Adaptive Curmudgeon

[First, a complaint. I tried to write a post earlier. Sadly, it veered into politics. Regardless of good intentions, my post went off the rails. It’s not my fault. Nor is it your fault. Current politics is a black hole of mental ruin and we didn’t do it.

It’s impossible to wisely consider what is reason free. Are we to discuss adult things, like stoic philosophy or the calculus of economy, in a world of hyperventilating toddlers? The clownworld ass-rodeo of current politics is decrepit, debased, degraded, demented, corrupt, and weird. It behaves in blindingly illogical ways. It’s so extreme that it’s hard to assemble words to address the true form of the world.

I wish to ponder in depth, not merely point and shriek. Yet politics is shielded by walls of emotional incontinence. A tsunami of childlike thinking leaves no room for adults. I’m rendered (temporarily) speechless. It’s amazing really! I have a decent imagination, I ought to be able to bridge the gap between the unicorn dipshits and the solid earth. Fer crissake, I write about talking squirrels with disco based mind control! Yet I can’t do it. The unreality event horizon that is politics in 2024 (or if you will 2020 part 4) cannot be breached.

I drafted a post. I deep sixed it. I tried again. It too was inadequate. Rationality in an irrational environment is elusive.

Finally, I gave up. I wrote this post about tractors and snowplows. What can I say? If you gaze long into an abyss of dipshits, the abyss of dipshits will gaze into you.]

I live in East Bumfuk nowhere. The local supply of goods and services is scant. We all need snow removal but it’s not like there’s a “dial 1-800-plowsno or www.clearmydriveway.com” solution. I meet people who cannot believe there are places like this. I assure you it’s true.

Over the years I’ve tried everything. The obvious solution was hiring guys with trucks. My favorite was a big green truck with a utility box. Sometimes the guy showed up, sometimes he didn’t. One winter the same truck showed up but with a different driver every time. One time the truck showed up when there was the merest dusting of snow. I think the driver desperately needed alimony money. I’d dealt with his ex-wife and know why he got divorced! I paid in full even though I didn’t need a plow. This one time had no bearing on whether he would show up the next snowfall (even if summoned by phone). I assume some sort of clan used the plow truck as a sort of “communal property”? Possibly, whoever actually got out of bed that day got to use it. Who knows who maintained it or registered it? I wonder if it was insured? The last time I saw it, the truck was driven by someone’s grandpa. (I think the proximate owner was in jail.) After that, I never saw the truck again. I assume it no longer ran. Nobody answered the phone anymore. As far as I know, the truck and the clan that collectively owned it, just disappeared.

Trying a different approach, I bought a snowblower. I beat it to death. It was a good machine but I forced it into a job 10 times what any sane person would do with a snowthrower. I did get a lot of exercise.

Another time I hired a guy with a bitchin huge UTV. I think he was trying to justify the fancy toy to his wife? He did a good job but had no heat and was shivering every time I saw him. He lasted a winter and then disappeared.

For a few years I used my 60 year old antique tractor. Like the UTV guy I nearly froze to death. Being an antique, the tractor started or didn’t start based on a roll of the dice. I reverted to my ATV, which always started. But trying to clear the driveway with a little 325 cc ATV is like draining the ocean with a teaspoon. It was even colder than the antique tractor too.

I found another truck guy and he was a solid worker. Sadly, I watched him beat a good new truck to absolute smithereens in one season. I don’t know how much he earned pushing snow, but I know trucks ain’t cheap. He vanished too. I hope he managed to pay off his wreckage on wheels.

One winter, I got bronchitis. You never know what causes such things but freezing my ass off battling snow didn’t help. It was time to stop fiddle-farting around. I gave up on a core value and financed a heated cab with a tractor under it. I paid extra for the snowbucket. It was a game changer. The payments are brutal but the heat is a big deal. My problem is solved.

I still see plow trucks come and go. It’s a cycle. They last a few years slowly getting battered to death, then someone somewhere else buys a shiny new truck or perhaps resurrects a different heap. I’ve seen the same blade mounted on different generations of truck too. On a harsh winter plow guys clean up, on a mild winter they barely get by. A heap might limp for years or die in a week. One blown transmission on a new truck eats the season’s earnings.

