It is not a mystery that moving is hard. Victoria mentioned this in her last post. It is generally hard to move within the same town. It is definitely harder to move within the mainland states. It's a LOT harder to move to an island. Let me tell you why.
Pets
If you have a pet and you want to bring it to Hawaii it is not just matter of grab the kennel and call a Uber. Nope... islands regulations, in general across the planet, are very protective of what comes in. And rightfully so because it's a closed ecosystem and if something goes belly up the spread is inevitable and the effect definitely very lasting.
The first thing you want to do is to make sure that you meet all requirements. If you don't, on your arrival you are going to experience costly and sentimentally painful moments. Your pet can be quarantine at your expense, FOR MONTHS, and ultimately living the poor animal in sadness and loneliness.
You want to keep a regular eye on the directions provided by the state because they change and with no particular warning. Moving a pet there is such a chorn that there are businesses that they perform just that job for you.
Bikes
Buying a bike online and get it shipped to Molokai isn't really a thing. As matter of fact I could get almost anything I needed from Amazon and have it delivered in two days by doorstep but I have yet to find a bike shop that delivers there!
So shipping your bike is the best way to go. We have put together in the image below everything that we found researching. In addition, we share the recommendation of asking your local bike shop or REI if they have bike boxes that they want to get rid of. We were lucky with REI and got one for free. They were more than happy to give it away.
In my case, I am shipping an Evil The Following and I will be using Bikeflights.com with a cardboard box or this hard box. One of the questions you get asked when shipping through those services is about the size of what you are shipping. In my case, Evil customer service told me the following.
If you happen to buy a new one and you bike it directly from evil, they say: frame shipping to Hawaii is $65.00 and complete shipping is $165.00. I am pretty sure they use the same services listed above.
Internet
Throughout our investigation, it was pretty obvious that connectivity through the whole state is a mixed bag of changes. At the time of this writing, we see that Spectrum has been taking over an older provider and things seem to be heading in a better direction. Through our own testing using a speed measuring app from the phone did indicate that at least for our location the signal was good and most reliable.
We noticed that the latency had a bit of hiccups attitude at times and primarily with the personal streaming rather than entertainment streaming. Prices are very comparable to the mainland and from the moment that we contacted them to get fiber installed, the speed of operation has blown us away. We just called to ask if they served the address and two days later we receive a message from the previous owner of the property that they had received a new router and ready-to-go setup instructions!
In addition to that, in 2021 Starlink is officially serving the island!! We put in a request last year and to our huge surprise this morning we received a notification that the area was now served! We did not waste time and sure enough, we placed the order.
We love everything about Elon Musk so this was a no-brainer thinking of adopting and supporting THE solution for remote areas like ours.
Electricity
Turning on power also was really simple and everything was done over the phone in a matter of minutes.
Water
The island has several private wells and the story about the water deserves a post in its own right. For our location turning on the water was literally a matter of an email and in a few hours, we received confirmation that it was pumping as expected.
I am still on the mainland and can't join Victoria until the veterinarian clears our cuddle demander home cat. However, every day, when I wake up, open the window and find this to be my weather reality:
My mood switches very much in this mode, so much I can't wait to move full time to Molokai.
