Post 208 - Kona day 12 and beyond - leaving Hawaii

Days 12, 13 and 14 - Tuesday 15th, Wednesday 16th, Thursday 17th October 2019

The last day on the island. Unbelievable. The trip home effectively started this morning (Tuesday 15th October). With the distance back and the time difference, I wouldn’t be back in Edinburgh until the evening of Thursday 17th October…

We had one last wander down to the oceanfront of the condo complex. What a place to have stayed. What a view. What great sunsets. What great swimming pools and facilities.

But I had to pack. I know what I am doing with packing the bike now, and in what order to do things. And I also knew exactly what could and couldn’t go into the bike box in order to meet the weight limit. Plus, I had extra pairs of hands to help with any dismantling and bike packing. So, dare I say it, I am now reasonably proficient at packing away a bike and doing this was fairly painless. I still maintain that any bike box company who says that you can pack a bike into their bike box in 5 minutes is being very ambitious. You need to properly pad the bike out, use foam lagging, bubble wrap, straps, cable ties etc to ensure it is properly secured and protected.

Then the tough bit came. Packing the rest of the stuff (while eating all the remaining food in the condo as well). We had properly “moved in” to the condo, and stuff was everywhere. - in cupboards, in drawers, in all the different rooms. I had picked up so much extra stuff as well. Freebies, t-shirts, caps, souvenirs, gifts, bits and pieces. How would it all fit in my medium-sized suitcase…? I ditched a pair of worn-out trainers. But I had acquired much more in volume and weight than a pair of trainers.

The others all helped, tightly rolling all my clothes and kit into as small a volume as possible. There was loads of free space in the bike box, but it was already at its weight limit, so I couldn’t put anything more in there. It all had to be stuffed into the case. The heavier/smaller/more delicate bits and pieces like the camera, the camera accessories, my medal, sunglasses, bike computer etc, all got packed into protective tupperware boxes which would travel in my hand luggage.

Deirdre had bought me a little jar, on which was written "sand from my favourite beach". We had a few bits and pieces in it. But we couldn't take it away. We had to empty it. Madame Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes and the mythological creator of the Hawaiian islands, would curse us if we took pieces of Hawaii away with us. Mark Allen, 6-time Ironman world champion, didn't win this race until one of his family returned a piece of lava taken from the island. Plus, the security people at the airport would be very unhappy if they found it. 

It was tight, but everything fitted. Just about. The plan was that we would load everything into the car, drop Steve and Natalie in town for some last-minute shopping, I would drop Deirdre to the airport (we’d meet up again at the airport motel in Los Angeles), I’d then drive back to town, pick Steve and Natalie up, pick some food up, and head back to the airport.

It was another huge effort to fit everything into the car. One bike box, four big pieces of luggage, and four pieces of hand luggage. But it all squeezed in and we headed off. The plan worked fairly well up to a point: Deirdre got to the airport, I got back into town, but then couldn’t find the others. I had a last walk to the oceanfront while waiting to hear from them. One last look up Ali’i drive. It was as if the Ironman had never happened. The others messaged to say they were in the pizza place, so I drove to meet them.

More planning was done. They would drop me at the airport first, with my bike and luggage. I’d get that all checked in, while they drove in circles round the airport. I’d get back in the car and then we’d go back and drop it off, and then all head back to the airport terminal. This meant I had to eat my pizza in the car en route to the airport – time was now getting tight and I’d be first out of the car at the airport.

We had to fill up with fuel too, so the trip out to the airport was a hurried one involving eating two massive pizzas, and stopping at gas station. We made it, but the queues at the airport were long. Not fun. It’s an open air terminal and the queues were out into the blazing sunshine. To get the bike checked in, you first had to have it weighed. Hawaiian airlines knew what they were doing, and it was a bit cynical. They were charging everyone $50 for every kilo overweight. Most bike boxes were overweight. The scales claimed mine was 2-point-something kilos overweight. “You’ll have to pay an extra $150 for that,” he said… that was on top of the flat fee of $150 to check the bike in. $300?! No way.

No way, I said. I’d spent hours in Edinburgh ensuring my bike met the weight limit. There was nothing different in the bike box for the homeward journey. I hoped that the Hawaiian scales weren’t tipping things in the airline’s favour, but cynically that’s how it looked. I kept arguing and the guy said to take it up with a supervisor. So I walked over in her direction, pretended to take it up with her, then went straight to the check-in machines, paid my standard $150 bike fee, didn’t bother with the “overweight” fee, and went back to the original guy who was giving final approval for the bikes.

He didn’t even query it. He was too busy arguing with a Spanish guy over the weight of his bike. So the bike and the suitcase were checked in. I’d had to sign a waiver saying that Hawaiian airlines would accept no responsibility and that it may not travel on the same flight as me. I pressed them on this and they just shrugged and said they’d do their best. I really hoped it would travel, otherwise I’d get to Los Angeles and then have to miss my Dublin and Edinburgh flights to wait for the bike to arrive in Los Angeles.

Then we went to drop the car off. They barely even checked it over, which was good. It had a few scrapes when I picked it up, which I had photographed. It had also accumulated a bit (a lot) of sand in the interior… but they took it straight back, no questions asked. We got the shuttle bus back to the terminal. Halfway back, I realised I had forgotten my Ironman finisher’s cap. It was sitting in the car. I’d taken it off to check under the seats and hadn’t put it back on. I had to go back. I had to run. Time was very tight.

