Maui Postcard

Tree on Pulehu Road

Sometimes Maui feels like one big tropical traffic jam. Outside my condo, the cars crawl up and down South Kihei Road, bumper to bumper in the late afternoon. Many of the roads in the middle of the island are packed with a steady stream of bland rental cars and Toyota trucks from dawn til dusk. It's a bit depressing. The scenery is stunning, but if you want to ride a bike around here, you don't dare take your eyes off the road for long.

Sure, Kihei has bike lanes, of the paint-on-the-road variety, but they don't feel especially safe to me. A lot of the drivers here are either elderly or from Alberta or both. That thin layer of paint doesn't offer much protection. I feel about as safe cycling in Kihei as I do around a seniors home in Leduc.

But with a little effort, you can get away from the traffic, and that's when Maui cycling becomes transcendent. You find a perfect spot, a stretch of car-free road, a breath-taking view of the ocean, some weird tropical bird, or a majestic tree--like this one on Pulehu Road--and you remember that this place was once paradise, and, in some hard-to-reach places, it still is.