Greg Patent Newsletter: So You Want to Live in Hawaii?

Welcome to my first newsletter from Kauai, our new home!

Many of our friends thought we were a bit gaga doing what we did, but hey, you only live once.

The hot housing market in Missoula, Montana, convinced us this was the time to sell. Our half acre got bigger and bigger; cleaning took longer and longer; and so, after 44 years in our beautiful custom-built home, we departed.

But we had a plan. We figured that since we were homeless, why not live in Kauai for awhile? It’s an island full of beauty and wonder and we’ve been there many times and we have friends there. We just needed time to recover from our big move and time to figure out where we might like to live for the rest of our lives.

For the past few years we’d head to warmer climes for the winter. Now we’re in the tropics! Year-round outdoor farmers markets (I’ll have much more to say about them in future posts), wearing flip-flops and shorts on our shopping trips and walks, and buying fragrant fresh basil and other herbs in the winter.

Wanting something and actually doing it are two different things. How do we find a place to rent? What do we do with our trusty 20-year-old Subaru Outback wagon? We have a few friends on Kauai who we turned to for help, but they were all spending time on the mainland!

Rental car rates skyrocketed during the pandemic. When we booked a car weeks before we arrived in Kauai, the basic cost for a medium-size auto came to around $1,000. By the time we arrived, rates fell to $650. Still very steep. So we decided to ship our car. And how much did that cost? $1,900 with the insurance included. We wound up having to pay for rental cars a total of 3 weeks while we waited for our car to arrive.

With our car situation settled, the next big thing was finding a place to live. Craig’s list Kauai turned out to be the place to search. And I did, daily, for a few weeks. Then bingo! A 2 BR top floor apartment showed up in Sun Village, a senior living community we knew well. About 3 years ago we rented an apartment there for a couple of months and loved the location. Our apartment is lovely. Top floor, vaulted ceilings, ocean and hillside views, and quiet. But it came to us unfurnished.

And what did we do about that? I’ll continue the story in my next newsletter.

Aloha!