Also butler to batteries and chickens and horses…

Since it seemed likely to rain yesterday evening and today, I brought the bike’s battery and charger back to the Lair with me. I don’t expect this to be regular practice since I’m currently storing the bike in Ian’s Cave and he’s got lots of unused juice, but the manual is almost ominously adamant about not leaving the battery plugged into the charger longer than necessary and it doesn’t look as though I’ll want to be doing a lot of extra back-and-forthing today.

And it’s taking a surprisingly long time. That picture took forever to load given the poor cell signal in the weather; it’s now quarter to nine and the charger has been plugged in for nearly 3 hours this morning, plus probably that long yesterday afternoon.

It’s taking a noticeable amount of power…

…but nothing my system seems to find distressing even in the gloom. If we had any real sunshine I don’t believe it would even notice the extra load.

Whoops, even as I typed the previous sentence the charger signaled a full charge…

…and the charger backed off…

So that’s good to know. I think the bike must have been shipped with the battery already partially charged, which would make sense. It only took about four hours to charge it the first time, closer to six this time.

BTW, it sure is nice to have decent rain gear after all these years. Last year somebody sent me a rain suit – the pants only work if I take everything off my belt but the coat is fine. And recently somebody sent me this from my wishlist…

…a comically wide-brimmed waterproof hat. Which I wore seriously for the first time this morning when I went to take care of chickens.

Unfortunately it appears I’ll probably use it again at noon. While I was waiting for pictures to load I got a phone call from Neighbor L. D is back in the hospital all of a sudden, we don’t know yet how serious it is but I’ll be going out to take care of their dogs and horses today at noon.