THE HARVESTS OF SUMMER

Although the seasons don't make so much difference here, summer is still the season people are most likely to travel to places that do have more difference.  Three of our band regulars were gone for most of the summer and others were just too busy so we ended up having only four present for two markets.  But those present included Barbara and Myrna who I have taken to calling my angels singing from heaven so I have always enjoyed accompanying them.  They have learned to harmonize very nicely on many songs.  This Sunday we will play pre-meeting at the annual community association meeting a couple miles down the road at Kolekole County Park.
Myrna and I and Richard and Nancy attended the Hakalau Paka celebration last Saturday where four bands performed short sets.  The youth surfing contest there was a great success again and we were able to talk to our county Mayor and County Council representative who were there for a couple hours.  I lobbied for porta-potties at Veteran's Field where the Tuesday "Food Share" is held.
We then left the Paka early enough to get a quick nap and dinner before heading to Hilo for the last performance of the annual Shakespeare in the Park presentation.  This year it was AS YOU LIKE IT set in the 60's.   Luckily there was no rain, the night was warm, and the performance was great.

Pigs continue to be an intermittent problem for everyone.  One neighbor who has a full perimeter hog wire fence still gets small pigs coming through the wire and then having a hard time getting out.   I finished fencing our south side recently but I am reluctant to do the rest because large falling tree branches would frequently do serious damage on the north side.  A few days ago our dog Taco cornered an adult pig in a "den" under an upturned tree on the vacant lot next door.  Its head was protruding and Taco was right in front of it barking.  I could have gone for a weapon but it was a rainy morning and our freezer is full so I just grabbed a stick and from the top side of the tree trunk I reached over and poked the pig.  The first time it ignored me so I poked harder.  The pig then whipped to the side and bit off the end of the stick.  I poked it a couple times more times till it turned and tried to break through the back of the cave so Taco ran around that way.  As soon as Taco was away from the entrance the pig shot out and ran for the hills.  As far as I can tell it hasn't returned since and that is fine with me.  A well trained dog seems to be the best garden defense for me.

Today, as I sit at the desktop, Myrna is re-arranging some furniture in the next room.  Suddenly she starts talking in an endearing way to some small creature.  It turns out it is a 2" WOOD GECKO that she is encouraging to hurry up and get out of the way.  I am so glad that she is not one of those people who are afraid of or disgusted by small allies sharing our house.  Although it is a nuisance cleaning up after them, lizards in the house keep our place nearly bug free.  When we first moved in the house had just been fumigated with CO2 to kill any termites that may have been present ( that is recommended to be repeated at 7 year intervals here) and that kills anything else also including several house geckos that we found.  Tiny new young geckos moved in very quickly and each staked out a territory and grew quickly.  As I tightened the seals under the doors and around the window screens prey became scarce and the number of house geckos declined.  Now we sometimes see Day Geckos (also know as Madagascar Geckos or Geico Geckos if you wish)  in the house instead but both are rare.  Outside Day geckos are becoming predominant in this area, I think because they will eat anything from nectar to fruit to insects to other kinds of lizards. 


 

 The current harvest at its peak is Lilikoi (passion fruit) and we have a bumper crop.  We make lilikoi butter, lilikoi/pepper jelly, lilikoi cheese cake, lilikoi meringue pie and various drinks.  There are at least five different varieties here and we grow the common yellow fruited type as they are most productive.  The vines will grow to 60 feet and live for years.  We have five vines on our dog pen fence and yesterday we juiced the largest batch yet.  The already expensive shipping rates have just gone up again this year or I would want to send some lilikoi/ pepper jelly to everyone but since I can't, here are some pictures of our processing day.

We have found that lilikoi juice is so vitamin C rich that jars of it in the refrigerator will keep at least 5 months if shaken occasionally but we also can and freeze some of it.  I use the juice in pancake batter, bread or even putting on my cereal.  The vines produce from June to December here.  As you can see there's not a lot of juice per fruit volume but the juice is so strong (think strong lemon juice) that a little goes a long way and that wonderful smell comes through in cooking.

