#090 - The Full Tilt Poker Guide to Maui, Part III - Paradise, the Hard Way

Rule Number One: Forget the luau.

“Luau” is Hawaiian for “buffet,” and everybody knows to avoid those except when you’re in a hurry and don’t have time to be waited on. But there’s nothing quick about these gastronomic shows, unless the Hawaiians discovered some way to microwave a whole pig – apple, snout, and all. We met up with a couple who went to one of the big luaus and they said it reminded them of a bad wedding.

I had no interest in the pork orgy, so I didn’t attend. In addition, the weather did not cooperate with the luau operators during my time on Maui. I heard about two of the biggest luaus being moved indoors. How does that even work? Would they pry open the floorboards and roast the pig in the middle of the hotel lobby?

I was in the Maui Prince on the evening when their luau was forced indoors. I don’t know if this was specific to their indoor version, but there was some aviary nightmare involved that was worthy of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. The interior courtyard echoed with the screeching of what sounded like a million birds. If someone wanted to convert me to vegetarianism, this would have been the night to do it.

The Road to Hana

This is, literally, the road at the end of the world, a 34-mile coastal highway to the village of Hana. The road is a series of hairpin turns, switchbacks, and one-lane bridges. The village itself is nothing special (and the road actually goes on to include more stunning sights, but we turned back at Hana). For most tourists, “the journey is the destination.” Every few miles there is some kind of attraction: a hike through a rainforest, a waterfall, a state park with black-lava rock formations and the world’s filthiest bathrooms.

I recommend you take the drive and check out some of the sights, but the real attraction for gamblers is the road FROM Hana. I can imagine some pretty spirited action on how fast a vehicle can make it back the length of the Hana Highway. The posted speed limit is 15 miles per hour, though there are a few straight-aways. I made it in 70 minutes, though with Jo Anne in car, it wasn’t, strictly speaking, a time trial. (If you are from the Puggy Pearson school of all’s-fair-when-there’s-money-on-the-line, recruit a local as your driver. I saw a couple people just HAUL through the Hana Highway.) Drive safely and obey all posted traffic signs. I guess.

Haleakala – Hawaiian for hell

Another attraction we checked out was the bicycle ride down the volcano through Haleakala State Park. I highly recommend this ride, though it’s hard for me to explain why.

Riding a bicycle down a mountain – you ride down a paved highway along a series of switchbacks – is the easiest exercise a poker player will ever get. There is only about 400 yards of actual pedaling on the 35 mile ride. The more vigorous exercise for me was the uncontrollable shaking and the clenching of my bowels.

The tour guide picks you up at 2:30 AM. This would be a disadvantage for most tourists, but it’s prime time for poker players. You could actually play the $13,000 Guarantee, win it, and make it just in time for your guide. (I wish I could tell you I did that, but it was more like this for me: piss and moan at all the great tournaments I was missing on Full Tilt while wasting my time with dinner, bombing out of the $13k G, moping into the $4,000 Guarantee Pot Limit Hold ‘Em tournament, busting out of that in 15 minutes, lying awake miserable debating whether I suck or everybody else in the world sucks, and dozing off moments before the 2 AM wake-up call.)

The reason for the early wake-up is so you can see the sunrise from the top of the volcano. But sunrise is at 6:30 and the ride takes about 90 minutes, tops.

So why all the extra time? Roshambo and Chinese Poker, as near as I can figure. I can’t think of any other reason why the tour guide took us first to their office shack, where they hooked up the trailer carrying the bicycles. (Other than to get slightly better gas mileage, why didn’t they hook up the trailer BEFORE picking us up?) We also waited 45 minutes for a guide who overslept. They also had us sign a stack of releases which proved impossible to read in the dim light of the shack. On the other hand, if I actually tried to read them all, we would have been pressed to make it to the mountain in time for sunSET.

Expecting it to be cold early in the morning and at the top of the mountain, we were encouraged to dress in layers. The guides also offered us rubber jackets, pants, and gloves. My advice is to wear everything you own and take every article of clothing they proffer.

We got to the mountaintop at 5:15 AM. Altogether, there were 5 guide companies and about 20-25 SUVs full of riders. So there we all were, in the midst of what were probably some of the most beautiful surroundings in the world: mountaintop, landscape below shaped by an ancient volcanic eruptions. I say “probably” because it looked like the inside of an ice maker to me. It was barely above freezing and raining hard. It was pitch black and the only sounds were those made by 100 or so sets of chattering teeth. Sunrise came and went as the blackness was replaced by an impenetrable fog.

The best (and only) sight at the top of the mountain was the restroom. For the first time in my life, I was actually happy to see one of those hand dryers. I was able to use it to dry a very small portion of my clothes, which stayed dry until the instant I stepped outside into the parking lot.

By 7 AM, we were riding in a formation of nine bicyclists behind our guide. We were riding specially designed bikes with fat tires, no fenders, one gear, and brakes set inside the hubs (whatever that means). For safety, we wore motorcycle helmets, which limited visibility. “Don’t look back,” one guide ominously warned.

I was shivering as we started in the freezing rain, blind, down the mountain. But it was more like riding a motorcycle than a bike. We were told that the road featured some crushed lava mixed with the concrete so there was no danger of skidding off the side of the mountain. Speeding almost uncontrollably down the mountain in the rain, I think our safety was actually in the hands of positive thinking and Hawaiian tribal magic. Those brakes did nothing other than give me something to do with my hands, which was nice because I didn’t need to pedal and was advised not to move my head.

After a couple miles, the rain slowed and then stopped. It warmed up. The sun came out. That gave me a perfect view of another group that was surrounding a rider who had fallen off their bike. I also got to see the ambulance winding its way up the mountain in the brilliant sunshine.

Then, as if on cue, it turned dark and start raining again, never stopping.

We gave a lot of attention and preparation to issues involving hydration and shedding layers. You can skip those things. With no fenders on the bike, I was drinking a steady spray of road-rain. And because of the unrelenting cold, no one was shedding layers. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me when I felt a cold chill down my spine, imagining the spray from the rear tire. Back at the hotel, I discovered that there was actually a vertical stripe of muddy water on the back of my tee shirt, despite that rubber smock and two Full Tilt sweatshirts.

It took about an hour and a half to ride to the bottom. Granted, most of the experience seemed like hell with the lid ripped off, but that brief period of nice weather was exhilarating.

And even the rest of it seemed worthwhile. There is something undeniably pleasurable about the speed and the latent danger, especially when reminiscing about it while eating breakfast or, better yet, lying beside the pool. As Winston Churchill said, “There is nothing quite as exhilarating as being shot at and missed.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem Maui offers enough gambling action to make it a gambling destination. But if you are looking to escape poker for a short time – and who’d want to do that? – I can’t think of a better place.

And who knows? Given time, Steve Wynn or Sheldon Adelson may visit Maui and see that last sugar mill – ugly, stinking, belching smoke – and buy up the land and put a nice clean casino in its place. Or, even easier, Disco Stu and the other Full Tilt tournament poobahs will schedule some juicy tournaments with good guarantees after that graveyard of a $24 + $2 Pot Limit Hold ‘Em tourney. (It would help if you folks on the Pacific Rim played more poker and made your voices heard. So get on that.)