A ride down Kilauea

I'm with Mark Twain when it comes to Hawaii:

...its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surf is in my ear; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud-rack; I can feel the spirit of its woody solitudes, I hear the plashing of the brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.

So when the winter closed in here in Arcata (actual snow for the first time in about five years!) my wife and I fled for ten days to the Big Island of Hawaii.

You don't see a lot of cyclists around the larger towns. The mountain roads are narrow and traffic is constant on the Kona coast's main drag.


But 4,000 feet above the coast at the Volcano park its cool, quiet and peaceful. I joined a sedate little tour that rode seven miles down the flanks of Kilauea, stopping often to look at lava tubes and the caldera itself. The tour operator simply showed up at the summit with a trailer of bikes and off we went.

The crater floor was quiet and just a bit smoky. The sun never appeared. And the ride was mostly downhill. A nervous guide hovered over our group, encouraging us up the tiny hills and warning us of every hazard.

Yawn.

THREE DAYS LATER:

Worried about earthquakes? Earthquakes are mere symptoms. You don't ever want to meet the underlying disease. With a little luck you might survive a major earthquake, even at the epicenter (I have). A volcanic eruption moves the bar just about as high as it will go. Lava emerges from the earth at 2,400 F, the melting point of steel, and is followed by vast clouds of sulphur-dioxide gas, a deadly poison. An eruption can continue for a few hours--or, in the case of Kilauea, decades.