The trade winds have been blowing on Oahu with a ferocity greater than I remember from my time here on Oahu. Last week they were strong – I started measuring wind speed by seeing how fast I could ride into the wind while pedaling 200 watts. The lowest I saw was 13.0mph for that test. This week the winds were supposed to go back to normal (10-15mph steady trades), but instead they’ve picked up even more. Each day I think the wind is the strongest it’s been since I got here, so testing as I just described is my best estimate as to how much the winds are actually changing. Two days ago I was pedaling 200 watts and going 10mph on a flat road. Today was 11mph, which I thought was horrific until I turned into a valley were the wind was funneling at me. I looked down and saw I was pushing 230 watts and going 8mph on a 1% grade. (Thanks Garmin Edge 705!!). It’s so windy I’m getting blown all over the road – while running. If I wanted to be in this much wind, I’d move to Chicago. (Ok, I take that back, nobody wants to live in Chicago and it’s not just because of the wind).

  Today was an awesome day. I finished up a short training block, which means the next few days I get to rest up and visit Jaco Van Delden Physical Rehabilitation (or just Jaco for short) and get my muscles stretched out and ready to rock again.

This morning I swam my longest solo pool swim this year, and maybe ever. 5600m, which isn’t that far, but I hate swimming by myself, and I’m pretty sure every time I’ve attempted that kind of workout in an empty pool it has ended up finding a way to shorten itself. After that I headed off to Tantalus (yup, it’s still my favorite ride – Marin County may have more miles of climbing, but this place is special.) Above is a screenshot from my Garmin Connect. The info is off of a Garmin Edge 705 and a Quarq Cinqo crank mounted power meter.

After I finished training for the day (including a stretch and some calories) Uncle Bob (a.k.a Bear) gave me a guitar lesson (I’m learning to play Jimmy Buffet – Another Hotel Room), then took me out whale watching. We saw a few whales coming up for air, but nothing like the full on jumping breaches I saw a few days ago when I didn’t have my camera.

But what really made today an awesome day, was a belated Valentines present from my beautiful and nice and wonderful girlfriend in Seattle: THREE NEW CUSTOM SPLISH SUITS!!

There’s the I <3 BC “don’t frown” design, the pink unicorn bencollins.org design (which I’m calling Unicorn Planet, though if you google Unicorn Planet, you’ll get something a little different) and the ever so Valentine’s appropriate < CB+BC 3 (that’s an attempt at a text heart around the initials – I accidentally wrote “CD” there last night, and this morning I ad an angry email…) plus butt kisses. Can you guess which design I made? Oh, and all three have unicorns front and center. I’ve said it before, unicorns totally kick a**.

I can’t decide which one to wear tomorrow!!! Rachel Ross is going to be there, so I have to look good. Otherwise I’ll hear about it from Courtenay, who will have heard about it via stalkerbook from RR.

Here is a map and elevation profile of my favorite ride. The loop part is my favorite anyway. The rest is kind of crummy with stop lights and traffic.

It’s 8k up and 8k down with 500m elevation. Plus, at some point since I moved away from Honolulu they managed to pave the side of the loop I ride down (I go clockwise). The road is so smooth now that on my Beyond Fabrications Radius Carbon it feels like I’m just gliding through the corners the whole way down.

Yesterday I came back from my day’s workouts around 3:30-ish and was greeted by a worried Uncle Bob. Worried because I was home so late, and I he thought there was no way I could make it so long without a good meal. He made me a smoothie while I stretched and then started in on veggies, potatoes and chicken breast. I felt like royalty. Bob, however, suggested that if it weren’t for the swimming biking and running, I would be just like a baby, “eating sleeping and shitting the days away.”

What Bob says may be mostly true, but I’d like to point out that I’m also trying desperately to catch up on my schoolwork in Biochemistry, and hoping that when I do get back on schedule I can put some energy back into learning Spanish, which I was much better about before I left Seattle. It’s just so hard to focus  on academics when you’re in a new place with new people and a new routine.

So I got to do my favorite bike ride, Tantalus, a ten mile loop that climbs 2000 feet in the first five miles, then descends the second 5 miles. I only rode one lap, but hopefully I’ll have a chance to do a bunch more while I’m here. Tomorrow I’m doing a track workout at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. It’s a nice all-weather track, and the best part is that it’s rainbow colored! There’s even a sign that reads, “run on a rainbow.” Though the sign is old because UH has moved on from their original mascot, the rainbows. They became the rainbow warriors, and now they’re just the warriors. I guess warriors seem tougher than rainbows if you haven’t played Mario Kart.

