One of the benefits of subscribing to variety of cycling group mailing lists, two of mine are the Rivendell Owners Bunch and Bike Friday’s The Yak, is that from time to time folks come a visiting. Of course an even bigger benefit, if you travel like I do, is that sometimes you go a visiting.

As fate would have a buddy of mine and I will both be a visiting each others neighborhoods, though oddly enough we’ll be doing it at the same time and miss each other! As he puts it,”I guess it’s part of some cosmic balance!” It’s something all right. He’ll be here on Oahu at the same time I’ll be visiting the Bay Area. Cosmic balance indeed!

Because of his upcoming trip he’d asked on a couple of lists about Honolulu rides. Indeed I saw his request on both the lists I mentioned as he subscribes to both as he, like myself, owns both brands (and these are small boutique brands mind you). Even odder we both ordered the same camera (Fujifilm X100 – more on that in a few days), his arriving last Friday, mine this coming Friday. Long lost twin or what?

Now Honolulu tourist rides are something I actually know a little bit about. My friend Erich was here recently and I got to show him around a bit as documented here. Before a relative Lynette Chiang, whom I’d met through her Bike Friday connection, came through and we’d done a bit of cycling together. Add to the mix the fact that I get everywhere by bike and Honolulu just isn’t hat big and it seemed to me to be a good idea to document those ‘tourist rides.’

By that I mean rides taken to see the city, not rides that folks might want to do to maintain triathlon standard fitness while here.

Of course the problem for most folks visiting is that some of the ways to get around aren’t immediately obvious. For instance there’s a wee stretch near the eastern entrance to the Pearl Harbor bike path that I get to by crossing the road and riding on the empty sidewalk (generally very empty) for about two blocks. It beats trying to cross what can be a very busy stretch of road. I’ve done it both ways and much prefer the sidewalk even though I’m pretty firm about not riding on sidewalks.

Basically there are shortcuts and tips we residents know about that might escape the average visitor. Indeed I was looking at bit I’d mapped from the Hilton Hawaiian Village to downtown and back, taking in the waterfront, Chinatown, the capitol district and so on, and realized that there are bits, even though it’s on a map where one could get confused…am I supposed to ride down the road or the sidewalk (one short bit on Ala Moana Blvd).

So I’ve decided that as time allows I’m going to photograph and catalog some of the rides I do around town. Mostly I guess I’ll include a simple map, a few words, and some photos not just of what I consider the highlights, but also of the tricks – where to turn to get through a gate (up at UH comes to mind), and things like that.

Will I do it here? I’m considering using my other domain, veloahu.com for it. I’d had that linked to one of my Posterous spaces, but I’m not sure that’s the best solution in the long run.

We’ll seem, but it seems I have a new project!