Meanwhile, I plow my own driveway. It’s convenient to have my own equipment and tractors seem generally tougher than trucks. It’s still work but it’s not miserably cold.

This winter I haven’t had any big blizzards. I’m not complaining! Sometimes it snows so constantly that you need to plow 3 or 4 times in one week. Even with a good tractor, each effort takes anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple hours. I have a “day job” and a blizzard consumes all of my “spare time” until the weather shifts.

My tractor is several years old now. I’m still freaked out I bought a thing that expensive but it’s “broke in” enough that I don’t get it serviced at the stealership. I begged a friendly neighborhood mechanic to do an oil change and he did a fine job. While he was swapping the oil, I was drinking his garage beer and sitting on his garage couch. Good service and free beer! What more could a man want?

His garage is a bit of a gathering place. The bar from Cheers was never so welcoming. While I drank, a bunch of fellows showed up. One of many topics was snowplowing. This year’s mild weather means every dollar invested in a plow truck is “wasted” (same could be said of my tractor). This devolved into talking shit about every brand. Chevies are gay. Fords fall apart. Dodges have an unstable front end like Dolly Parton. The usual.

Plowing is hard. Trucks have more complex steering geometry every year. They’re not built to be used as bulldozers. They do it of course, but the delicate balance between paying too much to buy a new one and servicing a dying old one is a knife edge. A winter without blizzards throws a monkey wrench into the whole profit / loss calculations.

Blue city dweebs shit on rural people as clueless rubes. They’re utterly wrong! An urban dweller may bitch about municipal services while wearing pajamas but what has he actually done? Rednecks “invest” unknowable maintenance to gain unpredictable returns using machines of uncertain lifespan. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But they definitely play the game.

My tractor does the job so well I sort of forgot the annual struggle to hire a plow guy. I think one guy (let’s call him Frank) is the main resource. The rumor was that Frank said he’d be “in it” as long as his Ford held up, and then he was “moving the fuck out”. He’s earned his retirement. Think about it, for a rural man bitching about municipal services rather than carrying on the fight is “relaxation” while for an urban man that’s the whole battle. I wish Frank well.

When Frank packs his shit and bails, nobody knows who’ll be the next plow guy. With three beers in my gut and a forth in my hand. I had an idea. I looked at my tractor, still dripping oil from the drainplug. Why not?

It’s more or less ready for that job. To become “tractor plow guy” I’d need two upgrades; a flashing light on the roof so I don’t get clobbered on the road and a radio to kill the boredom. Beyond that? Time.

Right now I don’t have time. Day job and all that. But the future is uncertain. A few years ago I was almost fired over a vaccine that doesn’t provide immunity. Given the mess that is this election season, what comes next? In a world where Texas and the Feds are inches from playing Fort Sumter part 2, who among us knows what the future holds. Frank’s Ford might outlast the union. Anything could happen. But it will always snow.

I decided to prep the tractor as a “backup”. I certainly wouldn’t buy a tractor trying to make a profit, but if I already have it… why not? Maybe in a few years Frank will be bitching about the heat in Florida? Maybe at the same time I’ll be free enough to put in 50 hours a week during blizzards? It could happen.

I haven’t purchased flashing lights yet but I did purchase a radio. I bought the radio specifically wired to “plug and play” with my tractor’s cab (which is pre-wired with a specific plug). Amazon charged about ¼ of what the dealer wanted. I have a Kioti. If I had a Massey-Ferguson or a Kubota or any brand I could probably order the same radio with that brand’s plug installed. The sole exception might be John Deere. (John Deere is the driving force behind “right to repair” lawsuits and legislation. Like Apple, they’re nice products with built in anti-competitive proprietary structures. On a green machine who knows if a simple radio swap would require firmware only the dealer can access? John Deere is also like Apple in that it seems to cost about double what you’d pay for an equivalent “off brand”.)

The radio took a while to arrive. I assume the plug was installed “as ordered”? I’ll probably for the summer before I open the dash and add the radio.