Yesterday I celebrated the life of my friend Adam Havrilak, along with his Hawaii ohana. The service was done at a beach park in Hawaii Kai. It was sunny with strong trade winds blowing as we gathered around  Adam’s ashes and a photograph of Adam, taken on the water just in front of where we stood. We gathered around close, forming a tight circle around Adam’s father while he read his son’s eulogy. The eulogy was well written, and just as everyone began to cry the sky started crying with us. It was still sunny and warm, but, as it happens in Hawaii, the rain seemed to come from nowhere and be sent from above just to wash away our tears.

[Above: Adam and I got up and drove to Sandy’s Beach for the sunrise on New Years Day 2008. On 2 hours of sleep, I never would have gotten out of bed, but Adam had this drive to have fun that you just couldn’t say no to, and we ended up running all over the beach taking pictures with the bus loads of Japanese tourists who paid to be taken out there to watch the sunrise with us.]

The service ended and we took Adam out to the ocean. His father jumped in the water and let Adam’s remains drift away while we decorated the water with lais and flower pedals. It was perfect.

Afterwards we headed to Kona Brewing Company for pupus and to talk story. Adam had a lot of stories.

That was pretty much all of Sunday. It was sandwiched right between Valentines day (my least favorite “holiday” which I hate) and Presidents’ Day (I’m still laying in bed thinking about all the hummus I ate yesterday and how my sweat probably smells like garlic). Not that the long weekend really has a lot of meaning when you “work” every day (I put the quotes on ‘work’ because the word has a negative connotation associated with it, and I really enjoy what I do.)

Yesterday I arrived on the Island of Oahu. I flew 9.5 hours from Sao Paulo to Dallas on Monday night, had breakfast in the airport, then went for a second 9.5 hour flight from Dallas to Honolulu. Bob Havrilak (Adam’s father) picked me up. The trip was 31 hours door to door, which was pretty awful (not worth all the air miles I earned). I’m staying with him in Hawaii Kai up until the Lavaman Triathlon at the end of March. Bob is awesome, but I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that in the coming weeks – right now I want to talk about Rachel Ross’ stalking of Ben Collins (she’s good at it).

The first thing I did once I unloaded my bags from Bob’s car was to head out for a run around Hawaii Kai. There I was a mile and a half into the run when I hear a car honk and see some lady waving at me as she flies by, too quickly for me to see who was driving, but then gets stuck at a long light a block away. As I got close I tried to peak into the car, the light changed  and as she pulled away I strained to see any clues as to who had waved.

Then I hit a sign pole. Seriously, I ran my shoulder and forearm into a hard metal pole so hard that I have bruises and it’s a little painful when I bend my hand backwards.

Then last night I talked to Courtenay on the phone, and apparently Rachel Ross was the driver, and when she made it home she decided not to send me an email or facebook message (she has both options), but rather to FB Courtenay. Great, I hadn’t even called Courtenay to tell her my plane hadn’t crashed and she already had a FB message from another woman telling her I was out running in knee high compression socks. At least she didn’t see me nail the pole.

This afternoon I went for another run around Hawaii Kai. Bob rode his bike along with me, and I had no recognition events – or so I thought. But when I got home Courtenay called and told me that she had another FB message form Rachel, who apparently saw me again today, but still didn’t actually stop to say hi or otherwise try to say something to me.

So Rachel, is it easier to FB message my girlfriend in California than to email, call, or FB me? Or how about just slowing down and saying hi?

On an unrelated note, Adam Havrilak’s memorial service will be this Sunday, the 15th of February, at 2pm. Here’s the email that Bob sent out:

Hi Everyone!
Adam is back on Island, and if you want to share some Aloha with him, and his island Ohana….here is the plan.

Sunday afternoon, we are going to gather at Mauanloa Bay Beach Park (located in Hawaii Kai at intersection of Kalaniana’ole Highway & Keahole St) for a traditional Hawaiian service, to talk story and give Adam to the ocean.

We will begin to gather at 2:00 for some time to share among friends, and talk story about Adam.  We’ll begin the service at 3:00 and and conclude the service by taking Adam out to the ocean in his boat.  We should have a few boats available if you would like to accompany us and even join him in the ocean for a swim.

