Getting Here – The Good, The Not So Bad, The Bad and the Really Bad
huaka’i = journey
The Good – Finding Our Place
Wow, we feel like we really lucked out. We don’t know if we will want or be able to stay on O’ahu for longer than a year so we were in the market for a furnished rental; however, most furnished places do not allow pets and we were bringing two of our cats. We also wanted to find a two-bedroom place so our friends and family could visit; and we wanted a view and walkability. And it needed to fit our budget.
Our dream neighborhood was Hawaii Kai, because it’s beautiful, close to Riv and some of our favorite beaches, and has all of the amenities we’ve gotten used to having, living in the ‘burbs. But Hawaii Kai is popular. And pricey.
We had been daydream-searching off and on for a few months while we were waiting to see if we would actually be able to make the move, and were seeing some decent options, but nothing that excited us. When we finally got the go-ahead, we found a fabulous place on Zillow within just a few days that met all our criteria! Feeling extremely fortunate, we jumped on it immediately.
We just moved into a two-story, two-bedroom attached townhome on one of the inlet marinas in Hawaii Kai. It was a bit beyond our price range, but electricity is included and we are saving a ton by choosing a furnished place. Our new landlord is wonderful, and we are absolutely thrilled with it – just look at our view!
The Not So Bad – Dealing with Cars
Selling and Shipping
We had to make some decisions about cars that weren’t easy. Troy had been holding onto his 1997 Toyota 4Runner since River was a baby. He loves that truck and would have driven it until it fell apart around him. Within a couple of days of talking about options, the engine temperature light started coming on. That made the decision to sell a little clearer, but no less difficult for Troy as he really had a hard time letting go. We sold Tortuga, as the truck was affectionately known, to one of our “second sons” for a steal.
My baby, a “soul crystal red” Mazda CX-5 named Marcel, the first brand new car I’ve ever bought, was an easier decision. He is at this very moment on a boat to me. We used Pasha when shipping River’s car last year and had a great experience, and we’re going with them again for Marcel. It was $1500 from Los Angeles. Instead of spending a small fortune for the shipper to get the car to LA, we decided to have River and his friends drive it out there. It pays to have a DJ for a son who is always up for a trip to the City of Angels 😊
When shipping your car, you need to bring it to the shipper a few days before the boat will actually depart, so that they have time to transport and load it. It then takes another day or two once the boat lands for them to unload it and bring it to the lot where you can pick it up. Marcel’s current voyage across will take 5 days, and I can watch where he is on his journey from satellite, which I think is kind of cool.
Insuring
Insuring the car was a bit involved as well. Our current insurer, Amica, does not serve Hawaii. This turned out to actually be a great thing because it forced us to shop our rates around, which we hadn’t done in years (tip – don’t do that!) We are now getting better coverage for significantly less money. Luckily, Troy’s dad served in the military so we were able to get insurance through USAA. (Friends on the island said they’ve also had decent service from Geico and Progressive.) We bundled all of our many insurance needs with them and are so far extremely happy. (We hadn’t needed to change our insurance last year when only River was here since college students are considered “transient.”)
Registering
Registering a car here from out of state involves a few steps. First you get your safety inspection, which will fail because you do not yet have your registration, which is required. You take the “failed but only because there’s no registration” safety report to the DMV along with all the usual paperwork (including the bill of lading from the shipping company). They’ll give you your plates, but you then have to go back to the mechanic that did your safety inspection and have them pass you and give you your safety sticker. At that point, you are finally fully compliant.
The Bad – Bringing Your Pets
Hawaii is a rabies-free state, great! How wonderful for them! Let’s do everything we can to help them keep it that way, like create complicated spreadsheets for the timing of each piece of lab work and certifications needed, and harass our vet for the exact right scheduling of that lab work as well as follow-up treatments, and nag the vet techs about the exact right format of those certifications and the exact right details, and go to the bank for cashier’s checks because personal checks just won’t do, and spend tons of money sending those checks and documentation registered mail to Hawaii so that they arrive in just the perfect window for acceptance, and book a very expensive flight that takes you hours out of your way just because it’s on the one airline that actually imports animals into Hawaii (Alaska Airlines), making sure that you arrive at your destination well before the Animal Quarantine Station closes for the day, and after spending 12 hours traveling with your drugged-up but still disgruntled darlings, spend an additional 20 minutes lugging them through a concrete jungle outside the airport that radiates heat at you from all sides so you can wait in a tiny room where everyone is very nice but it feels like it hasn’t been updated since the 50’s and communication is nonexistent. BUT THEN, after an unspecified amount of time (10 minutes for the lucky ones, 30 minutes in our case) you get your packet with your certificates of approval (which by now, you’re considering framing and putting on the wall), so your beloved fur babies can legally co-habitate with you in this rabies-free paradise. Aaaaaaaaaaaaah. (Tip – read the checklist on the Department of Agriculture’s website until you have it memorized!)
The Really Bad – Moving Your Things into Storage and Getting Your House Ready to Rent (With Your Partner)
So. From the informal polling I’ve done, plus the studies that show that building or moving a home is a leading cause of divorce, I don’t think I’m alone when I say that going through a major move with your spouse SUCKS. You make a hundred decisions in your head every day, moving quickly onto the next one because that’s kind of how it has to be, and then you forget to mention to your significant other all of the dozens of things you decided that day and they go and behave in a way that contradicts one of those decisions and you suddenly wonder why the hell you were ever attracted to them in the first place. It is STRESSFUL. Unless you have lots of money and can just throw it at people to do this for you, make a pact before you get too far into the process to give each other as much grace as you can muster and do not consider filing papers until well after you’ve settled into the new place. I was shocked at how angry I got at the stupidest things when we were deep in the throes. We were full-on yelling about whether to store unused photo albums – hard-copy, cardboard and plastic, photo-freaking-albums which no one has used in at least a decade!
When we finally arrived at our place, put down our bags and kitties, took a deep breath of salty air and hugged a couple palm trees, I turned to Troy and I swear he looked again like the man I married.
