Well the RV place isn’t a good fit and I’m low on cordless tool battery power. The gentleman at In and Out Door Shop, whose neighbor used to be Tim (who is Tim, where is he and why does Zeke care??) was nice enough to let me charge two.

Getting dropped by the RV place and now no Tim sure seems to be adding up to me doing the wiring. Most is straight forward; I don’t know about wiring something to the ignition though. I still need to check on the current solenoid actually: maybe it is already wired correctly. I don’t have a way of crimping 2 gauge wire, though perhaps I can use the bash it technique. If I forgo the isolator replacement it is a non issue actually, so that’s what I’ll do.

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Zeke gets a lot of requests for, basically, how to be more like Zeke. Noble goal. For starters, here’s how you eat when you’re working full throttle on a project. Off the top of my head, as a for instance, say you’re traveling in a bus and putting in a pair of 215 ah 6v batteries in a small golden school bus in a national forest 10 miles outside of Flagstaff.

Back to today’s chompies. Breakfast is coffee and a thick slice of the last of that terrific bread with thick coats of almond butter and the Full Belly Farm’s great strawberry jam (same as I gave to my door making friend who powered up the batteries); snack at 5 is a chocolate sea salt Rx Bar; supper is a can of Trader Joe’s sardines which are the only ones not needing doctoring up to be palatable and a bowl of oats and raisins; dessert is raisins, marshmallows, chocolate and more almond butter. Maximum effort towards the battery install and a willingness to make do.

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Back to Tim. I mean my new friend Tim….. what a secuitous path to noon tomorrow. Here’s how it went: on Thursday I went to Northern Arizona Solar, which referred me to Buddy’s Welding and RV. The former’s lithium proposal was at a minimum $1600 = too much and the latter offered a $300 flooded lead acid solution, said the plan was sound and explained how a battery isolator works (when the car is on the solenoid is open which makes the alternator see one big battery) but was too busy. On Friday I went to Camping World located on Route 66 by the way and was reminded why I steer clear of that place. Next door is another RV place and suddenly I had an appointment for Monday. Today, which is Monday, I show up and the guy says he can do it for $1500 in labor. The bus was but 3x that! As an alternative, he suggests I speak with Tim of Aspen Auto Electric. Upon arrival, a mechanic at another business tells me Tim’s gone. Moved. Used to be in that red building. In the back of my mind all this time the where I’m going to charge the cordless tool batteries riddle. Thats of course how I meet the door maker. And, after 2 charges at 30 minutes each, the mechanic gives out a shout as I’m saddling up to leave that Tim is here.