We’ll adjourn around 3:30ish and move over to Adam’s favorite Hawaii Kai spot, Kona Brewing Co. to enjoy more stories, a viewing of the memorial video his sister put together, and to drink a few toasts to his life and our memories of him.

I will publish an announcement in the advertiser, but please be kind enough to spread the word to his island ohana.

–
Bob Havrilak

Please spread the word to anyone that knew Adam and would like to come.

I had a strong race at my first Santos Triathlon.

The swim was a beach start with two laps, requiring us to come out of the water and to go back in twice. Beach starts are not my forte, and I ended up spending the entire swimming portion of the swim trying to regain the positions I had lost while running into the water. Regardless I came out of the water in front of all but the two that had broken away, Benjamin Sanson and Paulo Miyashiro of France and Brazil, respectively.

I attacked the bike, and was pulling a string of people behind me, each separated by the required 15 meters. around 10 kilometers Fabio Corvalho and Juraci Moreira came around me and Fabio said, “rotate leaders until we catch [the front pack]” It seemed like a good idea, but we had a marshal right there. I waited for Fabio to get to the front then passed him again and tried to stay there. He came around again and I fell back to 15 meters, then another cyclist passed me and pulled into the space between me and Fabio. I thought he would keep going forward and attempt to lead for a while, but I started to fall back as quickly as I could (I stopped pedaling). Unfortunately, The marshal started yelling at me in Portuguese. I couldn’t understand and I told her, “I don’t understand!!” She said, “stop pedaling!” which is ironic because I had already stopped pedaling trying to fall back (by now I probably had a larger gap in front of me than anyone else nearby). “Pull to the side and put your foot down!” Now that I understood. Expletives invaded my thoughts, and I pulled to the side. I’m not sure why I was singled out for a penalty, but after standing down for a full minute I got back up and started channeling my frustration into the pedals. I was less than 15km into the race, and by the time I reached 25km I had passed the same group that I was riding with before, less Fabio and Juraci who had already gotten away and did end up catching the leaders, which was a huge advantage. When I saw the leaders they had a 5 motorcycle escort forming an echelon around all the cyclist in that group.

I’m pretty stoked that I was able to ride nearly as fast as the top guys, without a motorcycle escort, and without a group of riders working with me.  And with a full minute on the side of the road!

Anyway, when we came into town one of the riders behind me passed and tried to lead through town. I think it slowed me down because I had to stay far enough back and he wasn’t very good at cornering. My roommate, Francisco Serrano (represented Mexico in Beijing) was with my group and we started the run together.

I tried to hold pace with the Brazilian who had passed me toward the end of the bike, but after the first kilometer he started pulling away. Francisco went with him and by the first turn around at 3km they had about 20 seconds on me. I tried to shift gears and close the gap, and it seemed to be working. Then the Brazilian pulled away from Francisco, and between 5km and 8km Francisco built his lead over me to 45 seconds at the second turnaround. I had my Garmin 405 on and was looking at my mile splits, which were getting slower rapidly, but rather than getting discouraged I just gazed ahead at the road, thought about relaxing my upper body, and put in everything I had left. I ended up closing the gap on Francisco from 45 seconds to 6 seconds in the last 2k, which was pretty painful. I was 8th place by the end. Reinaldo Colucci won, followed by Paulo Miyashiro, and Fabio Carvalho ended up in 3rd with a similar run split to mine.

With regards to the weather, we lucked out. There was a high cloud cover that kept the sun from being quite as intense as it has been. It was still quite hot, and so humid that the air was sweating, but certainly not as bad as some races I’ve done in the past.

The Santos Triathlon exposed some things for me to work on, but things like beach starts and penalties are fairly rare, so hopefully my next race will lack those features. Despite the penalty, I’m happy with how I rode my bike, and I still had a lot of fun competing. The course was really safe and the event organizers did a great job with the setup.

(when the official results come out I’ll be able to see if the people I thought I was riding with were actually who I thought they were.)

The past week has been so monotonous. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot things I’d dislike more than sitting around in Santos – where proper attire is a Speedo for men and a g-string bikini for women – trying not to get sunburned and waiting for Sunday to roll around so I can go race. It’s just that, I’ve eaten the same thing pretty much every day. I’ve done the same thing pretty much every day, and even the movies on TV have been the same pretty much every day. For example, I’ve seen Back To The Future (part one) three times, and Waterworld twice since Tuesday. The Hotel Avenida Palace has yet to fix their internet (which was supposed to be back in order Tuesday night when we checked in), so Francisco and I have been using the internet of the Atlantic Hotel down the street. Right now, for instance, we’re sitting in a cafe on the sidewalk in front of our hotel. Francisco told me about some plane that crash landed in the water in Australia, so I went to google news to see what else was going on the world. Apparently Russia is ashamed that their leader likes Abba, and Angelina Joli is working on foreign relations. Plus, the average home value went up by $15,000 as part of the brilliant “bailout plan”, which is really just a way to get more property tax from homeowners.

