Kona Report - Day 4

I signed out of one hotel and checked into the other one today, where i will be spending the rest of my stay. Lisa comes in tonight and we like being out where we are, which is 30 miles from Kailua. It's a beautiful spot though, and I'm finally getting a chance to relax in my room here this afternoon after another busy morning. At the moment, I'm looking out the window at a palm tree that is still as can be. I've never seen this here before - typically, it's being blown towards the ocean from the trade winds coming off of Mauna Kea. It's just bizarre.

Below, you can see Baker floating around at Hapuna Beach. The shot below him is a view from the Queen K from my ride on Tuesday.

Not a bad view, eh? I love palm trees.

Below here, you can see that Molson made the trip out as well. Thanks for the support my man.

I took my camera out with me on my early morning swim today.

After my swim, I did an easy 40 minute ride to test out the Cannondale. Murry from Cannondale was once again the ace mechanic here. This guy is the man. As I brought him my bike yesterday, he had another bike on his stand that he was working on. He said "perfect timing" as he took that bike off the stand and put mine on and began working on it. the bike he took off was Chrissie Wellington. Faris Al Sultan brought his bike by later on for Murry to work on - Faris isn't even sponsored by Cannondale anymore yet he wants no one else but Murry working on his. Kind of cool and lucky to have this guy treating my bike and a peon like me just as important as these top pros. I'm not worthy.

I met up with Desiree Ficker at the MyAthlete booth at 11am where she hung for awhile and signed autographs. She was great and she's a magnet for getting people (funny, both men and women) into the booth. Speaking of MyAthlete, if you get bored on Saturday and want to see where I am on the course, you can track me here: www.MapMyAthlete.com/vemap.aspx?name=010129

I'm starting to get excited to race. At this point, I just want it here. I want to race, I want to be out there on Saturday which is good. At the same time, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want this to be over with. I look forward to lying on the beach on Sunday with Lisa.

First though, I have some exercise to do.

Cheers,

EH