The New Normal

Go go go! Let's see, I'll start with ...

A friend had a couch to get rid of and Sunya wanted it so I went to the shop yard to get my trailer and then go meet him at his house at five. Hooked it up, got ready to go ... Rrr rr r click. Dead battery.

Seemed to me some mechanic or other had mentioned recently my battery was barely passing test. I knew it was old. (Never mind why it had been seen by "some mechanic or other", i.e. at least two, recently.) I knew it was old so why waste time debugging? Time for a new battery.

Did I mention I was at the shop? That's being vacated? No one else there and the yard had accumulated solar energy all day and was about 110 degrees and my truck was dead.

The Colosseum was still there! An art car, full of Burning Man dust, all folded up, basically a heavily modified Chevy S10 with the ignition switch modified to not need a key. It started! My ancient jumper cables were broken such that I needed vise grips to make the connection, but connect they did. However, no jump start.

Hmm. Looked around. Aha, a couple old battery chargers, auto shop variety. I hauled one out and hooked it up for ten minutes and sure enough, r rr rrr growl. I was operational! Pulled out, set the alarms, locked the doors, and drove (trailer and all) to Autozone. No, I didn't have time to shop around.

The one battery I needed was the one without the built-in carrying strap. And they don't sell carrying straps anymore. And my old one is long gone. But the lady was very nice and managed to extract one from an old battery and install it on mine. (She was nice. Cute smile. Helpful. Hmm. Maybe they like the hair after all.)

Vroom! Off I went. Friend was home, and after he let me ingest three glasses of water we loaded the couch. Wait, before this I had to use my smartphone secure mail app to tell a couple guys I was going to miss the 6pm meeting (which was 9am for one of them). OK, now, off I went, Sunya not home, I opened the garage and moved the couch in and moved stuff around and put my trailer in there too, after all it needs a new home.

Went home and got online and worked a few more hours but enough about Tuesday. Yesterday I did about ten hours too and then got a call from a friend: Sunya had been at an arts fundraiser but was now at an actual bar and they wanted one more, hey, come join us (and bring her driver's license). I'd had it since our weekend adventures in the City (not these but the weekend following) and she's young and beautiful and can't get anything without ID. So I did and by two we were at Ink but the combination of free fundraiser wine and almost zero sleep the night before had rendered her impervious to the salubrious effects of ice water and mac & cheese and so I drove her sleepy self home, leaving my Jeep bravely parked overnight in the center of downtown (J and 11th, IYMK).

Which meant that after three hours sleep I was walking down to the Lite Rail so I could go downtown and get my vehicle in time to get up to Roseville for a 7:30 doctor appointment. She offered to take me but her passage through downtown to get to work was normally to be an hour later and I didn't want to make her go early. 'Sides it was fun to ride the train at six in the morning, a sparse combination of early workers and homeless people commuting home from their nightly rounds amongst suburban recycling bins, and dawn-lit views of the back streets the rails run through. I got to my truck about seven and headed up the freeway, and was ten minutes early so stopped at a Safeway to go in to their Starbucks and get a mocha ("large" or whatever they call it). Back in the Jeep, rrr rr r click.

Really?

The doc was just a few blocks away so I walked up, did the thing we do, walked back, and then, what the hell. R rr rrr growl! Quickly now, I hit Sunrise Blvd and headed homewards as fast as I could go. The dash voltmeter was pegged at 9V so I knew I had a limited opportunity here. And it was limited indeed, for not halfway home she started bucking and moaning and I was sidelined. The Triple-A tow truck was quick, though, and took me to a AAA approved shop right near my apartment, or meant to; but the place had moved and AAA never heard about it. New address back up the freeway a few miles, well, what the hell, no time to shop around, so we dropped it there. I didn't want to wait around so the tow truck guy took me to Lite Rail and I rode that home, logged in, commenced the work activities and I still haven't showered, oog.

Jeep (they say) needs an alternator and I don't really doubt them as the thing is old and I can't remember when I last replaced that particular item but I don't look forward to the labor charges. Normally I would do that myself but normally no longer includes taking time out of aggressive design schedules to work on cars. To write long pointless blog posts, perhaps. But I realized this morning that late nights and unexpected side trips are indeed the norm these days, and they are welcome. The old normal was to sleep eight per night and work fifty per week and fix cars on the weekends, but I like the new normal better.