So now we’re heading off for the race meeting, and hopefully Fabio and Paulo will come and take us for a tour of the course, but we haven’t heard from them since Wednesday.  We’ll see!

I’ve been playing around with the “create panoramic image” feature in Windows Live Photo. It’s pretty cool. But for some reason, the program is a memory hog. Even with a gig of memory, I keep getting a low memory error when I try to put one of these images into a blog. I wanted to put in a few of these images that I made today, but Live Writer is freaking out. I may have to upload the images directly and add them to the post. Actually, Live Writer isn’t even letting me add a normal picture (I shoved my waterproof Olympus Stylus SW into my speedo today and took pictures from the ocean – it was really cool), so maybe it’s just the new version of the program. Can one of the microsoft employees that read this blog please tell the guys working on MS Live that not everyone has a supercomputer from the year 2020 at their disposal?

{update: I finally got the image to show on the site, but now it’s not even close to the same quality as on my computer. Plus, for some reason the Windows Live suite is now giving me the “not enough memory” error for things like adding text to a blog entry. Two days ago I loved the MS Windows Live stuff, now I think it is starting to smell like house guests and old fish.}

I overslept this morning and missed going on a ride with Paulo and Fabio. I’m a little bummed because we were going to take the ferry over to Guaruja on the other side of the river from Santos. The riding over there is much nicer because there are fewer cars and more rainforest. So, I went for a run on the beach, ate breakfast, then went to the appointment Fabio had made for me to get a massage!!

[Before I start this story, let me ruin the ending for the readers with dirty minds (Loren and Chris Tremonte, I’m looking at you ) – it was not that kind of massage.]

I was running late, but I needed to stop at a bank to change money. Fabio said that there were a bunch of banks in front of Patricia’s (the massage therapist) building, so I went in with my bike and asked, but was escorted out by a security guard. Then a woman came out to ask what I needed. she said the nearest place to change money was in the mall, which was 2 blocks down. I was already 5 minutes late, so I went into the building and valet parked my bike. Sort of. The Valet guy handed me a lock and let my lock the bike in the corner. Then I hopped in the elevator.

After explaining to Patricia that I would have to exchange money after and come back she told me to take off my clothing…

This is when I realized I was not wearing underwear beneath my K-Swiss board shorts. I mean – it’s so hot, why would I put on an extra layer? Normally in the US this isn’t an issue because there’s a sheet and they just wrap it around you so that you can maintain some kind of modesty. Here, however, there was no sheet. My options were to get a massage through my shorts or lay bare naked on the table.

I laid down in my shorts, and immediately regretted my decision. My legs are sore, but she ended up spending most of her time working on my back and shoulders. Those were tight too, but my legs were begging for a rub down. Besides, modesty is so not me, and the nudity would have made for a much better story (Loren and Chris would have enjoyed it more anyway).

After she finished (45 minutes for 40 reais, which is a little less than $20 – would have been 55 if I’d been on time) I walked down the street a few blocks to find the mall. After five blocks I didn’t see anything that looked like a shopping center, so I went into another bank and asked for an exchange. “It is at Canal 3 near the beach.” Now, I was at Canal 5 and they are each about 800 meters apart. They were actually directing me back to my hotel, about 5km away. I turned around, walked back another block, then went into another bank to ask again. “Yes, go to the next street, turn… ah… [points left, i say “left” he confirms] then walk about four blocks, it is on the … ah… left… side and there is another bank like this one at the entrance, and it will say ‘exchange’ in front”

Those are directions I can work with!! After that it was easy, I changed some money and went back to Patricia’s office where Francisco was getting a massage. I just can’t believe how hard it was to find a money exchange!

While I was walking around I saw the garbage collectors. These guys put the New York City trash collectors to shame. They were running down the street – three at a time running, one driving – and grabbing bags from the sidewalk, then throwing them into the still moving truck. While they ran they yelled for people to move, and those that didn’t understand (read: “Ben”) were simply run over. The whole scene was awesome!