Kona Stations: The Queen K
Tonight at the IronGents and ladies dinner, an annual affair for Kona competitors 60 and over, Mike Reilly allowed as how "Kona is my favorite race, because after all it is the Mecca of our sport." Many people come from all around the world the second week of October, just to do the Hajj here in our Mecca. I'm not really familiar with the various activities on the Hajj, such as stoning the devil, or crossing a certain bridge. Nor do I know about the Stations of the Cross in Jerusalem.
But I do know that one of the absolute stations of the Kona Pilgrimage is riding on the Queen K, preferably under a searing sun into a roaring side or head wind. The Queen Ka'ahumanu Highway proper traverses 32.5 miles from Palani Road in Kona to a T intersection where the Akoni Pule Highway to Hawi begins. This road was completed in 1975, as an alternative to the Mamalahoa Highway, which parallels it at an elevation of around 2500'.
The Queen K was created from the lava which it traverses. We can currently see that process in action. Hawaii is gradually expanding the Highway to the Airport, 7 miles north of Kona, from a two-lane to a divided four-lane, with left and right turn lanes at a major intersections. This is desperately needed. Just in the ten years I have been coming here, the number of cars and trucks on the highway appears to have doubled, and is reaching the saturation point. While that used to be true mainly out to the airport, now the heavy traffic flows all the ways to the resorts of South Kohala, 20 miles farther on.
So those pilgrims who ride anticipating a quiet desolate experience on the sterile lava are in for a bit of a surprise. Trucks and cars are constant companions. Luckily, the road has 12-foot wide shoulders, so safety is not a concern. But it is certainly not a religious experience. The highway construction process is a mechanized version of "breaking rocks in the hot sun." Cat and Hitachi jack-hammer/tractors constantly pulverize the lava surface into smaller and smaller chunks. Then, bulldozers move the chunks around, creating a flat underbed. Finally. the most finely crushed lava is mixed with tar for the blackest asphalt you can imagine. All this while cyclists are rolling down the shoulder not more than five feet away.
The Queen K is not only the main route from Kona to the airport and the thriving resort complexes of Waikoloa, Mauna Lani and Mauna Kea. But it also connects the Kailua-Kona metropolis to the world of commerce. Nearly everything used or sold on the Island must come in by ship While the Kona Pier provides the semblance of a deep water port, what is needed are acres of asphalt for truck parking, and pier after pier for unloading. Kawaihae is where all that noisy work takes place, Then everything must be trucked, often still in the shipping containers, 30 miles or so down the road to where the people are.
Despite this reality, over the past two decades, the "Queen K" has come to symbolize to triathletes the world over the magic of the island, a place where the mysteries of Pele are shrouded. Bikers contend with a stark landscape of black, heat radiating lava. Runners, who follow the QK from Kona for five miles to the Energy Lab and back, have to fight not only the heat, but also the forbidding darkness. That all may have been true 20 years ago, but as the island's population has mushroomed, so have the lights. Each intersection boasts a cluster of sodium vapor lamps. Homes on the hillside twinkle above the runners. A large commercial area sits just above the highway, featuring a Costco, and, further on, a newer center with Target, Sports Authority, and the like.
And yet ... the magic remains. Come race day, the Highway is deserted. Traffic is re-routed to the Mamalahoa. Once again, athletes can find themselves all alone with the heat, the wind, the darkness, and their suffering. The Queen K once again becomes the testing ground for self-reliance.
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