We had two more days and nights to leverage Bob & Paloma’s wonderful hospitality. I spent much of the time repacking the bikes in the boxes we had left at their house (along with a decent amount of our gear), and then we both had to rearrange the rest of our possessions into “flight mode”. Bob was curious to hear all the details of our circuit, so it was fun to run through it with him, and his depth of knowledge about the island helped fill in a lot of interesting details and background on places we had been. Paloma returned from visiting her sister on Oahu on our last day, and we drove into Hilo for a two-dinner blowout. Their openness and generosity were 50% of the reason we came to the Big Island at all, and made our stay here at least 100% better than it would have been on our own. So even though our circuit of the island didn’t end quite how we’d hoped, it was still far better than we could have dreamed before we met them on that random rainy day at Yellowstone.

And actually, our island explorations weren’t completely finished. The “direct” route to Kona from Hilo would take us right across the middle of the island, rather than around the ring road we used for our circuit. “Saddle Road” cuts right between the two island giants, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, climbing high where they join. It gave us an opportunity to see their “inside” faces (after seeing their “outsides” from the ring road), to experience the landscape changes in hyperspeed as elevation and hydrology changed rapidly, and, would give us an opportunity to go even higher up Mauna Kea’s face.

Rett has historically suffered significant ear pain due to the pressure changes of airline flights, though careful use of decongestants before flights seems to have significantly reduced her risk. Still, since we were about to fly to Chicago via a connection in Los Angeles, that would be two back-to-back up-and-down cycles, so a higher risk than a normal one-leg flight. That’s what made me doubt whether it was worth the additional risk to drive any higher up on Mauna Kea’s slope, because it would effectively make it three back-to-back flights, with the drive perhaps being worse than the flights. Our planes would let the cabin pressure decrease to a level equivalent to 8,000 ft. above sea-level. Simply crossing the island on Saddle Road took us from 0 ft. to 6,500 ft (and then back down to 0 ft.), nearly as bad as a flight on its own. But continuing up to the visitor center would take us to 9,100 ft., significantly worse than a flight. Informed of the danger, Rett determined the benefits would be worth the risk, so up the drive we went!

The road climbed far faster than the Saddle Road had been rising, and in the middle section felt like a scary challenge even in the truck. RideWithGPS shows the grade topping out at 14-15% (with an average grade of 8% over the 6 miles); it felt much steeper than that in middle section, but maybe being in the truck skews perspective relative to being on the bike. Either way, plenty of cyclists do the climb (even going all the way to the summit, well past where we were going), and might have been a fun challenge…if we were unloaded!

You’re required to turn into the Visitor’s Center parking lot, and there is a guy sitting at the exit, presumably to instill the proper fear in anyone who thinks they want to drive further up rather than turning back down. Bob had said going further didn’t give much beyond what you got at the Visitor’s Center, and I’m not sure if our rental contract allowed going further anyway, so, satisfied with the top-of-the-world feeling even if we were still 4000 feet short, we turned back down.

On the way down, back on Saddle Road, we narrowly avoided a dust storm rolling up from the south, and then also narrowly avoided a speeding ticket at a blatant speed trap near the Pohakuloa Training Area. The constant downhill made it difficult to stay within reasonable range of the 60 mph limit, so while I think I actually did a pretty good job of braking down near to the 40 mph limit that suddenly appeared, I was dismayed buy not shocked when I saw a police car light up in the rearview mirror. Luckily there was a guy behind us who had been going much faster, and he gave himself up. I’m sure that officer doesn’t even need to wait 60 seconds for the next violator to speed by once he finishes writing up the previous one.

Even though Kona is a much more-active airport than Hilo, it’s even more “primitive”, being an almost 100%-outdoor facility. I’m sure some part of that is an intentional way of showing off: “Welcome to gorgeous Hawaii, where we don’t need to build walls to separate you from the weather like you do on the mainland!” Most (though not all!) areas do suffer the indignity of roofs, however.

We unloaded our bags and I left Rett with them at the curb while I returned our rental truck. The airport is so small that it was just an easy walk back to the terminal that took a lot less time than riding a shuttle bus would have taken. At check-in the agent scolded us for our pannier-filled woven-polypropylene Ikea ‘Frakta’ bags, saying that they don’t allow them because they can rip open. We pretended that we had no idea (no, it’s not like I’d hand-stitched multiple broken seams on them from previous flight legs!), though honestly we’d never had anyone previously say they were prohibited, and she grumpily waved them through. Bike boxes again came in quite close to the weight limit (which is “51 lbs.” in United’s terms, because they kindly round up the “23 kg” international standard that converts to 50.71 lbs., even though that “23 kg” probably came from a US standard of 50.0 lbs being converted to 22.68 kg and rounded up to 23 kg!) A much-friendlier agent helped us carry the boxes over to a large-item scanner, where we waited a couple minutes for the scanner-operator to show up (the ad-hoc systems were honestly charming), and then were free of our loads until Chicago.

We found seats under a huge ceiling fan, because even as ideal as the Hawaiians think their climate is, it was still fairly warm even as they sky grew dark. And then we just walked through a literal metal “gate” separating the waiting area from the tarmac, and climbed the external stairway to board our plane, the first time Rett has ever done such a thing (and the first time for me since Greece ~25 years ago).

Five-and-a-half hours later we returned to the mainland US for the first time in 8 months, at the same place we left from, LAX. Luckily this time our connection was more-convenient and we didn’t have to do the two-mile walk with our awkward panniers, though the lack-of-sleep countered that benefit. One downside to breaking the flight from New Zealand into two segments for our return is that the segments aren’t long enough to allow much sleep.

Still, by the time we arrived at O’Hare at mid-afternoon, we weren’t doing too badly. Our thrice-used bike boxes (once by the bike shop, twice by us) were still in good shape after four flight segments, and were introduced to their third pickup truck, this time my Dad’s. A short drive brought us to their house, and the comfort of being “home” once again.

We left this parental shelter nine months earlier, and spent most of that time in a foreign country and on exotic islands, which was by far the longest time either of us has spent outside of our homeland. We don’t return as changed people, as you might expect of, say, a college student making such a journey of discovery. I think it’s largely our relative-old-age prevents such transformation, and that’s a good thing, because bicycle-based nomads are who we have been for nearly three years, and we don’t want that to change anytime soon!