Saturday, March 5, 2022

45 Lbs of Poi & A Set of Metric Hex Keys

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

3/5/22

Aloha Ohana!

March already!  Can you believe it? What happened to January and February?  In fact, what happened to the last two years?! 

Our friends left Tuesday evening after a week of good times.  One of the most interesting things for us was discovering the changes to tourist spots that have occurred since the last time we saw them.  For the most part these were positive, but in a few instances they were more mixed, like a cloud forest hike that used to have a short route but now is a fairly long slog  (also, this one ended in a trip to the drug store for extra bandages).

Here's something in the "only-in-Hawai'i" department. On Wednesday our local newspaper devoted

Poi, Anyone?
nearly the entire front page to a story about a record-breaking taro plant. The Polynesians brought taro with them when they arrived in the islands about 1200 years ago (taro root is what poi is made from).  A farming couple down south has apparently grown the largest taro root in the world, weighing about 50 pounds! According to the article, this sucker would produce about 45 pounds of poi and feed about 180 people. Thatsalota poi!!  They've submitted it to the Guiness Book of World Records and should know soon if it is accepted.  The previous record holder was a measly 7-pounder grown somewhere in China.  Take that, Xi Jinping!

My house maintenance project this week was to replace the pitted towel racks and toilet paper holder in the guest quarters where our friends stayed.  I had tried to do this before they arrived but I couldn't get the old ones off.  If you've ever installed or replaced these you know that they are held onto their brackets with little screws that have indented hexagonal heads. The tool for tightening or loosening them is called a hex key, aka "Allen" wrench, named for the Connecticut tool company that invented it.  I have a set of these but none of the different sizes would fit.  After a bit of frustration it occurred to me that these particular ones might be metric. So a quick trip to Lowes' toy ...ur... tool department and the problem was solved.  Of course, I'm still working on the difficulty that the brackets for the new ones are slightly different and will require drilling new holes in the stone tile covering the wall. What could possibly go wrong?  I'll let you know.

On Thursday Karen played golf but I opted to follow my "quit while you're ahead" philosophy after my good round last week and went to the gym instead.  Not as picturesque and certainly not as pleasant-smelling but a whole lot quicker.

Ok, that's about it.  Take care and think warm Spring thoughts.....


4 comments:

SimoneStan said...

75 degrees today. Warmest day of the year so far. Though I would rather be in Hawaii.

Richard Sherman said...

Enjoy that weather!!

Back in the days when we owned our apple orchard we would get very nervous when it warmed up like this in early spring. The blossoms would open and then a cold snap could kill them and devastate the year's crop. Hard to believe I used to hope for a late spring!!

Dennis L. Nord, Ph.D. said...

I probably could have loaned you the Allen wrench you need. While my collection doesn't tip 45 pounds yet, I seem to get a new one about three times a year with a "some-assembly-require" acquisition. I also bought an all-in-one gadget with a bunch of them and a set of "T" handle ones at some point. I found in my other tools an errant long stemmed Allen wrench I don't recall seeing before. Probably snuck in by my neighbor to confuse me.

Richard Sherman said...

I know what you mean -- each of the pieces of hardware came with its own allen wrench. All of them, however, were a size that I already have, not metric. The same thing happens when I do a tune-up on the little pool robot I have. Each kit comes with a stiff brush and a small flat-bladed screw driver. I do this maintenance about 3-4 times a year, and that comes to about 40 or more of these things.