HURRICANE WARNING

                                                HURRICANE WARNING

For over a week the reports have been telling us to prepare for a hurricane that would hit us head on tonight.  And sure enough the tropical depression they call Felicia did strengthen to 135 mph for a time and did keep heading towards us at 14 mph.  I was of a wait and see mind because the things we can do to prepare don’t take a lot of time.  Myrna , on the other hand is never one to waste a chance to worry in advance just in case she doesn’t get an opportunity to later.  She got all the chairs off the deck, tied down the garbage cans, and put her bicycle in the garage.  I went ahead with my intermittent project of cutting down the “weed” trees in the orchard.  The one thing we really are agreed that we should do to prepare is to hire an expert to cut down the very, very tall Cook Pine that stands at the corner of our house.  We’ve actually gotten 3 bids for the job but the two with the equipment and the insurance to replace our house if they make a mistake were too shockingly high for us to stomach.  We are working on getting a forth now who has the equipment and is considering getting the insurance.  Meanwhile this storm is now only about 45mph and veering off to the north towards Maui.  We did have an inch in the rain gauge this morning but I think that was a two day total and now it is sunny and 85 with a pleasant breeze.

There are so many nice restaurants here and we’ve needed to make quite a few trips to town to get set-up so I’m not surprised that we’ve eaten out more than we usually do.  There is every manner of Asian, Hawaiian and the usual “American” styles and the best part is that most of them are very reasonably priced.  We typically spend about $10 less each for a really nice served meal than we would in Spokane.  Everything else here is way more expensive but I suppose the restaurants have had to cut their prices to keep business in this economy.  You may recall that I wrote about the very unusual Durian Fruit that people typically either love or hate.  For desert at a Thai restaurant I had Durian ice cream recently.  Just like the fruit, each bit tasted different, caramel, aged cheese, pineapple, coconut, etc.  I recently met a man down the road who says Durian is the king of fruit because eating one can mean getting as many flavors as an entire Thanksgiving Dinner!  But truth be told, even in ice cream the smell that most people find repugnant is noticeable.

One of the things that I hate about moving is all that lost effort of learning where the best deals are for the things we use.  The 2nd hand stores here are not as good (which I’ve heard from everywhere else not Spokane), the auctions are smaller and not as frequent and the yard sales don’t have as good a quality.  However, there is a great fish market, a huge farmers market and several smaller ones in the surrounding communities and there are 3 places that culture tofu.  Last weekend I discovered that three mornings a week you can buy end of the block trimmings at one of them.  In Spokane County we rarely bought tofu because we had an abundance of lamb and mutton.  Here we might get an occasional wild pig in our orchard in the future but so far we have tofu/veggie stir fry pretty often.  So I was at the tofu store at 8:00 am this morning and it turns out the prices are $1.40, regular or $1.60/pound, organic.   I bought three bags of about 2 ½ pounds each.  They were very firm (just the way I like it) and when I started nibbling from one of them on the way home I liked it enough to eat about ¼ pound by the time I got home.  So I guess we will be eating a lot more tofu than we ever have.

As I wrote we got about one tenth inch of rain but now its very pleasant again.  ALOHA!                                                STORY TALK

This week ended a two day drought with 1.8” on Wednesday another .2 this morning.  Tuesday after work I met Myrna to look at 2^nd hand couches I’d seen earlier and we decided to get one.  So we put money down and I promised to get back to town with the trailer the next morning.  I waited till 11 hoping the rain would quit but I need not have worried because the guys at the 2^nd hand store were pro’s at wrapping furniture.  When I got it home I found I couldn’t get it up the stairs without help so it waited standing under the eaves till Myrna got home and it was still fine,

Back to Tuesday, after shopping I took Myrna to the public access for the shore end of the breakwater that protects Hilo Bay.  We’d never been there before and it took some talking to get Myrna to walk on to it in her work clothes.  It was well worth it however as we had arrived at the exact best time to observe the sea turtles feeding amongst the rocks as they got tossed about by the surf.  We had the setting sun right behind us so we could see into the water clearly.  There were about two dozen within our range and five or six of them clearly visible at any one time.  We were amazed that such clumsy looking creatures could maneuver so easily in the crashing waves.  Prior to this we had seen them several times but always just laying in the shallows sleeping.

Yes, we have no bananas!  We have no ripe bananas right now and probably not for a few days so we are getting a chance to eat the ones in our refrigerator and freezer.  Now the over abundance is avocados.  A half dozen fall from our tree every day and they are quite big.

Knowing that I had a lot of pruning to do here I shipped my old McCollough chain saw even though they’ve not been made for years and parts are impossible to get.  It was a good running saw in Washington.  The first time I tried to start it here it broke so I just set it aside and ordered a ‘new’ reconditioned Poulan.  The Poulan arrived Friday so I’ve been attacking the invaders a little at a time ever since.  The end of the lychee “orchard” towards the house now no longer looks like a jungle but instead like a cathedral with the lychee branches forming a perfect gothic arch high above our heads.  It is so pretty that I’ll hate getting around to topping them.  But so far it has been palms and African tulip trees.  I certainly never dreamed back in Spokane County that one day I’d be chain sawing palm trees in Hawaii!!

Politics here is very different.  As I’ve mentioned before this is the first time I’ve lived in a Democratic precinct.  Statewide, the legislature is democratic but somehow they have a Republican governor who is determined balance the budget by cutting payroll (because you folks haven’t been spending enough dollars here).  Governor Lingle has offered to furlough all workers 3 days a month without pay but the unions refused so Lingle is now preparing to layoff 1,100 workers for starters.  The differences that I notice here are that the County does a lot more for people like mow the roadsides as if they were lawn once a month, provide free “2 bin” garbage transfer stations in many locations with each being manned and allowing all recyclables in one bin, except glass in a secondand having beautiful county parks all over the place (which are heavily used on weekends).  There are also lots of recreation fields and halls – each named for someone.  I’ve mentioned the free buses all around the island and they also appear to have a better social “safety net” although there is a shortage of doctors.  Also, anytime I’ve asked a public worker for help they’ve been glad to even if it requires bending the rules.              Aloha, Rico