Kona

Aloha!  After being home a week on the dot from Interbike, I headed to Kona for the Ironman World Championships.  This is our first year CycleOps is going to the race.  It's pretty amazing and hard to put into words.  I'm used to long flights, but the flight from Chicago to Maui seemed to take forever.  It's nine hours, which isn't too bad, but they didn't serve a complimentary meal.  Really?!?  After having breakfast in the airport, I had to pay like $20 for a small lunch on the plane.  Thankfully I had a good book to read.

The layover in Maui was long enough to have a Kona Brewing Co Longboard Lager, which was the perfect way   to adjust to life in Hawaii.  You can't by KBC in Madison.  Or least I haven't found it yet.  The airport in Kona is amazing.  It's all outdoors!  Baggage claim is under a huge "hut" for lack of a better word and of course there's palm trees everywhere.  Of course my baggage didn't show up, but whatever.  I knew it would eventually show up, which it did, but I wasn't going to sweat it.  I mean I'm in Hawaii, it could be worse.  My coworker arrived a little after me, we picked up the rental car, and headed to the hotel.  You'll notice I said coworker.  That's right, I actually get to work with someone on this trip.  Sweet!  The hotel in nice.  It's the Sheraton Keahou Bay.  It's pretty huge, but the views are amazing and you can watch manta rays feeding after dark from one of the bars here.  Very cool!  So we arrived Saturday night, rested on Sunday, then set up our booth on Monday and Tuesday.  We were able to get a little sightseeing in and even hit the beach for a little after setup on Tuesday.  I should mention though, that there aren't a ton of beaches in Kona.  There are still active volcanoes on the island, so the shores are mostly just lava flows.  Don't get me wrong.  It's pretty cool.  But anyway, the "beach" is about 45 minutes away and man was it nice.  Crystal clear and bright blue water, flanked by lava rocks.  Simply amazing.  The expo has been steady and it's good to talk tech stuff with the athletes.  Power is new to triathlon, so there's a lot of education involved as well.  Stuff I like doing.  As the race gets closer, the energy is starting to build.  This morning before the expo started was the Underpants run.  Yes, underpants.  Think lots of triathletes running around in their underwear.  Real underwear, men and women, kids, costumes, you get the idea.  It was definitely entertaining.  Tomorrow is the bike count.  Again, for those of you who follow the sport, everything bike related is counted during bike check in.  That means power meters, wheels, bikes, components, tires, saddles, pedals, the list goes on and on.  What that means though, is sitting in a chair staring at bikes zipping past for six hours.  I might need to set an alarm so I remember to reapply sunscreen to my close-to-bald-by-choice head.  I've already burnt my head once this trip and I don't intend to do it again.  Anyway, we went to dinner tonight at this restaurant right on Ali'i Dr.  It's the main drag through downtown and we were treated to quite an amazing sunset.  The best yet!

Well I think that's about it for now.  Oh, one more thing.  if you want to see my pictures, you'll have to find me on Facebook.  Hopefully I'll update this again before I leave, to recap of the actual race experience (from the spectator perspective, of course).  Until then, mahalo for for reading.