The other fruit in abundance the rest of the year is avocados.  Our own early tree is bad quality but lucky for us, nearby friends have an early tree of excellent quality. 


As it turns out, I've been writing this about one paragraph per day as tropical depression Flossie has been approaching.  Up to the middle of the night it was heading straight for us with winds up to 60 mph.  Now, Monday morning, it is turning north towards Maui and slowing down some but we are still expected to get 8-12" of rain and 30-40 mph winds.  This could result in slides that may close roads or knock out power for awhile but probably will not otherwise affect us.  The winds are just now starting to pick up but the rain has still been light so far.
  

This immature male Jackson Chameleon, native to Kenya, was asleep at night on a fern by the guest house steps.  Even touching it did not awaken it.

2013 SOLSTICE

      As we approach the solstice each year the morning and afternoon sun comes in our North windows a lot.  If I'm home and in the house I try to keep up on closing the windows and drapes to keep the house cool.  For the most part I manage to keep it cooler in the house than outside until the afternoon breeze comes up around 3:00.  At that time I open the windows except on the west where the setting sun is starting to creep under the wide eaves of our house.  In this way we are well satisfied with living without insulation or air conditioning.  In fact, adding more solar panels to the south facing roof has helped block some of the sun's heat from our house so management has gotten easier.  Also I reframed and reroofed the front porch in a way that increased coverage a little, also helping shade windows.
    Last entry I mentioned my "fruit and root" salad and today a friend sent a weight loss product ad that reminded me of it.  Here is my response:

So you think I need to lose weight?

Yes, I did need to lose weight 9 months ago.  About mid September our Pomelo ripened its first fruit and yesterday I picked the last of the season's pomelo.  We've always noticed that we lose some weight while we are eating pomelo but this season we have coupled them with another weight control food, Yacon root, which contains a non-digestible form of sugar.  Throughout the last 9 months I've nearly always had a "fruit and root" salad in the refrigerator consisting of about equal parts of pomelo, banana, papaya and yacon root.  I find it very refreshing and I don't have any trouble keeping within my healthy weight range when it is available.

The photo to the right is of fruits of the day, clockwise from the bowl; sweet 100 tomatoes, papaya, one banana, more sweet 100, one Celebrity tomato, one avocado, half of a yacon, and half of a pomelo.

     The above reminds me again of how much I love the long seasons of our fruit in the yard.  Here I never need to rush to get ready for the next planting season or the harvest or the preservation because the seasons are so long and there is always fresh fruit and vegetables in the garden.  Of course we still buy our favorites sometimes when they are not in our garden but it is nice to know we could get by without them.  We tend to have more surplus bananas this year and I continue to dehydrate them for shipping to friends and family but as the USPS has raised prices again, I may do less of that.  Let me know if they are really appreciated.
By the way, it looks better and better for our coming avocado crop to be our best ever even though one tree has none.  I just picked the first one and it was early March when I picked the last of our winter variety.

At this stage the sweet 100s (four plants) are 11' tall.

Vanilla orchid with flower above the cluster and young beans hanging below.
 I hand pollinate the flowers of the day whenever I think of it so I am getting about 60% bean set. 

Our house as seen from the highway 

From the front, sweet potato, pineapple, taro, papaya. sweet 100 tomatoes 

Our little weekly flash market, which is only open from 4-5:30 each  Tuesday has
grown to about 140 people and offers a wider variety of produce, dairy products and
 prepared food than it started with.

   Our new addition to the PV array on the roof and the original units are now being tracked online via an "Envoy" device that tells me the daily, weekly and to date totals of production for both the whole array and for each individual panel.  This will allow us to know if at any time in the future a specific panel or, more likely, Emphase mini inverter goes bad.  This morning it is 8:45a.m., we've generated almost one kilowatt on this very cloudy day, and the individual panels range from 59-70 watts output out of their peak of 240 watts. We get peak output around 6 hours if it is clear skies.
Here all our lights are compact fluorescent or LED, our hot water is solar, we need no heating or AC so how we cook our food is a more significant part of our energy bill than for most people so I was interested to read recently about magnetic induction cooking.  Complete ranges are available but VERY expensive however some of the countertop induction cookers start about $59 on Amazon.  They do not themselves get hot but work by fluxing a magnetic field in ferrous cookware.  We decided to try the NESCO 1800 watt unit.  Our main frying pan is cast iron and when I checked our stainless steel pots and pans with a magnet I discovered over half are the magnetic variety.  This cooking method is supposed to use about 1/4 the electricity.  I'll report in the future how we like it.