This whole “vignette” got me to thinking about resilience. Getting snow plowed is a bitch but Frank has things covered for now. Half a dozen rednecks with half a dozen trucks in half a dozen various conditions might take up the torch when he leaves. Or maybe another fancy UTV will emerge. Or maybe yours truly will throw his hat in the ring. Whether it’s worth it to me (or anyone else) depends on things like inflation and diesel prices. No city bureaucracy can be as flexible (or colorful) as the local people. It seems like chaos but it becomes a form of resiliency.

My truck has two 12v batteries in series to make 24V. I know everyone is rushing to the keyboard to tell me I can work around that but I’ll stop ya’ right there. I decided to make it independent of the truck itself. After all, if I want to heat a tent or whatnot it can’t be hardwired to the truck. Also, I’m reluctant to unnecessarily draw power from the thing that is supposed to get me home. The truck doesn’t have a radio. (It did but that’s gone too.)

I wanted to power the heater with something like a Jackery Explorer 1000 but that’s not going to work for me.

(Note: I don’t own one of these. So don’t think I’m linking to Amazon because I’m recommending it. I lust after one, but I can’t vouch for it. The reason I went to Amazon is because I read the specifications in detail and it’s not up to snuff for the heater.)

The Vevor heater, and most like it (I think) draws 15 amps during the brief start up phase. Then it drops precipitously. The cool sexy power stations that people buy for camping seem to top out at 10 amps in 12v DC. That’s just how it goes.

Ironically, if you have a plain old stupid 12v deep cycle battery, you can pull 15 amps no problem. This is where some redneck with an electric trolling motor on his fishing boat has an advantage over a hipster who remotely charges his drone. Who knew.

Lucky for me, I’m a stupid redneck who tried an electric trolling motor on his homemade (!) sailboat. The battery is long dead but I still have the battery box. My battery box is the “deluxe” type. It has external terminals, a cigarette lighter port, and a battery tester. A fancy box will cost you about $50 (or did before inflation). My battery box is buried in my garage but here’s a photo of an equivalent box from Amazon.

It’s funny that a deep cycle in a box is better than a fancy power station. But it saves me money! I figure $50 (for the box, but really $0 because I own it) and a deep cycle 12V (who knows how much they cost in the Bidenverse but they used to be about $120). That’ll do what a $1000(!) power station can’t. I’ve seen various YouTubers complain that their camping power stations are too weak to handle the start cycle so I know the specifications matter.

I wanted to test it on AC. So I bought an AC to DC power supply. I didn’t really need this but I’m a HAM. A HAM is always needing another power supply. Most HAM power supplies top out at 10 amps. You’ve been warned. I purchased this:

This funky gadget is a Ham Radio Power Supply Analog DC Regulated 13.8V Fixed Output 30A Designed for Communication Equipment. (Don’t blame me, I don’t make up these names.) This was taken as the furnace was running, see that it’s pulling just over 8 amps? Most of the time the furnace is that low or even lower, but it did peak somewhere around 12 amps during start up. This is further evidence that the sexy power station would trip a breaker even though a plain old battery would be fine.

The point is, the power supply can plug into 120v AC and provide with all the 12v DC you’ll need. It’s enough to run enough radio equipment to get you put on a list. It’s enough for two (!) Vevor heaters. I’ll find a use for it long after the heater has been bolted into the truck.

My photo sucks, here’s one from Amazon. Notice that it has a cigarette lighter outlet and it says “Max 10A”? That’s because getting more than 10A in a cigarette lighter is not standard. That’s why people trying to run diesel heaters (at least some of which need more like 15 amps during start up) off a cigarette lighter get pissed off.

The back of the object is where the real power terminals live. You’ve got 30 amps on tap back there. Also, this little critter is smaller than it looks. It’s pretty sleek actually.

I wanted to be able to plug in and unplug the heater. I had a high amp 12V plug I got for a different project. It looks like this.

I took a million photos while I was setting it up but the photos are on another hard drive. Suffice to say, I put one plug end on the heater and made pigtails from the other end that hook to the AC/DC power supply OR a 12v deep cycle battery box. (I tested that the ring terminals fit.)

