January 18, 2026
For most of my adult life, I have had the desire to always be busy. I think this trait was instilled in me from my father – at least, I want to blame him for this inability to simply exist. I cannot just “Let it be” as the Beetles recommended. I must always be doing something, thinking that by doing something, I am making progress. A concept that I am questioning more each day. I wonder if busy-ness really does not equate to productivity and progress, and if I am equating simple movement with progress?
Anyway, I feel that I have to have something to show for each day – some kind of an accomplishment. So, I look around the site and see the last corner of the roof overhang that needs the 1 x boards finished. Once I have this corner completed, a matter of only three or four boards, I can move on to installing the OSB plywood over the two long slopes.
In order to install these three or four boards, I must first HAVE them. That means I need to disassemble another pallet.
After successfully completing the roof 1x boards on this last section of overhang, I find that I cannot install OSB plywood over these two remaining roof slopes. I do not have any OSB plywood. That requires a trip to Kona!
Where I fill up the truck gas tank for the low price of $3.84 per gallon! Two weeks ago, when I left Arizona, I had just paid $2.49 per gallon.
I do get a rare glimpse of Hualalai Volcano. Typically, it is shrouded in clouds, but today, there is not a cloud in the sky!
And another surprise is waiting for me in the parking lot of the lumber yard, where I spot a flock of peach faced love birds – a species of birds that is definitely not “native” to Hawaii! Over a dozen of them that have escaped from someone’s aviary!
Upon returning to the property, I proceded to lift the OSB plywood sheets on the roof. One at a time, I leaned them against the extension ladder and then raised the sheet up to where it rested on my chest, with my arms extended to the ladder. Then I climbed the ladder, pushing the sheet up the ladder, one step at a time. I have a video of doing this in a previous post:
It required some blocks fastened to the roof to keep the pile from sliding off.
The key was to only lift a couple at a time before installing them.
As a rest from pushing plywood up the ladder, I checked out what is left of my tomato plants after being gone for a month.
There are some tomatoes there, and they appear to be ripe.
Well, there is one!
My plumerias are still blooming. They started to bloom a week before I left to return to Arizona in December. Unfortunately, I cannot eat plumeria flowers!
With a couple of rows of OSB cut and screwed down to the roof, I began installing shingles.
Before installing the OSB plywood, I saturate the salvaged 1x pallet wood with a borate solution to attempt to control the bugs like termites from easting the wood.
I spray this on the 1x boards as well as on the OSB. At least it is an effort – better than doing nothing!
My truck registration is due to expire at the end of February, so I should begin to gather the documents needed for the safety check. Here is the current registration, now I just need to find where I put the insurance card. It is supposed to be in the glove box of the truck, but, . . . well, maybe I can get the insurance company to mail me one!
The different types of birds are beginning to make their appearance at the feeder. I’m not sure what kind of bird this is – he is smaller than the red headed cardinals and the green honeycreepers. There are quite a few of them that come and go through the shrubs that form a hedge between the gazebo and the neighbor’s property, but few of them come to the feeder. They do like the fountain/waterfall though!
For the first time since I returned, I saw a northern red cardinal. It is a full red male one. I have yet to see the brown female.
January 24, 2026
My truck insurance is set to expire at the end of January, and my insurance company notified me that the company that wrote the policy has decided not to continue doing business in Hawaii. Therefore, they are looking for a new company and a new policy. That was two weeks ago. I get no response to my emails to the insurance agent. So, I decided to go on-line and see about vehicle insurance on my own. Many of the larger insurance companies believe that it is not possible to have a vehicle in Hawaii if you do ot have a job, a house, are going to school, or any other similar situation that would provide documentation that you really are in Hawaii, such as a pay check stub, a w-2 form, homeowner’s insurance policy, etc. After all, you and your vehicle might be in Pittsburgh, or Miami, or France, or Fiji, and trying to register your vehicle in Hawaii when it really isn’t in Hawaii! 🤔🙄
So, I gather my past property tax bills, and the current vehicle registration. The tax bills might not be acceptable because they need to be within the last 60 days, and these are from October – over 90 days ago, and the new ones do not come out for another 30 days! Bureacracy exists everywhere!
So, . . . I need to get the safety check done – where they verify that my vehicle is safe by seeing the headlights work, the windshield wipers work, the turn signals work, . . . and currently, there is something wrong with the back-up lights. So, I need to fix or resolve that. I inspect all the wiring and the bulbs and the fuses, and cannot solve it, so I take it to the repair shop. He keeps it for a day and all the time he is checking it out, it works perfectly! The next day, when I have it, it blows the fuse!
His suggestion is to install a seperate circuit and switch to turn on the back-up lights at any time, and abandon the factory circuit. Unfortunately, he does not have the needed materials and it will take a week to get them, so the best thing to do is to put in a new fuse five minutes before pulling into the inspection station, so the back-up lights work for the inspection, and then deal with the new circuit later!
Success! Using the current registration that expires in a month, the insurance card the insurance company mails to me that expires in two weeks, and the back-up lights that “expire” tonight, I pass my safety inspection! And the tax bills that are past the required time frame are accepted by the new insurance company, and they issue a new policy to start in two weeks. After two days of back and forth on the internet with the insurance company’s autonomous information system, I call the company and sit on hold for two and a half hours until a human actually picks up. This agent cannot help me, as the computer system does not cooperate for her either, so she transfers me to her supervisor who resolves it in less than five mintes, and my computer spits out the proper auto insurance card! Bureaucracy circumvented!