I forgot to mention in the last entry that we put down a new floor and painted the ceilings in the guest house.  Those of you who have stayed there know it needed it.  Our next scheduled guest isn't till the last two weeks of November so I hope to see a couple of you before then!

Aloha!
 

FOUR YEARS IN PARADISE

       This month marks the end of four years since we closed on this house!  Each year we have made some major improvements, first we added solar hot water, second year we put on nearly enough PV panels to supply our electric needs while still remaining grid connected, the third year we bought the THINK electric car and put its 120 volt charger on the wall and this year we have finally added 8 more PV panels to make up for the added power our car consumes.  Electricity here costs about 40 cents/ kwh so our car, was taking about $90/month.  Now we should be back to having surplus power credit with the utility 9 or 10 months of the year.
 Each year I've been improving, enlarging our small gardens and adding more varieties of fruit trees.  As a result I've had less grass to mow each year and more vegetables for the table.  This year our winter garden was the best yet - largest broccoli heads and kale plus the most pickings of string beans (in fact they are still coming on).  The soybeans have not germinated well however so we won't be having many of those this summer.  The Sweet 100 tomatoes are about six feet high on their way to 16' and I suspect I've allowed them to keep too many branches to be able to keep the fruit size up as I would prefer but so far they have big fruit.  All winter long we have been eating "fruit'n root" salad which I make from roughly equal parts of papaya, pomelo, bananas and yacon root.  We've usually had surplus of all four but now the there are only 4 mature pomelos left in the tree - such a refreshing fruit that we will miss them while the new crop grows from the current 3-4 inches to 7-9".  All the varieties of avocados bloomed heavy this winter but only half of them set fruit heavy, however the best  one has a great crop on that we hope to be eating from September to late December and there will be enough of the early varieties for our family at least.  This will also be the best year for our garden's pineapples which are mostly the extra sweet low acid white variety.  And the purple sweet potatoes just keep coming! 

This month I made the somewhat surprising decision to cut down our nearly 90' tall Durian fruit tree.  It was not very productive having only 5, 3, and then 0 fruit per year, although the fruits were up to 8 pounds.  There are no other Durian trees near us so lack of cross pollination may have been it's problem but another aspect was that it was located between our two breadfruit which are a nearly year 'round basic food source that we both like a lot.  Cutting this tree will allow the breadfruit to branch out lower where we can pick them and also gave us a spot to plant a cacao tree.  Additionally, Durian fruit are capable of killing people when they drop not only because they are heavy but also because they have spikes two to three inches long!   It was no easy matter, however, as the tree grew a few feet from the south fence line at a point where the property is only 80 feet wide, the guest house is just east of it, bananas west of it and other fruit trees in striking distance.  

 Because the Durian had larger branches to the south it really wanted to fall over the fence to the south so first, using my extension ladder and a belaying rope tied to the branch being cut, I cut a couple of the large south branches.  Then I tied a strong rope from about 28' up to my pomelo tree, to the east of where I wanted it to fall, with just a little slack and put my guest, Adam, there.  I then cut a notch aiming for a gap between the mango and the guava that I use for growing vanilla orchids on.  With Adam keeping the rope tight to feel for movement I made the back cut till the tree started to move  - the wrong way.  The rope would keep it from falling the wrong way but we found out that even with both of us pulling with all our might we could not get the tree to come over north.  So I had to get my other good rope (thank you Clyde) and go from the rope we were pulling, around the mango and to Adam's car.  I was very concerned that the second rope might break so we only pulled with the car a little at a time till finally it came over.  One branch of the mango got knocked off, 10' of vanilla vine broke off (which yielded 6 new vanilla starts to give to someone) and we lost three small branches from an Abau tree.  At 48' from the stump the tree dropped less than 2 feet off from the target and although it extended at least 10' past the north boundary, that is the vacant lot and no damage was done.

