Wednesday
I woke up too late. I’ll never be able to catch the 7:00 am bus! So, I went on-line and checked the bus schedule. There is another one that leaves at 10:45 am and gets me there in Hilo around 1:15 pm.
I can have breakfast. Then I grab my backpack with the brake pads inside, along with a drink, a book, and some snacks and start walking to the bus stop in Waiohinu. As I go past Ahi Road, another neighbor of mine named Brian is pulling out of his driveway. We chat, and I tell him my tale of woe, about my brake problem. He says that he is going to Fern Acres to do some work on a house for a friend of his and offers to take me to Mountain View. Surely, from there it will be easier to catch a bus into Hilo, so I put my backpack in the back of his truck and off we go. As we are driving, I call the bus company to check on bus connections from Mountain View. There are a couple of options, so that is good.
He decides that he needs to go into Hilo for a fuel pump and a fuel filter for his truck, so he might as well do that today.
He is working on building an un-permitted cabin in Fern Acres. He is setting the post piers today for the floor beams to rest on. I offer to help him today and then I can just ride back with him later this afternoon and I won’t have to mess with the bus!
We get our auto parts in Hilo, and go back to Brian’s cabin project.
The property is a three acre parcel of mainly forest/jungle. Near the subdivision road, there is an old cabin that has been there for years. Brian says it is about to fall down, but yet there is a guy staying there – kind of like a caretaker. He is named Greg – who watches over the property.
They have bulldozed a driveway about 300 feet long and 40 feet wide through the trees toward the back of the lot, where they bulldozed out a building pad about a hundred feet square by pushing the trees into piles.
Then they covered this all with 2″ to 3 ” gravel.
It is sprinkling very lightly, so we fasten a couple of pallets together and throw a piece of corrugated roofing on top to cover the generator.
Brian has layed out his pier blocks and has the floor beams (4 x 12 x 24′) temporarily in place. He needs to install 4 x 4 posts between the pier blocks and the beams. Each one will be a different length. He also has some sheet metal termite shields to go over the piers. He is debating on using them because it would require moving the beams to place them over the piers. Also, they need two clots cut into them with a grinder for the metal straps that stick up from the piers and tie to the beams. I tell him that moving the beams will not be difficult with the two of us. He says that maybe Greg might even help.
So, Brian begins measuring and cutting the 4 x 4 posts and I use his angle grinder to cut two slots in each termite shield.
We get the termite shields all in place, the 4 x 4 posts and the beams installed and head for home. We arrive back at Brian’s driveway where he picked me up this morning at 5:30 pm.
TTFN
TropicalCastaway 