A fruit stand down the road had a half a dozen of these. I thought I would try one. I’m not really sure what it is, but I think it is some kind of a vegetable – some kind of a squash.
It has the outside texture of a squash, but when you cut it open, it looks like, well, it looks like a pear!
I cut it up and cooked it into my spaghetti sauce along with some bell peppers and onions and mushroom pieces. Still not sure what it is!
Between rainstorms, I got back to work on the roof shingling. Like the OSB plywood, the bundles of shingles are a chore to get up on the roof. I throw a bundle of shingles over my shoulder and slowly climb the ladder. Sometimes, I only take a half a bundle at a time – whatever works!
No nail gun, no staple gun, just the old fashoned hammer and roofing nail!
Up early the next morning. It is lightly sprinkling. Glad the roof is covered. Pretty red sunrise!
The rain dissipates and the sky clears. Turns out to be a pretty good day to be in Hawaii!
The honeycreepers seem to agree. One appears and enjoys the crumbs in the feeder.
And it is not long until there are two of them.
Let it rain all it wants to. The roof is shingled. The main shingles are all on, and now it is just a matter of installing the caps – over the four hips and the center ridge!
I cut a bunch of shingles into four pieces about 10 inches long to use as the cap! They make special cap shingles to go on this type of roof – and they cost about $50 per bundle – which covers about 10 feet of ridge – It would only take five bundles for a total of $250. Two bundles of regular shingles at $45 per bundle will give me enough pieces to cover my hips and the ridge – for a total cost of $90!
I had planted some of the seeds from the bell peppers I had bought. I planted them into a small flower pot and placed it on the lanai. They had sprouted back in December, the last time I was here, and when I returned, the top of the pot was totally engulfed in pepper plants. I split them up into four different pots to give them room to grow. This has been successful, as there are four or five strong, healthy pepper plants in each pot. One of them has even sprouted a couple of small peppers, so I transplanted them to the garden in front of the fountain.
Ahi road began to look a bit ragged, so I mowed it today. . . in preparation for a delivery.
A load of 1 1/2″ minus sand/gravel – delivered to Ahi for the price of $565!
Another thing to cross off my list of things to accomplish this trip!
This load appears to be more sand and fines than rock – so much better for mixing concrete!
Cutting the shingles and using them for the cap worked out just as well as I anticipated! I thought of getting the old three tab shingles and cutting them into three pieces for the cap. This would give me a wider cap, but only three pieces per shingle. By using the same dimensional shingle for the cap as for the field, gives me four per shingle. Also, the three tab shingles are not as readily available – I would need to order them – at $55 per bundle! Standard dimensional shingles at $45 per bundle which gives me four pieces per shingle is preferrable to the three tab bundle at a higher price, giving me fewer pieces!
Everything in Hawaii has been transported here at some point in the recent history. Nothing is truly “native” – except for the ocean and the lava. Some things are given the term of being “native” simply because they have been here a short time longer than others – at least, a short time in comparison to the 6 billion year life of this planet! Or even the million year life of the islands!
I tend to think of it more in terms of being preferred, or politically accepted, than being truly native. Anyways, there are a few animal species that are truly unwanted even though they were brought here previously on purpose.
The mongoose is a good example of this. They were brought to Hawaii to control the rat population that was harming the sugar cane. Unfortunately, the mongoose is active during the day, while the rats are active at night, so the two rarely came in contact with each other, for the mongoose to have any effect on the rat population. Instead, the mongoose became an even bigger problem.
The chicken has also become a problem with flocks of wild chickens in Maui, Kaui, and on the Big Island.
On Oahu and the Big Island, feral pigs have also become a nuisance!
They too were the initial inhabitants of the island along with the polynesian settlers between 500 and 700 AD. Then, when the europeans came, they also brought a different type of pig that has interbred with the polynesian pigs. But their behavior has made them an unwelcome nusiance. Their rooting behavior disturbs the vegetation and leads to soil erosion (we won’t talk about the way that humans have disrupted the environment in Hawaii), so they have been targeted as a species that has gotta go! In fact, in the early 1900’s there was an eradication program by the Kingdom of Hawaii that removed over 170,000 pigs by 1958.
On a road in the south end of my subdivisision, I came across this guy out roaming the steets!
The pile of sand/gravel has been calling to me, so I set up a screed to sift and remove the larger rocks. These have been used to backfill behind the back wall of the bathroom at Ahi. The smaller material with a lot of sand will be used to mix concrete!
By gathering larger rocks, I built some retaining walls behind the back wall of the bathroom. Then I hauled the larger sifted rocks down the driveway, and then up the pathway to the bathroom, where I shoveled them beind the rock retaining walls to create a level area for placing a water storage tank. This is another of my goals I listed at the beginning of this trip of things I wanted to accomplish .
During my last trip, I had built a rock column at the front west corner of the Ahi property.
I set up forms for pouring a concrete cap on this column, and then using the sifted material, I poured a concrete cap.
The other front corner is where I had begunb uilding a much larger and taller rock column. This one must be larger and taller because it starts off in a hole!
Both of these two corner columns are inside the property corners, on my property, with the established property pins right at the outside corner of each column.
As more rock are stacked up to make the column, the interior is filled with concrete and other smaller stones. As I near the final height I desire for this corner column, I imbed a piece of metal pipe into the center of the rock column, and secure it in place with the concrete and rocks poured into the interior!
As January comes to a close, I get a bit friendlier with the male Northern Red Cardinal who visits my feeder.
TTFN
TropicalCastaway 