Last night our Hakalau Jam band was asked to play at a private birthday party for about 100 people.  Most of our regulars showed up and we had a good time and ate way too much desert.  The party host is a vender at the Hakalau market and he lives at the 1,600 foot level.  We are into a bit of a rainy period (which we needed) and at that altitude we were right in the clouds.  The site was prepared with a big quonset shaped tent which mostly kept us dry so we even stayed out past our usual bed time.  Today I've been a bit slow but it was worth it.

Besides being drier than usual the weather here has been very mellow with even less temperature variation than normal.  One day the low was 74 and the high 79 f.  I've not taken my pocket thermometer to the the Ocean with me but it feels like we already have mid-summer water temperatures. 

Hakalau Market and Island travel

Most Hakalau market days some of us attend more for the 'jam' than for the food.  Pictured at right are Art on mouth harp, Barbara on guitar, Myrna on ukulele, Scott on guitar and myself on tub bass.  Others join in for some songs.  Last week we had another guitar, and another ukulele so Scott played mandolin. In the event of rain the market is held on the street-side lanai in front of Akiko's Bed and Breakfast and the Jam is just inside the entryway to the great room.  We are actually easier to hear there under the protection of the building from the breeze.  Market attendance has been growing to where I think we may have hit 100 if you count the many children running about and rolling on the grass.  One couple has been bringing fresh fish that they catch at South Point.  Two vendors have held cooking demonstrations to educate us on how to use their ethnic produce.
One of the things that indicates a lot about the nature of the people in our neighborhood (and the price of gas) is that about half of the cars (not counting the pickups that many drive) are hybrids.  Today I drove our THINK electric car to the post office to get a package.  At that moment 2/3's of the cars at the post office were electrics because Tom arrived in his Leaf at the same time I was there.  By the way, the THINK  has not been without a glitch.    One morning when Myrna was starting to drive to work it stopped completely as she was adjusting her mirror.  After a couple hours of troubleshooting I learned that adjusting either mirror would blow a fuse which in turn tripped a relay killing the engine.  I talked to a factory tech eventually who agreed that the most likely fix would be a new switch but when that arrived we still had the same problem.  It could be the hot wire from the switch to the mirrors but in the meantime, at least, we've adjusted the mirrors for Myrna and will leave them there. 

Last week our son from Oregon visited for the first time.  We hoped he and his lady would want to move here but although she loved it Zeno seemed unimpressed.  Of course I understand not wanting to move anywhere but Myrna just made me an offer I couldn't refuse!  Myrna took the occasion of visitors to use some time off so we could tour them about the Island together.  They did look at a couple real estate listings they had seen on Craig's list that were very inexpensive because Hawaiian Acres has terrible roads. In the picture to the left Brittany is walking up the lane in Hawaiian Acres.  There are still some foreclosures auctions  happening also but they take a lot of time to check out to discover possible encumbrances.  We also looked at a piece of ag land 10 miles up the coast from us which was 2/3's in sweet potatoes and will be auctioned in October.
C
The unemployment rate has dropped faster than the national average here since Americans with the money for Hawaiian vacations were less affected by the recession and also because middle class Chinese are starting to take Hawaiian vacations.  The Japanese tourists resumed their travel this year and there is often a help wanted ad for Japanese speaking tour guides.  The Imiloa Planetarium even has a once a day Japanese program.  This week there are 3 cruise ships stopping at Hilo instead of the usual 1.

 It is very easy here to find Ocean shoreline (not beaches) with no people in sight.  This one is just North of Kapoho.

Here Zeno is inside a lava tree mold at LAVA TREE STATE PARK.

                                                                 This tree mold looks like a face.

Tree molds are formed when moving lava is cooled around a wet tree enough to solidify before the tree catches fire and then the rest of the lava drains away from around it.  Over the years what remains of the tree rots and washes out so we are left with a hollow tube of rock.

