Hurricane Lane Conditions Thursday at Kailua-Kona Hawaii

So many people have asked me about Hurricane Lane conditions at Kona that I thought you might appreciate photos of the action. Throwing into the mix, of course, the progress with the bath remodel project at our vacation house in Hawaii. Not a good time to run out of ibuprofen either. When your back is strained from lifting furniture, well, acetaminophen just isn’t the same thing, and I am not going to Target today. Not elbowing my way down empty aisles.

We start off with a photograph of the Kona sunset from Tuesday. There are no sunsets I’ve ever seen as gorgeous as the sunsets in Hawaii. Nothing compares. This photo is before the rains and before Hurricane Lane conditions started to hammer away at the Big Island.

Here is the sunset from August 22nd, just as Hurricane Lane approached Big Island about 280 miles south. Before I went to bed Wednesday evening, I opened the door to our lanai a bit so I could hear the storm coming. We were supposed to get a lot of rain starting Wednesday night.

This whole business with the hurricane has strengthened my belief that we bought in the right place on the Big Island. We had stayed on the Hilo side and explored that area, but there were too many drawbacks. First was the lava flow possibility going down to Puna. Insurance rates were too high, making the lava zones too expensive, and with good reason. It turns out.

Second was the tree frogs. The coqui. They drive me nuts. Chirp chirp chirp I suppose it’s like a train after a while, you don’t notice it. It grows on you or something. But I don’t want to give them that opportunity.

And third, buying up the hill instead of on Ali’i Drive seemed like a wiser investment. After all, I am a survivor of my house falling into the ocean in Ventura in 1981. Just because they build houses on the ocean, doesn’t mean it’s a safe place to live.

This is our lanai. I carted all the breakables and fly-ables to the garage. As I stood in the doorway of the lanai Wednesday night, I listened for sounds of activity. The weirdest thing happened. No sound. No wind, no cars on the road, no animal noises, no drifting music uphill from Royal Kona Resort. Nothing. Complete silence. Uh oh, I thought, this is the calm before the storm. Super freaky experience, this dead vacuum.

It’s not like I am in Florida, you know. People in Florida can move away from a hurricane simply by hopping in their car and driving in long traffic lines to go elsewhere. The NCL ship did not dock in Kona on Wednesday, either. We have no way off the island. What the hey. You go with the flow. I slept straight through the night.

Come Thursday morning, I woke to steady rainfall about 5 AM. No winds. And the rain eventually stopped. Then I noticed the guys from Lowes were back in my driveway. I thought they weren’t coming. They had installed the tub and moved the toilet flange the day before. But they had the medicine cabinets with them, which Lowes finally located.

Somehow the cabinets were lost in the store. But Tom, the project manager, found them. However, an issue existed. Turns out the studs in both baths are not 14 1/2 apart, like they should be. For some reason, the distance is 13 1/2 inches. Which means the medicine cabinets won’t fit without alterations.

Not sure why the workers don’t want to just cut the danged stud, block it up and stick the cabinet in there. That was my first suggestion. Then I flashed back to one of the first houses I had toured as a Sacramento Realtor in 2003. The sellers in that house had installed a medicine cabinet that cost more than $1,000. Big selling feature they claimed. I could not imagine such a thing then. Can’t imagine it now. Except the Kohler cabinets I purchased were $260 a piece, and even that seemed high for a cabinet that will rust in 10 years.

My suggestion was why not return the medicine cabinets and buy a different width? The GC from Lowes says he has high-end clients who are looking for matching medicine cabinets, of all things, so maybe he’ll find out if they will buy them from me. Although, seriously, I don’t know why they are reluctant to cut through the stud.

All of this was going on Thursday morning when Linda texted to see if I wanted to join the gang down at Kona Haven Coffee. We had a front row seat to view the ocean, which you can see in the first photo in this blog. That is Laura on her Harley Davidson pulling away into traffic, with the Royal Kona Resort in the distance. People were out, wandering about.

This blog was composed on Thursday, as it rained off and on all day. Friday will undoubtedly bring us a different story about Hurricane Lane conditions in Kona. If I end up evacuating, it will be OK because I have a charger in my car. Which makes me very happy to think about. You know how I need to stay wired! Stay tuned.