Asphalt and battery
Monday February 17th 2014, 11:51 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

Hudson’s second day of walking and he was ready to be scooped up instead, my son says of when he snapped this today.

My backstory: the speeder who hit my car fourteen years ago severed the connections between the visual and balance centers of the brain and it makes it exceedingly difficult to walk in visually intense places; my left side collapses, my muscles go spastic and the slightest bumping-int0 sends me flying. The lupus made healing more difficult. I wasn’t epileptic–yet, warned the neurologist, but he told me I was very close to it and not to risk it walking around for long periods in loudly-colorized heavy-motion environments like Stitches. Sit.

So now, the batteries on the scooter didn’t seem to be holding a charge anymore. Increasingly over the last several years they’ve been problematic, and last year it seemed like I had to stop every few minutes and recharge for as long as I got to zip around after I did. (Hi, I’m Alison, do you mind if I borrow a plug in your booth for awhile and block your customers’ way in?) I didn’t see how it could manage this year at all.

It would be much better for lead-acid batteries if I used them all the time, but I don’t; in most of my life, I can manage with a cane.

So we finally took the scooter apart Friday night after planting that pear tree, as long as we were being productive and virtuous, to see what type of battery it was so that maybe we could simply finally ditch the old ones.

Uh, yeah. They’d ditched us first. They’d exploded.

We looked up the type and Richard found something that really appealed to him: a lithium-ion version. It would easily take ten pounds (!) off the weight of lifting that 90-lb scooter, they would last far longer, and when and how long you charged them vs how often you used them, all those issues would be over. They wouldn’t randomly explode if you left the chair plugged in all night.  (ahem)

But it was late Friday California time and the by-far most reasonably-priced place was closed for the weekend, today would be a holiday, and they were on East Coast time. But what could I lose. I sent off an email.

And got an email back Saturday! When they were all supposed to be off work.

It was not quite a sure thing in my mind till this morning when I checked my email, when, there it was, the order confirmed: two batteries, already FedExed. I would be good to go.

The guy at Starkpower.com hadn’t been sure I would want to fork over the second-day shipping charges for something that heavy, but hey, as long as we were in that deep. Their website wasn’t set up to deal with anything but the cheapest and slowest way here but he found out what it would cost and promised it could be done. I asked Richard if he was sure, and he was emphatic that he didn’t want me to be stranded by that chair anymore, he wanted me to be able to just go and enjoy Stitches and the Aquarium freely, year after foreseeable year to come with the much better and lighter and longer-lasting batteries and just not have to worry about it anymore. He’s a peach.

I cannot tell you how freeing it feels now, and just wait till this weekend!

And to Martin at Starkpower.com? You’re wonderful. Thank you so much.


7 Comments so far
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You go Martin! And now so do you Alison! And it seems Hudson as well!

Comment by Jody 02.18.14 @ 5:44 am

Yay! I’ll be there Saturday (and maybe a little bit on Friday afternoon). I hope I see you there! 🙂

Comment by (formerly) no-blog-rachel 02.18.14 @ 6:18 am

Wonderful!

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 02.18.14 @ 7:26 am

Well, at least you can fully understand how Hudson feels about this whole walking business.

Comment by LauraN 02.18.14 @ 11:28 am

Like I tell my daughter every day: there are still many good people out there yet. 🙂

Comment by Suzanne from Montreal 02.18.14 @ 2:18 pm

YAY! See you at Stitches! And, please don’t run me over in your excitement to get at wonderful fluffiness 🙂

Comment by Anne 02.19.14 @ 10:20 am

New batteries!?! Hooray! And super hooray for Martin at Starkpower. No stopping you now!

Comment by DebbieR 02.19.14 @ 9:39 pm



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