Huali Lani Komohana, April 2018, BRIDGE REPAIR

Warning: this blog post is mostly history-keeping for me.  The details will likely be tedious for anyone else :-}.

The precis version: we started rebuilding our bridge.  The flood happened.  We finished the bridge. 

When we bought our property in Kauai, we knew there were a couple really "big ticket" items that were going to require additional $$$$:  one of those items was this 70' bridge by which we and our immediate neighbor access our property.  Quite simply, the wood of the bridge was significantly rotted and needed to be replaced ASAP.  "ASAP" ended up being about a year after we closed escrow.

General Timeline:  we ordered all the wood beams in December 2017 from a company in Washington.  Approximately 3 months to prepare wood and ship.  Wood arrived in Honolulu the end of March, and arrived Nawiliwili Port in Kauai the first week of April 2018.  Transport from the port to the Princeville side of the Hanalei Bridge was a pretty straightforward hauling of the entirety of the wood via Semi-truck.

From the Hanalei Bridge to our property was a much trickier venture.  From that point there are severe weight limitations on the road and over the 7 single lane bridges.  From the Hanalei Bridge, the wood was carried 2-3 beams at a time by pick-up-trucks with trailers, like 15 roundtrips for the 45 beams.  All wood arrived at our property by April 6.  Work on our bridge commenced April 9.  The general plan was to replace 1/3 of the bridge each week, along with painting of steel I-beams below wood.

(all construction pics courtesy of my neighbor)

 Evidence above and below of rot ...Plants growing out of the beams like they're in fertile soil.  Oy.

Old beams off, placing new beams...

Painting steel I-beams to protect from rust corrosion...

Temporarily bolting down before weekend construction break.   (permanent bolting happens when curb beam installed).

And this is what Saturday April 14 looked like.  The beginning of the 24-hour period that saw 48" of rain fall.  The Big Flood.  So many things to be grateful about.  Our wood wasn't still stuck on the other side of the Hanalei Bridge - with no way now to be transported, as the entire North Shore Highway is shut down with landslides and portions of the highway eroded away.  The bridge beams were bolted down and didn't wash away.  The other beams and wearing-surface planks were not damaged or lost.  Both our (ours and our neighbors') homes were fine, undamaged  by the rising waters.

 This raging waterfall-river flowing across the road dramatically (and expensively) wiped out our driveway overnight, but left this pile of planks alone.  Grateful, grateful.

The pics from here on out are my own.  Here's the old rotted bridge wood, stacked in our front yard.  Notice the abundant plant life!!  oy.  This is now mid May.  Time to get busy.  Lots of clean-up...

Also in the grateful column, our contractor is a North Shore resident who still had access to our neighborhood despite the limited access highway.  Since our driveway was blown out and driving access to our properties was cut off, the new bridge plan became to tear out and replace the last 2/3 beams at one go.  Work re-commenced mid-May.

This section of the river is actually a "tail-race" whose flow can be controlled by the powerplant up the road.  Here it's considerably shut down.  Which was super helpful in terms of accessing the bottom portion of our beams for painting.

This is "the plank" (about 40') we needed to walk over with all our luggage and groceries and various Home Depot project pieces for a few days before all the beams were laid.  That was a whole lot of fun?

New wood (foreground), old wood (background).

Re-using bolts and screws ...

Not re-using (for the bridge, anyways) old rotted wood.

Two enginerds discussing spacing details.  And hey!  A sunny day!!  Finally!!!

River flowing again, making ladder work trickier.  

No more plank to walk.  Yay!

Planks for wearing-surface.  

And that was the bridge status on the day we left.  Our construction crew were rockstars!!

Easter on the Rocks ...

Joshua Tree rocks, that is.  Family came to town and we met up at our favorite playground.  Dog Dude came along for the fun, but even though it was pleasantly in the 80s, he doggedly pursued every spot of shade he could find, no matter how slim a sliver. It's hard to be a big black dog in the bright sun. (Middle Dude and I missed the memo about the dress code being black and white ...)

We climbed up high, looked down low ... as per usual.

There's always some clown who ruins the Christmas/NewYear's card ... ;-)

Self-timer set-up ...

Dog Dude is ready for lunch, rest, and shade ...

Ever wonder how many self-timer shots it takes to get "the one"?  

Big Dude likes to show that he can multi-task ... he's fancy like that.

Always love the layers of mountains on the horizon on the drive home ...

The time in between when we all get the luxury of hanging out together is way too long.  This day of playing together in the desert was truly a treat!

in other news ... iphoneography

On New Year's Eve, my LG G4 phone/camera died a sudden, horrible, badly-timed death. Badly timed as in right-immediately-after-I-compiled-my-2017-1SE-video-slideshow and *before* I uploaded to my computer.  Badly timed as in no other phones were remotely running a "sale" on Jan 1st, so it was an expensive time for my phone to die.

I ended up replacing my LG G4 with an iPhone 7+.  I have a like-Hate relationship with it (the camera firstly, the phone as a whole secondly).

I like ... that it takes pretty pictures.

I like ... that the video snippets work seamlessly and easily with 1SE app.

I LOVE ... the frame-by-frame viewing capability of videos.

I like ... having two camera focal lengths.

I like ... having airdrop to share pictures with other iPhoners in close proximity.

I dislike ... that it does weird things with skin tones.

I dislike ... that it doesn't really let me shoot macro (except by cropping afterwards or adding aftermarket lens).

I HATE ... the 4:3 aspect ratio.

I HATE ... that there's no easy way to file share with my family, who have not-iPhones.

I hate ... that the camera roll chronology scrolling is opposite all other phone camera rolls.

