Honolulu - Kailua - Honolulu via Pali Highway and Makapu'u. The climb from Waikiki to Pali was about 7 miles with 1000 ft elevation gain with 1 and 2 miles stretches of steady 5 and 8^ climbing, with a headwind. Grand old time, that.

Nuannu Pali Road was gorgeous though, and the waterfall and sounds of birds was a good curative from the noise of downtown Honolulu. The 5 mile descent through the Pali Tunnel with switchbacks into Kailua at 40 mph was terrifying. I was descending at an average speed of 38 mph, and the only nice part of that was that I was keeping up with traffic, so getting right hooked or rear-ended wasn't much of a worry. Wiping out on road shoulder debris or potholes was a bigger problem.

Still, kinda fun in retrospect.

Wound up doing the last 6 miles with a Norwegian kid who swapped pulls me all the way to Diamond Head. He seemed surprised with my speed on the touring bike, but I just shrugged it off as being a product of nice tailwinds. I was glad that he broke early and I didn't have to shame myself with falling behind on the climb out of Kilaeua Valley.