Gallery of Jim Blilie's Photos:

World Bicycle Tour, 1990-1992

The Big Show

Part 2:  HAWAII

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning

all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas

and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts

of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues

from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance

which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can,

begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now."  (Often attributed to Goethe)

  This page is under construction.  I'm still working on a text for each segment of the

trip and scanning in some negatives and maybe a few more slides hidden here and there.

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These are THE BIG SHOW of my slides from my trip around the world with Jeff Mellor, 1990-1992.

There are many more slides in this set than on the main world tour page:  About 2600 total.  I spent

some time in late 2009 going through all my slides from the world trip and I selected many for scanning.

The results are on this page (slide shows).  Many of these have been seen only by me and many of those

I hadn't seen since 1993.  The trip itself is outlined below.

These are scans of my Kodachrome 64 (and a very small number of Ektachrome 100) slides

From Jim and Jeff Mellor's bicycle tour around the world from Nov-1990 through Oct-1992

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010 All rights reserved

I used a very nice, yet inexpensive scanner, the  Epson V500  I like it very much.

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Hawaii, 17-Nov-1990 to 29-Nov-1990, 270 miles

These shots are from our two-week tour through the Big Island of Hawaii.  We rode from the Hilo airport

to Isaac Hale Park on the SE (wet) side.  We also rode to where the lava from Kiluea was crossing the

coastal road.  Finally sick of the rain, we rode back to Hilo and caught a bus to Kailua Kona.  From there,

we rode to Spencer Beach Park, which was great.  Then we moved further up north to the Kohala Coast

and camped at Mahukona State Park, which was the nicest place we stayed (except for the showers, which

were sort of in ruins.)  From there, we rode up to the Pololu Valley, which was magical.  Then back to Kailua

Kona for some city culture shock and the flight on from the Kona airport to Nadi in Fiji.

Hawaii route map:

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For the slide show:  

Click HERE.  Then:

Click on the first picture (upper left picture) on the black photo album page and then

Click the "play" button at the upper right of the view panel to start the slide show.

Enjoy.

Mellor at the Hilo airport, saddling up for the first time (rain pouring off the roof!)	Eating lunch in Hilo	Lava Trees State Park, on the way to Isaac Hale State Park	Isaac Hale State Park, trying to get things dry	In the tent, Hale St Park. Jeff broke hi left wrist while doing a training ride in October, which delayed our start and meant he had to have a cast for the first four weeks of the trip!
Riding near Kalapana, Jeff with his cast on his arm.	Flora and fauna	Flora and fauna	Flora and fauna	At the Kalani Honua.  Sort of a Hippie-style spa or retreat.  We needed badly to get out of the rain and dry out.
The flowing pahoehoe lava, crossing the road near Kalapana	Me at the lava site	At the black sand beach with our new acquaintance, David, a native Hawaiian, who showed us around and showed us the various fruits growing wild	Kohala Coast	Kohala Coast
On the Kona Coast Highway	Sunset, Spencer Beach Park	Spencer Beach Park, trying to dry things out, but at least we have sunshine!	Spencer Beach Park	Spencer Beach Park, inside the tent early morning
Sunset, Spencer Beach Park	Hawi, on the way to Pololu	The Pololu Valley	The Pololu Valley	The Pololu Valley
The Pololu Valley	The Pololu Valley	Just above the Pololu Valley	My legs and gloves after a wet ride from Pololu	Petroglyphs near Kona
Me on the road to the petroglyphs	Fisherman near the petroglyph site	Sunset, Spencer Beach Park	Sunset at Mahukona Beach Park, where we camped for several days.  It's almost up to the north tip of the island on the west coast and is a wonderful camping spot.	Riding away from Mahukona State Park.
Kona Coast Highway	Kona Coast Highway	Near the South Point, southern-most point in the 50 states	Hawaii Volcanoes National Park:  Green on black, the dominant theme	Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park	Hawaii Volcanoes National Park	Hawaii Volcanoes National Park:  The Kiluea Iki crater	Hawaii Volcanoes National Park:  The Main Kiluea crater	Hawaii Volcanoes National Park:  Active Halemaumau crater inside the Main Kiluea crater.  Note the bathtub ring.
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park:  Kiluea Iki crater	An old lava flow over the road in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

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Hawaii:

When we landed in Hilo , Hawaii on the Big Island , our first clue that we had chosen to land in the wrong airport was probably the solid sheets of water pouring off the eaves of the open sided terminal building.  Who knew that the Hawaiian Islands has dry sides and such emphatically wet sides?  The distinction is clear enough that it is said that there in one street in Waimea where rain is usually falling on the north side of the street and not on the south side of the street, which runs down the ridge line through town.  We didn’t know this.  We were very green on this our two-week shake-down in the USA before continuing on to more exotic places.

