doing a minute inspection of the bikes and photographing everything to prevent potential bogus hirer claims as had happened once before with a motorcycle rental outfit who tried to charge Cindy US$1200 for a new BMW 700GS front rim. Helmets are not required in Hawaii, but having crashed/fallen off and becoming a Newtonian physics demonstration numerous times I know that falling from 1.7m (assumed seated and stationary) my head will be travelling at roughly 5.8m/s when it hits the unforgiving surface and the impact force will be 45kg, equivalent to getting hit in the head by a smaller item of Cindy’s checked in luggage, so we naturally got helmets.

East looked better than west, so with a simple “go that way and turn left at the lights” from a Chase staff member I set the trip meter and we were off. Having no idea about navigation we sort of wandered through the ‘burbs, unfortunately going the wrong side of Diamond Head, but no time for back-tracking so we just launched on the short freeway out to a café for an early morning refreshment. The R nineT was already impressing me; it sounded cool which counteracted my very uncool cheap Hawaiian totally non-protecting shirt and handled very well as all beasts bearing the low-down weight of the boxer engine are apt to do. The intermittent nature of the speedo was a concern, it had come on for 1.5km but then settled solidly back on zero. The ABS and traction control lights were flashing when the speedo didn’t work, and a test of rear braking and a slide on the slick wet road showed the flashing meant the ABS certainly wasn’t working, and I wasn’t game to test the traction control by whipping the R nineT’s 108 horses into a lather coming out of a wet corner.

Having reached peak carbs with a pancake of a diameter close to the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb crater off to the west on Bikini Atoll, we were back on and heading around the coast road. Navigation was now simply to stay as close to the water on the main roads as possible. The speedo on the R nineT still refused to work, and a stop at a scenic viewpoint to check the fuse box was unsuccessful as we couldn’t work out where the fuse box was. The rain was now constantly threatening but it seemed to have become stuck on the mountains, so no need to deploy the “one size fits all” ponchos as we cruised past the imaginatively named Sandy Beach and into Waimanalo. Flashing lights alerted us to a police road block, the speedo decided not to push its luck with the authorities and so started working again just as we rode into a detour which ended in a total traffic blockage. Attempting some Urban GS riding through Waimanalo Hawaiian Homes got us a bit further up the queue but the hold-up was still a mystery, so the bikes were abandoned while we headed to the highway to discover the cause. A humungous parade was discovered, with floats and marching everythings extending as far as the eye could see. No end of “if we just rode around that police officer and through that creek…” scenarios were run with another parade victim who has many bikes including one in Port Moresby PNG, but we were trapped.

Eventually becoming desperate, Cindy approached the constabulary and was informed that the end of the parade was nigh, so we hurried back to the bikes. Exploding from the Waimanalo morass, our next navigational landmark were the major freeways that come over the mountains directly from Honolulu and join the coast road we were on. The second one – the John A Burns Freeway – was at the end of a long straight section of road, so with little traffic around us there was a bit of again-failed speedo troubleshooting going on. The poking and tapping were interspersed with occasional glances up at the upcoming lights, until about 50m away from the intersection at 45mph the lights were noted to have changed from green to non-green, a shade normally described by chromatology experts as red. Without ABS there was a bit of a panicky back wheel skid on the slick wet road, with pressing/grabbing levers quickly abandoned to avoid a front wheel skid, but luckily a Plan B appeared which was to head through the lights to the breakdown lane alongside the surprised drivers turning in from the John A Burns.

The coast then reappeared and the cruising continued up it. Apart from the lack of speedo and life-saving braking accoutrement, the bike was good fun to ride and Cindy was enjoying the 900cc Street Twin along the unchallenging roads. Following the lengthy parade delay it was heading on for luncheon, so I was starting to look for options, and then Cindy just disappeared. The lack of communicators was suddenly regretted, where on earth had she gone? I slowed, then slowed more, then stopped. A few approaching Harley riders caused interest until their casual riding position, near nakedness, and lack of helmet confirmed they were not Cindy. So, I turned back the way we had come from, past a likely looking lunch region, and tried hard to remember where I’d last seen her. A motorcycle coming up from behind was ignored; I could truck no distractions looking for my wife who may be in distress, until it became obvious that the now wildly signaling motorcycle was my wife. With telepathic misunderstanding all that is ever achieved between us without communicators, I turned again and followed meekly until we pulled up at North Shore Tacos.

A magnificent taco and something else Mexican inevitably involving soft flat bread and chillied-up meat with beans and guacamole later, we pushed a bit further north until north ran out. The crowds were built up along the famous stretches of surf on the north west coast, and heaviest at the epic Banzai Pipeline which had the professionals in session. No time for watching people smash themselves onto a reef though, we needed to do some hard riding and push down the middle of the island to make sure we got the bikes back to Waikiki on schedule. We’d managed to get 13km after leaving the coast when a navigational snafu caused a correction, and to get back on the correct road we needed to ride through the Green World Coffee Farm carpark. We never made it past the shop.

 

After medicinal caffeine boosting via the range of coffee and tea tastings on offer, we selected some product for the unfortunate few stuck back at home, then prepped for the foul weather loitering in the valley to the south. The cheap “one size fits all” plastic ponchos finally got their opportunity, and with tightening of the loose bits there was early confidence that the typically low travel speeds mandated on Oahu roads would not cause the ponchos to act like spinnakers. After the coffee kicked in, we’d decided that we had heaps of time to get over to the west coast and still make it back to Waikiki before Chase closed, so off we set. Almost immediately, the road opened out into a freeway and the speed limit opened out to 50mph. The cheap “one size fits all” plastic poncho was just hanging on, but then we hit the H1 heading west. The speed limit upped to 60mph, and soon the cheap poncho became like that scene in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, a smidgen embarrassing and under no circumstances was eye contact made with other motorists or their children staring out the back windows and pointing. Pulling into a western Oahu suburb to remove the shredded ponchos, we didn’t have to hold a chair in demography and social statistics at the University of Hawaii to note that the western side of the island seemed a lot seedier than the east, so parking in a side street encouraged rapid de-ponchoing before heading to a nice open spot in Waianae District Park with clear lines of sight.

 

Photos were taken of the excellent views down the Oahu coast to the south, but not without a property rights issue starting due to the photographer’s close proximity to a homeless man’s dwelling. Having promptly alerted Cindy to a potential ownership dispute by loudly stating “I told you to keep away from my stuff!”, her natural temptation to browse through his selection of grubby plastic bags and containers was resisted. Negotiation led to a good-faith settlement which resolved any future emotional distress claims by placing a confidential number of empty water bottles in the aggrieved party’s shopping trolley of recyclables, and we were on our way once more.

Having escaped the south west coast, it was then a straight blast east back up the H1 to Waikiki, with a stop for fuel and learning how on earth to open the keyless fuel cap and twice re-learning how to estimate required pre-purchased fuel volume. Further scrutiny of navigation aids (maps.me app – very useful) was required to work out how to re-discover Chase rentals, but with 15 minutes to spare we successfully arrived back, able to legitimately tick off our final non-contiguous United State.

Although we had loads of fun and it was well worthwhile, Oahu is unlikely to ever get into an adventure motorcyclist’s top 10 for “must do” rides, even counting the fantastic scenery. There are a couple of twisty sections on the island which were good, but the distances are short, and the traffic can be heavy. The Road to Hana (RTH) on Maui looks amazingly twisty with its 600 bends and people rave about it, and if going over to Hawaii again I’d certainly be thinking of Maui on an R nineT. Preferably with a working speedo.

Six down, only 44 left.