More site seeing

Captain Cook monument is not terribly exciting. It can be kayaked and hiked to, the New Zealand couple I met said it was a 1.5 hr hike. We did the kayak. Lani, the guy that rented us the kayaks, charged us $50 for a 2 seater and a 1 seater. When I asked about kama'iana rates, he replied "Those are kama'iana rates." Some places, maybe in Kona will have kayaks for $20/day, strap them to your rental and you're ahead of the game.

Lani did provide dry bags though which I didn't trust enough to put my camera into, but in the end worked out very well. He also said it was a 20 minute ride, but it took us about 30 minutes in the double kayak, the single took about 45.

We encountered a manta ray that was huge and awesome in the middle of the bay. Make sure you lock your car and bring plenty of water and it's also a nice place for a picnic. Don't forget a snorkle either, the yellow tang are abundant.

The memorial is at the southern tip of Kealakekua Bay park, launch from here. I made a fancy map!:


View Larger Map

Flight addendum

Cheap inter islands flights can be found with Go. Home of the $25 Hilo -> Honolulu flight if you book early enough.

A note on flights:

It's usually much easier to find flights out of Kona, rather than Hilo. However, ATA has several direct flights from Hilo (to Oakland and Vegas, notably); Kona flies several places but the main one, of course, is Honolulu.

ata.com is a website I frequently stalk for prices.

Hapuna Beach

We were making a trip to Kona on father's day to help put some easy miles on our new car, but hadn't decided on a beach. 10 minutes before we left I Googled Best beach in Kona. All of the first few links mentioned Hapuna.

Hapuna has been written about many many times by everyone. Everyone said it was great. None of them had a decent map. Luckily, you have me to show you Hapuna Beach on Google Maps.

Lots of tourists, a few locals, not much surf but great for playing in and wading. Lots of sun and almost no shade.

Merrie Monarch

The Merrie Monarch festival is going on. If you ever want to go, buy tickets in January 'cause I hear they sell out in February.
If you want to go to the free shows get there early. We arrived about 15 minutes before it started and we couldn't get in.

This is a once a year chance to see some super hot Hawaiians dance. I'm really sorry we missed it.

Furniture

When we moved into an actual house 10 days ago we had to leave our matresses behind, I've been sleeping on an air matress with the missus and K on the floor with my sleeping bag. No furniture. The kitchen is well stocked thanks to some fore thought on J's part.

We went to Smith's Trading Co. yesterday to look for whatever we could find. This place is great, it's just a big warehouse filled with mattresses and stoves and chairs and all manner of things from hotels. When hotels upgrade their furniture the upgrade ALL of it, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 rooms. That's 200 beds, chairs, mini fridges, tables and TVs. Sure they're scuffed from years of people not caring about them but they still work just fine and they're a steal compared to buying new.

We scored 3 chairs, 4 tables and 2 mattresses. It's a really nice upgrade from an air mattress to a king. Now our house looks like a hotel room. No room service though :/

Moving again

We found a house with a month to month lease and I've been working on getting the right money to the right person but that right person isn't making it terribly easy.

He told me to send a check for the deposit and 1st month's rent. I asked him who should I make it out to and where should I send it. He didn't respond but all his emails have a link to the realty company at the bottom so I checked their site.

I sent the check to the company at their address. A few days alter I find he doesn't actually want the check sent there. He wants it sent to this new address. Fine, canceled original check for $25 fee and cut a new one to the new address this time with $14 fee for express mail to guarantee next day delivery. A few hours after that's done he writes me that the check needs to be made out directly to him, not the company.

Three checks have been mailed so far. None of them valid.
It's Friday, we're supposed to move in on Sunday.


It doesn't help that he lives on another island or that he went on vacation for a week while he was waiting for the check.

Title Change

The name and address of this blog has been changed to make it more family friendly.

Surfing

There are a brazillian websites devoted to the best beaches in Hawaii. I'm just starting to learn to boogie board and I've found two beaches that have the waves for it near Hilo. First is Richardson's Beach and the second is Honoli'i. Richardson's is the most well rounded of any of the beaches I've been to. It has snorkeling, wading, sun bathing, a grill, showers, and waves for body boarders. Even has a small beach for kids to play in. If you're in a group with mixed interests regarding a beach, Richardson's is the place to go.

The only down side to body boarding at Richardson's is that in the middle of the wave break there are a few big rocks. During high tide you can only see them as a wave goes past. There's intimidating and you don't want to get caught on a wave headed towards them. It happened to J and I and it was pretty scary stuff. We made it with only a few scrapes.

Honoli'i is a famous beach for surfing. It's about the only thing you can do there, the beach is mall and full of rocks. The surf is outstanding. It's perhaps not the best place to learn to surf as there is always a crowd and the waves can get pretty big if you don't know what you're doing (like me).
Both beaches are within biking distance of Hilo.