 Here the family poses in front of the Hehau interpretive center at the spot where King Kamehameha solidified his rule over the whole island.

And this is at the view point above Honounou, just below the vog line for that day.

 

Zeno is very susceptible to mosquitoes, and is glad they are not by the ocean!

 I may add more pictures later.
Aloha!

EATING CHILI WITH CHOP STICKS

One of the things that I enjoy about living on the Big Island is the mix of cultures.  As this summer season has many social gatherings I've been reminded of that.  July is the month for the annual Hakalau Paka celebration which is especially well attended by Hawaiian families and also on the following weekend the Wailea  Kumiai Potluck whose attendees tend more to being of Japanese descent or "mainland" retirees.  At both all ethnic or racial groups are equally accepted as far as this old retired hippie can tell.  It seems the most important thing is to wear a smile and show aloha!
                                                                           I've written before of the Hakalau Paka celebration  so I'll not say much expect to note the difference this year was that we had a few less people, about 350 compared to 400 last year and this year the County Mayor, Billy Kenoi, arrived to speak to us about youth activities (pictured at left). We had more children (about 100) than last year.  In fact 23 of the keiki (children) were entered in the youth surfing contest this year.  The younger divisions competed over the gavel bar and the older a bit beyond that.  The Hakalau is not the best surf spot around partly because boulders make it unsafe to ride in close to shore unless you are right in the middle where the gravel bar is so surfers usually need to bail within about 4 seconds.  But the tide and the waves were just right for the youth contest on that day and I suspect most of them will be back with friends next year hoping to win one of those great surf board prizes provided by sponsors.  I am always impressed with how well local business supports even small events like this on Hawaii.  They may charge high list prices but they give back a lot to the community.  After the contest many of the teenagers climbed to the first level of the bridge girders to jump into the river while the little ones got to leave their hand prints, and sometimes foot prints, on the sea wall.

While the Hakalau Paka party featured food and bands brought in from outside our community, the Wailea Kumiai is a party of residents and former residents of the Wailea and Hakalau area that meets annually in the Kolekole Beach County Park on the Kolekole Stream.  Here the warm up music was the Hakalau Jam Band which is whoever shows up to play at the local farmers market every Tuesday (the four regulars actually rehearse twice a month).  For this occasion the band had, in addition to the usual four stalwarts, an additional guitar, a mandolin, a percussionist and a guest vocalist plus some more who joined to sing a couple of the songs.  We were amplified for the first time and a bit unsure about that but we were told we sounded great.  I didn't even bring a camera so I can't pass any of that on.  Perhaps someone will send some photos I can add here?
While there is a ten minute business meeting and a book exchange tent, mostly this is a socializing and eating opportunity and the potluck tables bore much more than could be eaten.  When I got back to my place I realized that my plate contained food of many nationalities and I was eating chili with chopsticks.  I mixed in a little rice and then it held together fine!  After the meal there was the traditional bingo game with "hurricane supplies" (canned food and toilet paper) for prizes during which I strolled down to the beach to watch the surf a bit.

So far this year we have been closer to normal rain fall and I have been writing down the readings from my rain gauge faithfully so I can report we had 93.9 inches through July 31.  This compares to 58.76" in Hilo at 11' elevation where the normal to this point would be 70.47".  At our elevation Hilo rainfall is closer to ours.  Still, the amount of rain does not seem oppressive to me.  Yesterday I was gardening in just shorts and crocs on a cloudy 78 degree day when it started raining lightly.  I kept working and soon the rain stopped and I was still comfortable although I had gotten a bit muddy.  My method of not bringing mud into the house with me is to keep a bucket under one of the downspouts where I can dip my feet and scrub them (and my crocs) with a brush if necessary.  This picture of the little garden on the south side of our house shows how the Yakon has grown to six feet and is covering the broccoli, Hawaiian pepper and okra.  That is our dog 'Taco' running around the garden!  Our east side of the house garden has more purple sweet potatoes than I can keep up with harvesting and the early variety avocados have been ripening for about 10 days.  We extracted the juice from about 15 gallons of Lilikoi (passion fruit) last weekend then made about 3 pies worth of Lilikoi cheese cake.  Mostly we dilute the juice 1:10 for drinking or put some in the pancakes.