In case you’re wondering, I could plug the fancy AC to DC power supply into the AC port of a power station and that would almost certainly work. Turning battery power (inherently DC) to AC with a power station, just to go back to DC with a power supply… that would work. But it’s also an abomination.

The last part is not the least. It’s exhaust. I’m still working on it. For testing I just jammed it out of my garage door. I was impressed, once it’s warmed up and running, there’s hardly any exhaust. The exhaust is the silvery tube. It gets dang hot! The black cylinder is the air input for the combustion chamber. That stays cool. AIr intake for the heat is a vent at the back of the machine. Hot air output is at the front of the machine.

Combustion air and heat air are two different things. There’s no crossover. Properly vented, it won’t smell like exhaust and it won’t kill you off.

This is what my “testbed” looks like:

I’m not done yet, but I’ve got most of the pieces of the puzzle. The only thing holding me back is an (ironically) unheated garage. Wish me luck.

My 4×4 truck has no heat. No worries. Heat’s not rocket science and I was far more concerned with complex stuff like locking differentials and shit. Also, I’m open to unusual solutions…

C’mon… isn’t that photo bad ass?

Anyway, I mentioned that my truck isn’t yet rebuilt enough for winter fun. “…it doesn’t have heat. I don’t mean the canvas top and the ungasketed windows are drafty, I mean it’s utterly 100% unheated. The components that once did that are long gone. There is no insulation anywhere and no heat at all. In winter it’s like riding in a vibrating refrigerated steel box.”

I got several comments about how to plumb into the vehicle’s coolant lines and work up a heater. I get it but that’s not my plan. Since my truck has no heat and all of the parts that I’d need are gone I have a blank slate. The truck’s cab is tabula rasa baby! My plan is to install a diesel furnace.

Now hear me out…

You see that? It’s a VEVOR 8KW Diesel Heater, Diesel Heater All in One with Remote Control and LCD Screen.

IT’S GLORIOUS!

I bought it for myself as a Christmas present. It’s not installed yet but I did some preliminary tinkering. I know the thing works. I was pleased with its performance. It even has a remote and has things like a thermostat.

I really like this idea. There’s thinking outside the box and there’s drop kicking that damn box into the cheap seats. A diesel heater is NOTHING LIKE a regular car’s heater. In my mind, it’s better.

There are pros and cons. Pro:

• A diesel heater cranks out heat like a boss. My truck’s heater (even when new) sucked. Rebuilding or replacing it with basically the same thing isn’t going to give me the blast furnace, camp on a frozen lake in the middle of January because you roll that way, heat. I fired up the heater for a test run in my garage and it rocks!
• A diesel heater doesn’t get its BTUs from “waste heat” in the vehicle’s engine coolant system. Ever waited while a stone cold car took forever to generate heat to defrost the windshield? During testing I got full throttle heat out of the 8KW Vevor in less than a minute. My old truck might take 20 minutes to warm up like that.
• A diesel heater, being unrelated to the truck’s engine can make heat even if the engine is shut down. The sole limit is that it needs enough 12v juice to fire and run a small fan. Beyond that, it’ll run all day and all night without needing a truck at all.
• This is the the big pro: being unrelated to the truck, the heater could be removed from the truck and used elsewhere. Imagine some glorious future where I setup my super awesome winter tent and route furnace heat into it! Just let that idea roll around in your head for a while. Savor it. Be one with it. Grok the implications! That’s a big deal. Possibly the biggest of the big. If portable reliable externally vented heat doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, then you’ve never truly been cold.
• Being unrelated to the truck, the odds of losing heat AND engine simultaneously is vastly reduced. If I’m out in the freezing outback and smash a rock so hard I shove my truck’s driveline spline through the bell housing… well at least I’ve got heat. If the heater craps out… well at least I can drive home. This “redundancy” might same my ass someday.
• It’s relatively cheap. I left this for last because it’s hard to believe it. The heater, which is an “all in one” system set me back about 150 clams. It would be hard to create or rebuild a heating system that doesn’t cost a similar amount. That said, it’s not all about money. I’m more concerned with max heat with redundancy than the absolute cheapest solution.

