Tom Torrance's Update from Hawaii!!!

Oh man, first time blogger. I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. Well, Erin's out running and everybody else has headed back to colder climates, so I basically stole the keys to the car here. Does anybody read this? HI VICKI! This being my first experience hanging out with the tri crowd, I really didn't know what to expect. But if need be, I was all ready to roll with some new tri-geek material. And let me tell you, it came in handy. When Branden (Rakita) started giving me crap on the flight out here about "ohhhh, the mountain biker can't swim.", I knew that I was in for a fun trip. And FYI....I can swim. It's just not very pretty and most of the time it involves some sort of inflatable animal.

Erin's last post left off with us spending a little time on the beach while some surfed and some swam. Well, I didn't do much of either. The Halloween party got me into bed around 3am. I was up at 6am, and back to the party location to look for one lost cell phone. That was only the second time that i'd lost it that day. That's just the engineer in me fighting its way through. It did eventually turn up. I'll skip the details in order to save some face here.....but thanks goes to Ryan (Decook) for saving the day. Anyway, i spent most of the day sleeping on the beach. It was amazing.

Well, yesterday was Tom's day. On the way back from the beach the day before, we stopped into a bike shop to inquire about some proper singletrack in the area. We were given a map and some rough instructions on how to find the sweet stuff, and we were ready to go. Needless to say, I was more than a little excited.

Oh, my new friend Chris (Christine Jeffrey). The girl stopped making fun of me long enough to score 5th place overall!

Anyway, off to the trail.....the Makawao Forest Reserve. The drive there took a little longer than expected, as the navigator was a little off the back. Erin eventually lost map privileges. :) But we did finally make it to the trailhead.

Having spent the entire day before laying in the sun, it was a nice change to get lost in some trees.


The trail was a mix of Northern California darkness with turny midwest singletrack. Good times were had all around.... Well, except when Erin decided she'd ride up ahead and not stop at the intersection, leaving us wondering where in the world she went. she's swears that she didn't see it. I swear we need to tie a bell or something onto that girl.

OK, Erin's back now. We're going to go riding, then maybe surf a little. I'll end this with some lesson's learned from my first Xterra experience.

1. If given the chance, Xterra guys like to wear as little as possible and touch each other

2. Don't unseat your tubeless tires the night before the world championships if all you have is a floor pump. (I actually already knew that one, Branden just reinforced it for me). On the bright side, my wheels did get top 20 at the World Championships.

3. It's probably not the best idea to shave your head(Blake Voges) the evening after spending the entire day racing in the sunshine of Maui. I do appreciate the dedication to one's Halloween costume though.
4. I didn't really learn anything from this photo, just found it kind of amusing.

5. No matter how much you try, you're probably not going to fix 5 years of colorado mountain bike tan in a week