Aloha from the wet side!

THE BIRDS AND THE BEES

The past month we've done a lot of things and a couple days I joined our company, the Hampson family on their tours of the island.  The photo above is is not a flower but rather the fruit and bright red bud case of a yellow flower very much like a buttercup that grows on bushes.  We found these bushes in the 2 mile nature trail at Manuka State Wayside near South Point.  Later I found one in a Hilo park but I still don't know it's name.  Anyone?
Thank you, BJ, for finding that this bush is Ochna Serrulata, commonly know as "The Micky Mouse plant", and that it is native to Africa.

This year I netted my broccoli to protect them from birds.  4 or 5 varieties like to eat the flower heads as soon as they start to emerge and they are so persistent at it that last year we rarely got any.  The kind that does the most damage are tiny grey birds with burgundy/brown heads on the males.  They travel in family groups of about 6 except in nesting season.  Wednesday I saw a male flying from the lower edge of our property, through the banana plants, up into our 60' tall mango tree, around an extended branch and up into the thickest part of the top, all while carrying a 10 or 11 inch blade of grass that must have been a load for such a small bird.  Then, much to my surprise, that bird was right back out in 4 or 5 seconds flying right back to where he had come from.  As I had just sat down on the steps for a rest I watched as that bird found another piece of dry grass where I had done some scything, cut it to length, and took off for the nest building site.  Again he emerged from the mango in a few seconds and headed straight back to the dry grass.  As I watched he completed 15 trips in about 12 minutes, for his size about the equivalent of us running up the stairs of a 100 story building carrying a chair I imagine.  I've often found the spherical baskets that these birds weave so here is a picture of one that blew down.  The female must have been in the tree weaving the nest as the male delivered the material.  They are so small and move so continuously that I couldn't get a picture of the birds.  These baskets are much bigger than a nest would need to be but after the fledglings are mature they continue to travel with their parents all day and for maybe a month and they all return to the nest at night.   Again, what's its name? 

Another small and continuously moving critter here is the Hawaiian bumble bee, also known as the carpenter bee.  Being large, black and noisy, they are good at scaring people with bee phobias.  Although they lack hair on their abdomens, the thorax is hairy and they do have pollen baskets on the hind legs like other bees.  Each female nests separately by boring a 1/2" hole into soft dry wood and her mate may hang around to "guard" it but as he has no stinger he can only bluff.  Four holes are visible in the log in this photo with one flying bee. Here in Hawaii, as everywhere else in the last few years, honey bees are in decline due to a confluence of pests and human spread poison.  As about 1/3 of the crops we eat depend on insect pollination it is important to encourage our insect helpers.  

When I saw that a gate I had built with a frame of African Tulip wood had become occupied by carpenter bees I didn't mind them buzzing around me every time I went through it because the females are too busy feeding and boring to bother chasing and the males can't sting at all.  I did realize, however, that the gate would not last for long.  To provide the bees with a good spot to bore into next I cut a 5" diameter dead African Tulip log eight feet long (it is very soft wood so it is preferred by the bees), and hung it by galvanized wires from the eves of my back porch.  This would put them close to the bored-in gate and close to the lilikoi (passion fruit) vines whose flowers are a favorite of the bees.  They also like the flowers of our lima bean that covers the porch of our guest house as seen in the photo below (actually six plants cover about 240 sq. ft. of vertical space).   I hung the log in November and as soon as  we had some warm dry weather in January I noticed "bee dust" floating down from the log.  I am so happy to have more pollinators in our neighborhood especially as the honey bees are almost non-existent now.  Today I googled 'Hawaiian carpenter bees' and was discouraged that nearly all the cites were "how to exterminate" types.  It is tempting to conclude that most people who post on line are idiots, but then we are exceptions, aren't we?  If my method of giving them someplace better to bore into other than the house fails in the future I will be sure to let you know.