I HATE ... that iPhone forces me into its proprietary picture file folder structure (ie. ppl, places, portrait, etc.). 

I Hate ... that I have to scroll past iPhone's meaningless file folder categories to get to the file folders I actually create and use.
I HATE ... that iPhone picture file folders can't be deleted or moved.

I hate ... that I can't move pictures from (*and out of*) the camera roll into other files I create.

I HATE-ABHOR-DESPISE ... the very complicated and un-user-friendly process to upload pictures from my iPhone to my PC computer.

Conclusion:  I hope my iPhone lasts a good long time.  Because it was expensive. But when it does die, I will NOT be replacing it with another iPhone.

More Books.

"After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.” 
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

Little French Girl by Anne Douglas Sedgwick - (bookclub) This was my 3rd time reading LFG.  It remains one of my favorite books.  

Howards End by E.M. Forster (Close Reads bookclub) - I quite enjoyed portions of this novel and I quite snoozed through portions of this novel.  It is rumored that the Schlegel Sisters are based upon the true-life Stephen Sisters (Virginia Woolf...), though Forster claims, unconvincingly, that they're not.  Virginia Woolf has intriguing critique on Forster's works - she and he were contemporaries (both part of Bloomsbury Literary Group) and acquaintances/friends - and she co-opted Howards End into her own novel, To the Lighthouse.  So I think my biggest appreciation of Howards End is going to be as a door into Woolf's story.

The Austen Escape by Katherine Reay - (library) this book was filled with cardboard characters, simplistic verbiage and all kinds of necessary (for me) suspension-of-disbelief.  T'was “meh”.  But I finished it in 2 days.  So, take that as you will.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman - The reluctant hero, the cantankerous neighbor, the man with a "heart too big."  Britt-Marie remains my favorite Backman book, but Ove is a close second.  

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - just delightful.  Gentleman, indeed.  Probably end up being my favorite from this year.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen – (bookclub)  I've now officially read the complete oeuvre of Jane Austen.  Mansfield Park is my last and latest.  Here's how I personally rank them:  Pride & Prejudice>Emma>Lady Susan=Sense & Sensibility>all the rest.  P&P is one of my top-5-forever-favorites.  I have a love-dislike relationship with Jane Austen.  Mansfield Park seemed to me to be a wordy version of Cinderella filled with characters that were all not-quite-likeable, and just glimpses here and there of Austen's fierce wit.  Reading it was just a slog.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle - I must have read this as a child, but I don't remember it at all.  It must not have resonated with me then, just as it didn't resonate with me now.  I know L'Engle is highly regarded, but it's hard for me to fathom that all that acclaim comes from this book.  Maybe the series ...?  I'll never know, because I don't intend to read more.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng - I read thru the first 77 pages before deciding I didn't really care about any of the characters. I skimmed/skipped til the end. This book just wasn't my cuppa. 

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (library) - similar to The Rosie Project and Britt-Marie Was Here, you the reader are in the head of an unreliable narrator whose account of events is filtered thru un-self-aware eyes. I liberally skimmed Eleanor, as it lacked the charm of Rosie and Britt-Marie. It was just an ok pageturner for me.

True Grit by Charles Portis - (Close Reads bookclub/podcast) a reread.  Just as good the second time through.

Bear Town by Fredrik Backman – (library)  Fredrik Backman wrings your heart.  That’s what he does in his writing.  That said, in Bear Town, he’s trying to wring my heart against the backdrop of the “needs” of a sports team (and by extension, the hoped-for revived economy of a town) vs the cries for justice from a raped 15yo.  He exposes the varying motivations of his 385 broken characters (I exaggerate. but not by much.) as they choose “sides”.  In a couple different places, one of the voices of reason claims that “This town doesn’t always know the difference between right and wrong … But we know the difference between good and evil.”  And see, as an Enneagram One-er, I personally don’t see shades of gray between wrong & evil and right & good; my heart could not be wrung effectively in this book.  Because a girl was raped.  And it doesn’t matter what one’s motivation is; in my humble opinion, it will never be ok to turn a blind eye to what you know is true of evil perpetrated.  So this book was just a huge exercise in frustration for me.  My ranking of Backman’s novels:  Britt-Marie>Ove>Grandma>Bear Town. 

A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - (bookclub)  Dorian is Wilde's homage to aestheticism; he even has an entire "introduction" dedicated to explaining to the reader "art for art's sake."  But goshdarnit, if I don't think he failed in his expressed goal.  I think it's quite impossible to read his story as anything BUT a moralistic warning against the excesses of unfettered hedonism.  Books reveal much about their authors, and Dorian, I think, reveals much of Wilde's self-loathing due to his own struggles with sin. Pair this story with Wilde's short story The Selfish Giant, and consider a fuller picture of the oft stereotyped Oscar Wilde.

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut - Big Dude loved this book.  So I read it, too.  It's Vonnegut, so of course, it's all kinds of weird and quirky and darkly witty and brilliantly written and just a wee bit confusing at times - it's a sort of modern Noah's Ark narrative written from a million years in the future, flashing back to the events and characters of the apocalypse.  I tend to miss the "big picture" in pursuit of the small puzzle pieces; so I got kinda hung up on not knowing who the narrator was for the first 220 pages.  Turns out it totally didn't matter to the story. (Ghost Leon Trout, son of Kilgore Trout, just in case you wondered).  Big Dude, on the other hand, *is* a "big picture" kind of guy, so he totally picked up on this being Vonnegut thumbing his nose at Darwin.  Now that I think about it, the way Big Dude and I differed in our approach to this book is much like how we approach life at large.  I'm glad I have him to supply me with the simple summaries of "big picture".  :-)