On the other side of the Island , where all the tourist facilities are, is the Kona airport, with nearly continuous sunshine.  Weather becomes an intensely interesting subject when you are traveling by bicycle (or on foot) and living in a tent.  We would soon see the Kona airport.

We unpacked out cardboard packing cases and assembled our bikes and packed up our panniers for the first time.  Packing them properly would take several weeks to figure out.  At first, whatever it was that you needed now was always buried deep in the bag somewhere.  Our panniers were lined with heavy duty plastic bags and much of the contents were inside zip-lock bags.  But that didn’t keep out the rain.  A minimum of three layers of plastic are needed for that.

And off we road in the hot rain.  We headed up the gentle slope of the volcano that is the Big Island , away from Hilo .  We were heading for Isaac Hale State Park in the SE corner of the island, to camp.  We were tired after over a day of continuous travel with almost no sleep.  I had flown from Chicago to LA to Honolulu to Hilo and Jeff had flow from Washington DC to LA and onward.  We finally crested the hill and turned off the highway for Hale Park .  We had a nice gentle downhill, most of the way, through increasingly thick jungle.  The spicy smell of the tropics was entirely new to me and very exiting.

To be continued.  Still working on it ...

Rain rain rain ...

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Outline of our trip:

From Nov. 15, 1990 to Oct. 6, 1992, with a five-month break for the winter of '91-'92, Jeff Mellor

and I traveled around the world through 26 countries, mostly by bicycle.  While in the "developed"

world, we bicycled 1000 miles per month, camping each night.  In Asia and Africa, we traveled by

train and bus and used guest-houses.  We encountered 16 different foreign languages, of which we

needed to learn at least the rudiments.  We rode a total of almost 11,000 miles on our bikes, camped out

at least 350 times, and climbed several mountains including Pt. Lenana (16,350 ft.) on Mt. Kenya in

Africa.  We took a three-week, 220-mile hike around the Annapurna Range in Nepal, which included

a 17,700 ft. high pass.  I took 13,000 photographs and wrote 1000 pages of journals.  No experience

in my life, except my university education, can compare with these travels for the depth and breadth

of learning or for the perspective gained.  It was one of the peak life experiences, up there with

marriage, children, university education.

Our trip was through these countries:

[Hawaii:  The Big Island, a 2-week shake-down within the US, started Nov 1990]

Fiji, about 10 days riding around Viti Levu from Nadi to Suva

New Zealand:  Auckland to Wellington via Coromandel Penn. and a loop around the Southern

Alps from Christchurch and back

Australia, from Sydney to Melbourne via Canberra and Mt. Kosciusko, around Tasmania, bits and

pieces inland mostly bus to Darwin

Singapore

Malaysia, from Singapore to the Thai border

Thailand (no bikes; we sent our bikes to Denmark from Bangkok, not wanting to ride in Thailand,

Nepal, India, Kenya, or Egypt)

Nepal (no bikes)

India (no bikes; just passed through Delhi and Bombay since we were running way behind)

and then on to a long tour of Europe:

Denmark

Germany

Netherlands

Belgium

France

United Kingdom

Then a winter's break at home in the USA from Oct 1991 through March 1992, then we flew

back to Lisbon Portugal in March 1992:

Portugal

Spain

France

UK, we rode from Plymouth to Land's End then from Land's End to John O'Groats at the tip of

Scotland and via ferries to the Orkneys, Shetlands, and on to Norway over the North Sea (with a

detour from Holyhead in Wales over to Ireland and back)

Ireland

Norway

Sweden

Germany (former East Germany)

Poland

Czech Republic

Austria

Germany (Bavaria) and home in Oct 1992 from Frankfurt am Main

All images are copyright © James W. Blilie, 1990 through 2010, All rights reserved

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Time and mileage table:

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Background image is Jeff at Mahukona State Park, Dec 1990

Last updated:  5-Jun-2010