We also have a much smaller pollinator that I have cultivated a bit. I am now talking about the leaf cutter bees that I mentioned a year ago when we spotted them carrying leaves into our small bamboo wind chime.  This year I found one stuffing the top tube of a polyethylene lawn edging scrap.  We will never get any honey from either these or the bumble bees but they are well worth encouraging as pollinators and please stop the poison!  


A much smaller insect here has been costing me gasoline.  I think it is a VERY small beetle or weevil that is attracted to boring in my plastic fuel 'cans'.  After both my mixed gas and straight gas cans started leaking careful examination revealed several partial and one clear through hole in each.  The holes were about 1/32nd inch diameter.  A friend suggested that cutting through to the gas must have killed the bore so I gave the whole container a careful examination and on one I found a tiny dead beetle that I needed a magnifying glass to see.  A trip to the University Of Hawaii at Hilo Agriculture extension service identified the beetles on the gas can as Granulate Ambrosia Beetles, a type of tiny weevil. They are about the length of Eisenhower's ear on a dime but only half as wide.  You can view one at: http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/caps/pestInfo/pics/big/Gran_ambrosia3.jpg   However, the entomologist does not believe that they would eat plastic.  I keep telling everyone only they they "bore" into plastic, not that they eat it and their size fits the holes perfectly.
 Not only are fuel 'cans'  and fuel expensive here, real metal gas cans are nearly impossible to find.  Only one local dealer that I found carries a metal can and that is for a special Federal standard to qualify for carrying gas inside a vehicle.  It sells for well over $100 so I guess I'll be buying another plastic one and coating it with insect repellent.  I later did find a more normal metal gas can for $50.
Aloha!

ELECTRIC CAR - OUR FIRST THREE WEEKS!

Our Think City car finally arrived on June 15th.  I got a ride to the dock and had no trouble getting it from Matson and with only a little trouble getting the sequence right, I got it started.  because the car had not been charged in a month I was a little concerned that the battery may have self discharged but it still had 80%.  Driving home was uneventful and I still had over 50% when I got home.  Like most electrics this car has only one speed but the "shift lever" does have, in addition to drive, an econ position which limits the amperage draw and the top speed in order to get the best range.  I, of course, choose econ and found it completely satisfactory on our hilly 55 mph limit highway.

As you can see, the Think is noticeably narrower
than our Subaru and a lot shorter.  It is a two seater
with a large space in back with rear hatch and the 22kw
li-ion battery is under both the seats and most of the rear
space.


The Think brand has had a difficult life of high 
hopes followed by bankruptcies.  At one time 
Ford owned it, in 2011 it was back under 
Scandinavian ownership with an American
division assembling cars in Elkhart, Indiana.
Such a small car at a premium price was a 
hard sell here so they bankrupted the American
division and sold the European division.  We
learned the 100 or so cars remaining were being 
sold at steep discounts.  Since here on Hawaii, 
where no dealers sell electric cars, we would 
need to service our own car anyway we were 
more willing than most to risk an "orphan" car
brand.  
    

Myrna started using the Think for her commute the next day and after the battery was cycled a couple times it did even better.  She now uses about 30% of the charge for each round trip, about 10% down to Hilo and 20% back up to Hakalau.  Saturday we made a trip to a potluck at about 2,000' up a slow bumpy road and I was pleasantly surprised that the climb only took about 2% of charge.  A 110 volt charger came with the car and that takes about 7 hours for Myrna's usual drive discharge.  For $800 we could get a 240 volt charger that would take half the time but as it doesn't matter under the current use we will put that off.

This car feels rock solid and since the dealer agreed to JPEG the whole shop manual my only fear is failure of a computer module.  The bumper sticker says "I GET MY ELECTRICITY FROM THE SUN".  The house got most of its electricity from the sun before we got the car but now we will need the rest of the roof covered to supply both.  Since cheap geothermal power looks to be stalled, more solar will be next year's goal right after we sell our former house and get our federal  tax rebate of $7,500 for the car.  The Hawaiian tax rebate fund was consumed by May and won't apply anyway to cars bought out of state.  For tech details, the Think website is: http://thinkev.leftbankcompanies.com/owners/