Pedaling in Paradise

What do you say when a friend offers to set up a scenic bike tour for you on the island of Maui? 

MAHALO!!! 

My college friend, Phuong, moved to Maui 5 years ago, and she earnestly tries to convince us every year to come out and visit her in Paia. I've always wanted to, but life happens. Her siren song finally hit the right note when she offered to set up a bike tour around the island for me. Resistance.is.futile.

Paia is a quaint little beach town on the northern shores of Maui-- lined with small but renowned eateries, island clothing boutiques, and second homes to many celebrities who want to stay under the radar and escape the constant hounding of the paparazzi. Paia is as laid-back and chill as you'd imagine a beach town to be. There are plenty of tourists, but also friendly locals, and a whole herd of bohemian types. As you drive through the main street, there's a posted sign that reads:

"Don't feed the hippies!" 


There is but one bicycle shop in Paia called Maui Cyclery. The bike shop dudes all wear board shorts and flip-flops to work, their skin freckled and deeply tanned by their dual hobbies of biking and surfing. This small community of bikers all end up running into each other on the island circuit sooner or later, and so become well-acquainted with one another. Phuong's husband, Jim, befriended the local bike shop owner at Maui Cyclery who organized the bike tour for us.

It took a lot of arm-twisting to get Phuong herself to join me on this tour, since she meant to send only me. She told me she hasn't been on a bike for years and was too nervous, but come to find out that she and Jim rode their bikes all the way from Alaska to San Diego in 2004....as part of their honeymoon! I've known this girl for 20 years, and I'm just finding this out?? I knew they traveled all around the world together from Vietnam to Morocco, but somehow the details of their 3 1/2 month biking & camping adventure escaped me!

As the shop guys loaded up our bikes, I had a sudden panic attack. I'll be riding on different bike I've never been on before, in unfamiliar territory, with people I don't know, biking up a volcano? 

Or so I thought. The tour guides trucked us and our gear "upcountry" to those mysterious, looming mountains in the far distance that always seem to be dappled by intermittent cloud shadows. The plan was to ride along the lush, undulating coastal roads along the westerly side of the island. 

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. The front wheel on Phuong's bike is actually way smaller than the rear one! This is the same bike she used on her wild honeymoon ride from AK to CA. She warned the bike shop guys not to laugh at her crazy contraption, but they cackled, "Too late!" The shop didn't even carry a spare bike tube that was the right size, so we took a wild gamble that she wouldn't get a flat on this ride, because then it would be game over! 

This beautiful road that we biked along boasted a commanding view of coast where you could actually see the outline of the island against the Pacific Ocean. The best pictures were taken with my eyes while riding, so I cannot even begin to convey the breathtaking beauty of the tropical, coastal scenery we were riding through. The sights, sounds, smells, all of it.

The photos shown here will never do it justice since it was a feast for the eyes, where digital photos will only serve as crumbs. 


Oprah Winfrey herself owns more than 1,000 acres of this beauteous landscape, with several houses and horses on her property. The road we biked on does in fact lead up to her very gates, but of course Ms. O's actual home is buffered by several pastures, an endless number of tropical fruit trees, and a winding driveway in between to keep prying eyes and skulkers away. 


This handsome fellow came right up to the barbed wire fence and ate fresh grass out of my hand. So maybe my claim to fame is that I hand-fed one of Oprah's horses? 

The guy with the ginormous quadriceps you see with me and Phuong in the photo below is named Kurt, one of the bike shop tour guides. He is a current bike champion and a former professional bodybuilder who hails from Florida. Like a lot of folks in Hawaii, Kurt is a transplant from somewhere else who alighted in Paia Town and found it hard to tear himself away again. He is exceptionally good at his job of guiding tourist bikers and pushing them up the many undulating hills along this coastal highway. So good, in fact, that only after 30 miles of riding together, chatting amiably, did he humbly mention that he placed first in last week's island-wide cycle race. 

What the heck is this champion cyclist doing babysitting tourists??

He just really, really loves to bike with people from all over the world, he said. That same day, we crossed paths with a German, an Irishman, and a married couple from Colorado, all on biking vacations. One of the other tour guides is a Vietnamese guy named Nguyen (not pictured) from San Francisco. He bought a sailboat years ago, wanting to sail around the world for the fun of it. He landed in Hawaii, fell in love with the islands, and never really left, he said. Like Kurt, he works at the bike shop guiding tours not because he has to make a living at it, but simply because he gets to bike every day as part of his job.

I can tell you that during this epic ride, Phuong's bike jitters evaporated just as her self-confidence materialized. She pounded up this wicked hill past EVERYONE, in a jalopy bike that couldn't even shift into its middle gears. Just that very morning, she was still dusting cobwebs off the thing! The muscle memory from all those thousands of miles of bike riding she did on her honeymoon came back with a vengeance. 

Just like riding a bike....they always say you never forget how.

Our fellow riders on the tour, Kurt (far left), then Donnie in the black (the bike shop owner), and the Colorado couple (in red & blue) celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary. Turns out, they have 16-year old twins who have no interest in biking with their parents. I'm hoping that my own (now) 8-year old twins will one day embrace road biking and join me on all these tours. Once they get big enough, I can draft behind them both. How cool would that be?

Ride stop at Grandma's Coffee Shop, where they grow, harvest, process, and roast their own coffee beans right outside their doors on the surrounding plantation. They also bake their own pastries, cakes, and breads daily, and were featured on The Food Network as a must-stop on Maui. Our group stopped here and enjoyed an amazingly potent rum cake and traded biking stories over coffee on ice.

Although Nhan couldn't join me for this special destination ride, I did miss my riding partner and wish he could have been there to experience the majesty of Maui. Who knows? Maybe the trade winds will carry him here to the island to bike, just like it did the rest of us that day. This ride will forever be a cherished memory for me. 

Aloha and Mahalo, Phuong!