Huali Lani Komohana, May 2018, DRIVEWAY REPAIR

The picture directly below is our driveway in March (the debris on the side is our other neighbors'; they clearcut a bunch of guava trees).  Anywhoo, nice whimsical jungle-y intact driveway.

Then the flood happened.  A "rain bomb".  48" in 24 hours.  No prediction for heavy rain.  It just kept pouring.  The waterfalls poured right over our road, caused landslides, destroyed a couple homes, and wiped out portions of the road and a few driveways, including ours. Below is our driveway after the flood.  All the exposing conduit is for electrical lines. What a mess! 

All our fill dirt, concrete & asphalt fill, and gravel washed into our neighbors' field.  We had to collect and carry out all that washed away concrete and asphalt.  What a workout!  Crossfit Kauai style.

Btw, I'm not in these pictures.  'Cause I'm taking them. (duh)  But, let it be known: I carried my fair share of concrete!!

(parking up on the road, because driveway undrive-able).

Ok.  This is the Engineers getting all nerdy again.  Big Dude has been dying to use straps with the Jeep.  If I had a dollar for every time he's told me he's needs a winch for that car ...  Below, the plan is to use the Jeep and strap and crowbar (as a lever) to move a HUGE boulder into proper position.

Easier said than done, but mission accomplished.

So this is pretty much what the driveway looked like at the end of our time here in May.  Our "manual" labor tasks were to recover all the concrete and asphalt, untangle the conduit, brace all the conduit, and in general, get everything ready for when local landslide dirt could be delivered to us and spread down the driveway with a bulldozer.  Such a huge job.  Days and hours of labor and not feeling like we had much to show for it.  

The first load of landslide dirt delivered (woot!).

And the "after" picture of the field now that we've removed the bulk of the concrete and asphalt pieces.  

Huali Lani Komohana, May 2018 miscellany

In May we had College Graduate Dude and Little Dude along for the labor, errrr, adventure.  Middle Dude had finals to deal with, so we left him to it.  This is our first time back post-flood and required some jumping thru govt hoops to get a pass to join the convoy over the closed highway.  We knew we had scads of deferred yardwork to attend to, in addition to addressing the needs of the broken driveway, a bridge project underway, and hopes we would be able to finish painting the house (which would be nice, but doesn't fall in line with the tyranny of the urgent to-do list).

Big Dude's new toy tool.  Assembled and ready-to-go.

Scads of yardwork is an understatement.  SCADS.  

These tiny purple flowers may be pretty, but they're an invasive weed.  WHACK.

SCADS,  Of WHACKING.

SCADS of Mowing.  Note: mower always needs battery jump-started...

Exploring.  The flood moved around a bunch of boulders, sent all kinds of debris downstream, and cleared the banks of plants. (bonus for us: no need to whack path back)

Giant Albezia tree downed.

Screen time...

Tree tent time ...

A brief ... ever so brief ... walk out to the pier before jumping back into the evening convoy line (the evening convoy is the only "short loop" roundtrip into Hanalei for quickie grocery runs, 80min).  The first couple weeks after the flood, there was no ocean under the pier because so much silt had washed out onto the beach from the river.  Even in May, the water level at the end of the pier was too shallow to jump off the pier and into the water.

A spot of not-rainy-time, so Big Dude pulled out the saw to cut more batten.

tbc ...