We'd Like To Thank Our Sponsors

So I, at least, got a lot of information off the internet before hopping on out here. I just wanted to share a few of the sites that were particularly helpful or encouraging to me.

Aloha Friends' move-to-hawaii guide - very helpful

KonaWeb - very helpful

theStateOfHawaii.com - a little helpful

Foodening

There are a number of places to get groceries in Hilo. We started shopping at the KTA but now I shop at the Sac n Save because they're a full size market with cheaper prices and they're a couple blocks closer. Sac n Save also has one of those handy loyalty cards which can knock of %30 of the prices sometimes.
A couple of days ago we finally found the local fish market, Suisan. It sells fish caught by local fisherpersons. If you're not too picky about the cut of fish you can find some very cheap steaks. We got two Mahi steaks for about $8.

There's the Hilo Farmer's Market on the corner of Kam Ave and Mamo Ave. You can find grapefruits as big as your noggin, sushi made with spam, and 6 papayas for $1.

recycled bicycles

This is about finding a bike in Hilo.

I highly recommend Da Kine Bike Shop. The owner is on vacation right now and the guy that's been working there in his off hours, John, has just been incredible. K and I bought bikes for $250 with a 30 day warranty. My bike had a few problems which were unforeseeable until I started riding, and I wreck my gear. From computers, clothes and my body, I destroy everything. So this bike. Anyway, John fixed my bike and told me some maintenance tips for the future. The guy is outstanding.

you can take that to the bank

Getting a checking account at the First Hawaiian Bank is easy. I brought my Virginia license and my Social Security Card and I got an account. Didn't even have to show proof of residency, which I'd forgotten at home.
They are one of the few parts of the island that seems to be on top of the technology curve, allowing online banking.

So J alluded to this a couple days ago, but getting rid of (almost) everything you own isn't so hard. The hard part is convincing yourself you don't care about these treasured sentimental knickknacks long enough to toss them in the trash, then convincing yourself that you just did the right thing. And as it turns out, convincing yourself that you just did the right thing isn't very hard. Just keep telling yourself, "I never knew I was so amazing," and, "Is there anyone in the world as hardcore/awesome/much-of-a-genius as me?" (The respective answers are "HAHAHA" and "YES", but pretend otherwise.)

I'm not really sure why S&J think I'll have some sort of insight into the workings of the UH, but I'll tell you what I can. Basically, it's the same as school everywhere else. UHH is pretty cheap ($10k/year/out of state), and pretty small (only 3000 students), which means the profs are happy to help out with anything. So that's not bad. They're a little anachronistic, like the rest of Hilo... their computers are a year or two older than any comparable school, and their "introduction to computer gaming" course starts out with MS Paint. In Kansas this might be backwards redneck bullshit, but here it's delightful local charm.
At least, it damn well better be. Hawaiian Ethnobotany is everything I was hoping for, and it's nice to be taking CS classes focused on C++, but sometimes I wish they didn't feel it was necessary to have a different network login/password for each class, plus one for the library and one for the website. Oh yes, you read that right.

Anyway, the unemployed hawaiian student blues got me down, but I have a feeling that once I get some work I'll be back up here talking some bull about how people come back from Heaven just to spend their vacations in Hawai'i. Love and respect. Later.

talent

Arrive with some money. Enough to pay your rent, groceries and mad cash for a few weeks. It may take some time before you can find work, enough work work that pays well enough to support you.

I am lucky enough to find a job within a week of moving. The pay seems legit, but I'm not sure how it'll measure up to my expenses. If after you've searched all over town, pillaged the classifieds and still can't find gainful employment, make your own work. If you have a skill, any skill, you can probably find someone that'll pay you to use it.

Put up flyer's at an Internet cafe, KTA, Farmer's market and the University.

A note about parking

(with a lower case p)

Driving seems like such a waste here. What better way to take in a tropical island than on bike or foot? There are no parking meters here and not much traffic, so driving might seem ideal. Consider the costs of everything involved with a car. Gas, insurance, maintenance, pollution, space, noise and the list goes on. Used cars are expensive with the lower price tags at around $4,000. My bike costs $250.

You can rent a car, scooter or taxi if you want to take a longer trip perhaps to the Volcano. But until then, why not get a bike?

Another note about Packing.

(With a capital P.)

Originally we planned to send 3 boxes of 36in of depth; they came in a 3 pack from Office Depot for 12.99. The reason we bought boxes at all was that our previous move required us to ship 2 of our suitcases at an expense of $100.00 (!!!), so to save having to deal with moving our stuff aboard a plane, we bought giant, corporate cardboard contraptions.

