Honolulu lights ride

Honolulu Marathon

Marianne and I volunteered to ride as bicycle escorts for the wheelchair racers in the Honolulu Marathon again this year. Since they start and usually finish in the dark the race organizers have a phalanx of well lit bicycles with each wheelchair racer. Marianne and I rode mountain bikes this year because the roads are so poor, and it's dark. I rode with the first place finisher Masazumi Soejima from Japan. It's amazing how fast these guys go. I had to bear down a couple times just to stay with him. He finished in 1:32. Just like last year it rained all morning which made me feel even better about not running it.

Diving

Two weeks ago a friend of ours invited me out on his new (to him) boat for some scuba diving. I promised myself to get out on the water more this year so I skipped a trail race I had signed up for and rented some tanks Saturday evening. The dive was fun. I sort of forget how much I enjoy it until I do it again. We had some dolphins following the boat for a few minutes on the way out and saw a big reef shark settled into a hole getting his teeth cleaned by some wrasse. After the second tank we fired up the motor for the trip back. It ran for about 10 seconds, then died. No amount of tinkering seemed to help so I volunteered to crawl down in the bilge with the motor and check fuel lines. It has a big old Cummings marine diesel motor and crawling around in the hot hold, covered in fuel and oil and stale water, with the boat rocking, I was soon more disgustingly filthy than I ever remember being. I was having a blast really. No joy on getting it started though. And to top it off, we burned up the starter cranking it to much. Luckily we had motored out to the site with another small boat and they volunteered to pull us back in. That next Monday and Tuesday I helped Mark pull the starter, suss out the fuel problem, and install the rebuilt starter. We had it ticking over nicely by Tuesday but I did mention how much his boat looks like the SS Minnow for you Gilligans Island fans?

What have we been up to?

So the pictures have been building up and with some time off for the holidays I can post a bunch.

The first bit of news is we had a new ragtop installed on the mustang. The old one was 10 years old, yellow and brown, and leaked like a sieve. I always wanted a vintage mustang and I figure if we hang onto this bucket for 20 more years I'll have one.

Rainbow ride

The Saturday ride had a small turnout but some great scenery. We rode a couple different routes through Wahiwa and had a rainbow following us all morning. Winter is hitting us hard right now, dipping into the low 70's. It was so cold John G had to wear his arm warmers which we gave him a hard time about.