During our honeymoon we did a bike ride down the tallest volcano on Maui. This is the situation: A van picks you up at 3am; you drive around and pick up everyone else in your party; you drive to the top of the mountain; you watch sunrise; you ride a bike halfway down the mountain; you eat breakfast at a country club. Here's what really happened: A van picks you up and drives you to an industrial park of low-slung buildings and sit on the sidewalk eating day-old pastries and drinking instant coffee. After choosing a motorcycle helmet crusted with other peoples' sweat salt, you get back into the van and drive to the top of the mountain; your van goes slower than all other traffic, so you have an excellent view of a huge line of honking cars behind you. Your van driver announces, "We don't offer your money back if there's no sunrise," to which you think, "Buddy, if the sun doesn't rise today, the last thing I'm going to care about is getting my $150 back." Then you stand over a freezing plain of lava rock for an hour and watch the darkness turn to washed out grey, and you realize he meant you might not 'see' the sunrise. Then you get on your beach cruisers, don your crusty helmets, and ride downhill at a pace chosen by the slowest person in your group (slower than you ride on flat land). Cars and other cyclists pass and flick you off. You stop for photos. Then you pull into the country club and eat in the clubhouse, which happens to be a double-wide trailer. They give you a ride home and you spend the rest of the day taking naps since you woke up at 2:30am.
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