In the end, we bought still more boxes, though they were much smaller and the reason was thus: The Post Office, despite it's insanely benevolent rates, does not ship packages priority mail that are more than 70 lbs. Our giant boxes are largely useless; they are good for shipping long/tall/awkwardly shaped objects, but not heavy ones. They fill up slowly and because packing well--ensuring everything you own isn't smashed to bits--requires you fill the ENTIRE box up with something (we used newspaper, magazines, sheets, blankets, and lastly plastic bags from the grocery store...dozens of them) every nook and cranny has to be packed. That's a difficult task when you are trying not to go over 70 lbs.

So, bottom line with packing for distance through the mail:

1) Priority mail is cheaper. 70 lbs though man...70 lbs.

2) Start saving up packing materials--smaller cardboard boxes, plastic wraps of all kinds, newspaper--way ahead of time.

3) Tape! Don't be stingy with the tape. If the box falls apart, it has to do the dirty work.

4) Label clearly; we splurged on fancy labels. But our stuff--each box insured for a 100 bucks--was nearly all sentimental and virtually priceless. Also, if you're recycling boxes (and we did this too), you'll have to cover up whatever writing was there before. Just mark that stuff out with a Sharpie, and stick the new label on top.

5) Have a reliable scale available at home, so you don't lug stuff to the P.O. just to lug it home again, rip it open, and remove a sweatshirt so it's below the limit.

6) Pack the box tight, pack it to the rim, fill every nook and cranny. Movers joke about people who pack their own boxes, because they don't fill them, and then open them up post-transport to find everything smashed.

The other amazing help is getting rid of nearly everything you own. But that has to wait for another post, acuz I'm huuuungry.

SitCom

Kevin and I are living in a studio apt. This means we have a single medium sized room to share. The only other room is the bathroom. It's close to town which is nice, a bit of a trek to the school for Kev though.

Rent is high. $1,000/month. I suggest looking a little bit harder for soemthing a bit bigger and cheaper. Especially if you're planning to have a car. We came across sub $1,000 houses with 3 bedrooms and a yard that were 10 minutes outside of Hilo. If you have a car that's nothing. On a bike it's downhill on the way and up hill on the way home. It can get grueling. The town is completely accessable by bike though, and we're giving it a shot.
Another post of living without a car in Hilo later.

If you know where you're planning to live before you arrive, call ahead and schedule an internet connection to be installed. If you arrive at the wrong time, like at the beginning of a semester, you'll be competing with all the students for a 'net connection. We have to wait a week and a half before ours will be installed. The local public libraries only offer 50 minutes a day on their computers. More on Libraries later.

Our one room apt provides no privacy and no cell phone reception. Cooking, eating, computering, reading, sleeping all happen in the same room. It's easy to get on each other's toes. Get something with a least a bedroom. Luckily we only have 2.5 months more to go before we find a house.

How To

This post was written the night before we left on my personal blog. When this blog was but a twinkle in my eye.

http://prisonindustry.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-to-move-to-hi.html:

Step 1. Spend 5 of the 6 months before leaving on the other side of the country, not planning and not being able to take your pets to the vet for their blood tests that require 4 months before leaving.

Step 2. Spend the 4 of the 7 weeks before leaving playing computer games and kind of packing but not really.

Step 3. 2 weeks before moving, go to Florida for a week of camp and let your car break down. Spend 4 days waiting for it to get fixed before finding a ride home.

Step 4. Spend the last 5 days you have visiting friends and family and not packing

How to get all of your stuff here.

Priority Mail.

We shipped 6 boxes all within 10 lbs of 50. This is all of my earthly belongings and most of Jessie's. It cost $200. Delivery time is 7-8 business days. To drop it down to the slower shipping with USPS would lower the price to about $150 and increase the shipping to 5-6 weeks. UPS quoted us at just under $1,000.

Pack everything with tons of tape. I bought six rolls of packing tape and used 2.5 wrapping all the boxes. Make sure you reinforce all the corners the tops and bottoms of all the boxes. After you're written your address, put some tape over that so it can't be smudged or removed.

Take your clothes, laptop and camera with you on the flight and put everything else in a box and ship it.

More in a few days if / when this stuff arrives. ;)

Weather the weather

We arrived on Jan 9th 2007 late late at night. It was misting. It has rained everyday since we arrived. Sometimes I can see the sun for about 20 minutes. Most of the time it's raining and misting.

Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful. Our studio apartment has a beautiful view. Water fall into a small pool that creates another water fall into a larger pool suitable for swimming. It was quite cold but very refreshing and a very nice.

It's very very humid here, the temperature is mild but the humidity makes me sweat when I do more than just walk. I am hoping this weekend will have some warmer weather so I can hit up a beach.