I thought I was done with running in the heat of Hawaii, but no. The island had reserved one last time-pressured run for me. The cap was there. I could wait for the next shuttle bus, but who knew how long that would take… so I ran the mile and a bit back to the terminal. I didn’t need that, being full of pizza and now sweating like crazy with a 6-hour flight to come…

I bought a few snacks from the airport shop, and the shop assistant gave me half of them for free as I was an Ironman athlete. Superb. The flight passed fairly quickly. I allowed myself to drink the Hawaiian rum served in-flight. We exchanged photos via the AirDrop facility on my new phone. I was glad I'd got a new phone for this trip, with a lot of momery storage space. I'd taken over 2000 photos. My old phone might have held another 100 at most... Soon enough we were swooping in over Los Angeles and its massive urban sprawl and clogged up roads. I hated the look of it. City life. It was worlds away from Hawaii and Kona.

Admiring a souvenir on the flight

Urban sprawl. A bit different from black lava

There was a bit of a wait for the bike at Los Angeles, as there had been a lot of bikes on the flight. But it arrived, seemingly in one piece, which was great. We blagged onto a car rental shuttle bus to get us close to the airport motel, then spent about half an hour, in the dark, wandering around the car rental parking lot, trying to work out how to get out of it…

Finally we got to the motel. I was lucky to have a chicken burger, chips and a beer waiting for me. Deirdre had arrived a few hours before and had been foraging for food. What a feast to arrive to. Absolutely brilliant. Our flights back to Dublin and London were in the afternoon of the following day, so the only reason to get up was to avail of the free breakfast. It was worth availing of, and for a fairly cheap airport motel in the USA, it wasn’t bad. Porridge, waffles, fruit, pastries. Plenty of it was discreetly slipped into various pockets and bags for the day ahead at the airport. We weren’t flying until nearly 8pm. Deirdre was a few hours earlier.

So it was back to the airport. But we couldn’t check in so early, so we were left in a bit of limbo. I saw a big weighing machine and decided I’d use the time to check my luggage weights. No sense in arguing with check-in staff at the eleventh hour and having to pay a fine. In the end I had to get about a kilogram out of my bike box, and about 1.5kg out of my suitcase. So it became a game of “What can I remove?” and “how much does it weigh?” We literally did make a game of it. It became ridiculous. “How much does this bottle cage weigh?” “How much do these four cable ties weigh?” “How much does this bubble wrap and foam lagging tube weigh?”

But everything adds up, and between throwing stuff in the bin, changing my clothes to wear heavier stuff, and re-packing other stuff into my hand luggage, I got both cases down to within the weight limit. Time well spent, I’d say.

Then Deirdre had to head off for her flight. We were down to three. We needed food. We still had ages to wait. Natalie waited with the gear while Steve and I headed off to see what we could find. There was one small Starbucks, where I spent about $30 on various bits and pieces. It was such a rip-off, but there was no choice. Even the guy serving us said “You realise this is stupid money for this…”

Oh well. We went back and then Steve and Natalie headed off to see if they could find anything better. They went across to another terminal and had a decent feed by all accounts. I took all my gear and sat at the front of the line at the Aer Lingus desk, so I could be first to check-in. I got chatting to an Irish couple who had been in Mexico and were heading home. They knew people I knew – it’s a small world when you are from Ireland. Natalie and Steve came back, and check-in opened.

I tried to blag them a honeymoon business-class upgrade again, but to no avail. We went through rigorous security. There were fierce-looking drug dogs. My hand luggage was searched by an old security guy. He opened up all my tupperware boxes, and finally found my Ironman medal. He held it up, had a look at it, and said “thanks, I just wanted to see it…”

We still had loads of time to pass, so we looked through Steve and Natalie’s wedding photos (they got married 13 months ago – time absolutely flies), went and had one last beer, and then boarded the flight. Again I tried to blag an upgrade for Steve and Natalie. The stewardess wished she could, but said there wasn’t a policy or a precedent for it. She did manage to find us seats all together though.

They looked like urine tests

It was a long flight back. But, between the meals, going up for second meals, watching the in-flight entertainment (Natalie watched Lilo & Stitch and Moana, a Hawaiian animation and I wish I had watched them too – they are now on my “to-watch” list), chatting, trying to sleep, and getting breakfast, it passed. We landed at Dublin. Very much back into the non-Ironman, non-Kona world now. Los Angeles was a big stepping stone for people coming and going from Kona, but Dublin was blandly back into the real world now. And it was cold…

Three became one as Steve and Natalie headed for their car and back to Cork. I had quite a lot of time to pass before my final flight to Edinburgh. I was hungry. I went to Burger King. Not particularly because I like Burger King, but simply because I could, now that the Ironman was over. I smashed a massive burger, a pile of chips, and a monster vanilla milkshake.

What an ugly food shot compared with other food shots from the past 2 weeks...

I wandered around the big new terminal. It was unrecognisable compared with years ago. Dublin is a huge international destination now, for tourists and for people coming in looking for work. Inexorable growth. But such growth can’t continue forever. I had heard it said over the years when I was trying to qualify for Kona, why don’t you wait until you are 75 and then qualify for Kona, you’ll be the only one in your age group? But I wonder in 30, 40, 50 years from now, will it be as easy to fly off to Hawaii? Will our travel movements be restricted for environmental reasons?

I saw them loading my bike onto the Edinburgh flight. Like myself, it would (thankfully) make it back in one piece. I was tired when I got back, and went almost straight to bed. Jetlag is always worse when you fly from west to east, on an overnight flight from the USA to Europe. The Kona trip was over.

Back to Edinburgh

I’m not going to end the Kona blog by simply saying “The Kona trip was over.” There will be one more Kona-2019-related post, with a few more photographs, describing the aftermath, and probably with a few reflections as well…