So what is this clip all about? A few of our triathlon friends have an obsession with all things DOUGHNUT! So last time Heather and I were in Hawaii we visited the world famous “Tex Drive In” on the big island of Hawaii. They are famous for their malasadas a Portugese version of the doughnut.

Watch Heather narrate our trip to the Tex Drive In.

We have been back from Hawaii for over 6 weeks and I’m finally getting around to posting the rest of our vacation pictures.  After the Honu 1/2 Ironman we spent several days in Kailua Kona before driving over to the Kona side of the island. We spent 3 days with friends of Heather’s parents who moved to Hawaii over 10 years ago.  We visited Volcano National Park one day and saw lava flowing into the ocean (see picture above).  Another day we got the “local tour” from our hosts. They showed us a town that had been destroyed by a lava flow several years ago and many other sites we would have never seen on our own.

While in Kona, we visited the “Kona Earth” coffee farm. Gary Strawn, a former co-worker of Dave’s from Netiverse and Cisco, left the silicon valley life and moved to Kona to manage a coffee farm. Gary, his wife, and two young daughters have been there two full seasons now and are becomming more popular and well known.

Kona coffee is “the hot thing” on the islands of Hawaii. The kona beans only grow in the climates of the Hawaiian volcanos – up on the hillsides where it is not too hot and very wet. Gary keeps the coffee trees trimmed to about 10 feet high, so that ladders are not required when picking the beans. He hires plenty of help to pick only the reddest “cherries,” as he calls them. The skins are then pulled off, the slimy green beans underneath are dried, roasted, then packaged for sale. Harvest begins yearly in late August, early September. (We expect Kyle to move to Kona in August, help Gary with the harvest and train for the Hawaii Ironman at the same time!

In addition to coffee, Gary manages several plots of macademia nut trees. In contrast to coffee, they wait until the nuts fall from the trees to the ground, they take the outer shell off, then the tough husk. I ate a few raw macademia nuts while roaming the farm. They were good! (Although, not as good as chocolate covered roasted ones!) Macademia nuts are harvested the same time of year as coffee beans.

Gary’s farm has plenty of animals. Wild pigs and chickens roam the land. Electric fences attempt to keep the wild pigs from eating the fallen “mac nuts”. He has a few goats, hoping to keep the grass mowed for free. Hens lay 7-8 eggs a day for the family’s consumption. Random, wild peacocks visit every so often. And the girls have pet rabbits. The Strawn family lives only a few miles from Kona, but it is a different world. A small, windy narrow road in the jungle takes you there. There are no street signs, so the directions include statements like, “Turn left at the ol’ blue pickup truck.” The climate is cool and humid, compared to the dryer, hotter areas of the coast. The mac nuts and coffee trees love the lava rock and get plenty of rain to keep them going. Gary is too high up on the hill to get city water, so they collect rain water runoff from the roofs of their buildings and collect it in huge water storage units. This water is used for consumption as well as irrigation.

We all had samples of Medium Roast Kona Earth coffee (100% Kona beans) – everyone liked it so much that we all bought bags to bring home!

Other coffee facts you may not know:

- coffee beans get stale within just a few months of being dried and roasted

- ground coffee gets stale within just a few hours, unless packaged immediately

- the worst thing for coffee beans and coffee grounds is humidity (keep things well sealed; if you don’t plan to drink it in the next month or so, put the sealed bag in the freezer)

- crappy quality coffee beans come from “Robusta” trees; low-priced coffee such as Folgers has a lot of Robusta filler, in addition to some higher quality beans

Gary says the supply of kona coffee on the islands outweighs demand. So, he’s looking to expand business online to the rest of the US. To order some of Gary’s coffee online, visit http://www.konaearth.com/. We promise you’ll enjoy it!

A few of us from Silicon Valley came to Kona for a Half Ironman Triathlon. The race was Saturday, June 3rd starting at 7am. A half ironman consists of a 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike, and a 13.1 mile run.

To be honest, I wasn’t really prepared for this race like I should have been. I’ve spent too much time working and not enough time working out. My longest ride for the year was a 2 hour compu-trainer ride indoors and my longest run was about 7 miles. In fact, I haven’t ridden 56 miles or run 13 miles since I completed the Florida Half Ironman a year ago! Anyway, I didn’t have high expectations, other than just hoping that I could finish. But I didn’t.

The weather was somewhat cool that morning, with a heavy wind. Dave wasn’t competing in the race, due to back issues, but he decided to do the swim. We all started at 7am at the sounds of the cannon. I had horrible sight lines – I was all over the place! I swam at least an extra 3 minutes because I did a poor job of sighting. 800 people started in one mass wave, so there was a lot of churn, kicking, bodily contact, etc – not something I enjoyed. So, I kept swimming out to the edges to avoid the crowds, which probably helped me swim so much extra. I finished the swim in just over 33 minutes (about 3 minutes slower than what I expected) but I wasn’t tired at all, so that was good for the bike.

I was nervous about the bike. Because I hadn’t been biking, I really didn’t know how I was going to feel. The wind was another factor. Wind gusts are known to get ugly on the “Queen-K” highway. There was a pretty significant headwind for the first half, which made the second half more fun! And there were some rain showers at ~mile 28 which cooled things off. All in all, I never felt a lot of discomfort due to heat. About 2 hours into the bike, the outside edge of my right foot really started to hurt. It got worse through the rest of the bike, to point where I was trying to pedal with just my left leg. I finished the bike in 3 hours and 16 minutes, better than I had expected. I didn’t feel exhausted either, which was nice.

In the transition, I put on my running shoes and tried to start running, but there was no way. The outside of my foot was just too painful. I actually couldn’t even walk! So, I hobbled around, and watched the race finish. I was disappointed I didn’t finish, especially because I didn’t expect to have foot problems like this. Two days later, I’m still icing my foot and limping around. I need to look into new shoes or something!

Kyle Welch, a friend of ours in Sunnyvale, finished first of our group. He qualified for the Hawaii Ironman and finished 16th overall. Keish, Fred, and Conrad came in and all had great races. Fred had the 7th fastest run time of the day.

Now we’re relaxing in a condo with Kyle, Conrad, and Fred right on the beach. The vacation has really started now!

Here is a link to all the Honu race results

More updates later.