It started like this - I was cleaning out my office. I took a bunch of huge, heavy, virtually-unloved and unwanted shop manuals to the Goodwill. I've been saving them for 30 years. Why? Because I wrote some of these books. But they are now worth less than nothing - and they take up space. So I loaded up 500 lbs worth of stuff to give away.
But then the car wouldn't start. And the battery is under all the stuff, in the back. So I charged the car for a while, started it up, and dropped all the books at the charity shop.
Then I drove by the store, returned some bottles, bought some dinner and went out to the car, which wouldn't start. Oh baloney! It was 1:16 pm. I started walking, and was home in half an hour.
It's supposed to start raining. That's nothing in most parts of the world, but here we haven't had measurable rain since May. No rain on my walk home, thankfully.
I got in my other car, with an ice chest in hand, and drove down and rescued my frozen food and milk. Food safely taken care of, whew!
I headed for the local Costco to buy a new battery. This was the second "failure to stay charged" and I'd already confirmed the alternator was working. So an hour later I was back at the grocery store parking lot, putting in the battery.
Here's the old one. Dead. But it still looks nice, as it's spent its whole life in a nice clean trunk.
I drove my good car home, put it away, put the food away, and so on. But my second car was back at the mall. Did I want to walk? Chance the rain? No.
I hopped on my bike for a purposeful ride back to get my car. Actually it was a nice little ride, as I got to do a section on nice smooth asphalt.
I carefully squeezed my bike into the back of my little truck, and headed for home. Mission accomplished. It was 3:16 pm. Elapsed time? Two hours. Expense to take those books to the Goodwill? $144.71 plus 20 miles worth of fuel. Convenience of having a bicycle? Priceless.
It's now 4:16 pm and it's pouring rain... and I'm enjoying a bit of Glenfiddich.