Cons:

• It’s fueled by a small fuel tank. It’s 1.3 gallons and you can even use “farm diesel” but you’ll have to top it off. Forget and you’ve got no heat. I’m sure I’ll spill it all over the place every time I fill it up.
• It’s not “waste heat” so the fuel ain’t free. That said, I don’t care. Suppose you got stuck in a snowdrift and turned your engine off (to avoid carbon monoxide death) but ran your fancy furnace (which has a properly vented exhaust pipe) on high for 8 hours straight. If you had to pay $4 for a full night’s very strong and reliable heat, would you care? What about if it was heating your tent or ice shack all night? The little beast is pretty efficient. It burns supposedly between .04 and .16 gallons per hour. The literature says the tank capacity can run 8 hours at the maximum listed consumption setting. Because no sane human knows what these fractions of a gallon mean, I interpret it as between 1/3 and 1 1/3 pints per hour. For the American based alcoholics out there, it’ll burn less than two cans of shitty beer in volume for an hour on “blast furnace” mode. You’ll most certainly not run it that hard. I was messing around and the thermostat cycles on and off just like a house furnace. Also that dumb little lunchbox took a fair shot at heating my entire garage just during testing. Also, I’m not suggesting you drink diesel instead of shitty beer.
• The heater wants 12v, my truck is 24v. Bummer! This too can be handled but it ain’t plug and play.
• This is the big con: I need to route exhaust and power systems and output hoses and stuff like that. It’s not like you can just toss it in the back seat and turn it on.

Stay tuned for part 2.

I ordered a NOCO Genius 1 and it arrived in a few days. I installed it on my old ATV (or rather plugged it to the pigtails I’d already wired to its battery). It looks like this:

In my last post I mentioned I’d installed a NOCO GC002 X-Connect M6 Eyelet Terminal Accessory on the ATV’s battery. I’d bought that accessory a couple years ago and thought it was necessary. At the time I was trying to swap one maintainer to several machines. If you swap one maintainer to several machines you’re going to need extra pigtails (which I bought while bitching about the price). I forgot that each  NOCO Genius 1 comes with pigtails that are fine to be hooked directly to little (motorcycle/ATV/lawnmower) batteries but too small for big car sized batteries.

Given the cheap cost of the little 1 amp charger, I have no idea why I was going through gyrations trying to use multiple pigtails with one charger. Maybe inflation has changed the maintainer/battery cost ratio?

The pigtails (included with a NOCO Genius 1) have a fuse on the hot (red) side (fuse included), their proprietary plug (that fits all of the maintainers I’ve bought so I can swap maintainers at will), and alligator clips. The pigtails look like this:

Alligator clips work on any battery, but I remove them because I’m not a Neandertal. Just kidding. It just feels more civilized to install pigtails right to a battery so that’s what I prefer. That way I can plug in any Noco maintainer without opening the hood or anything.

The pigtails are designed to have the clips removed easily. Just remove the little screw. Since every maintainer has a set of alligator clips and I hate alligator clips (preferring pigtails) I have a pile of leftover alligator clips. I use them to close half eaten potato chip bags… which is the manliest of all potato chip bag clips. BTW: The clips are pretty well built, they’re not flimsy at all.

One other note, the clips for Noco’s maintainers are different than the clips for Noco’s jump starters. The former are pretty beefy, but the latter are much beefier. On the smallest jump starters, the clips are almost as big as the tiny battery itself; as if you’re planning to reanimate a freight train. I don’t complain because thick wires and clips make it work so very well with the high amp task of a jumpstart.

The drawback is that I have to carry jumpstart clips with the Noco Boost Sport GB20 battery pack that lives on my dirt bike. It’s not built to jump start the bike through the maintainer pigtail (though if ever got desperate I’d try it). The big “jump start” clips are an unavoidable extra few ounces I add to my two wheeled mule in the interest of being unstoppable.

Back to the topic at hand, the proprietary plug between the maintainer and the pigtails is idiot proof. One side is round and the other is a pentagon, you can’t plug it in “backwards”. The clip also has a little red lever that snaps the two sides together and holds everything tight while you abandon your beloved ATV/motorcycle for weeks or months at a time. The lever is big enough you can see it in dim light and it’s idiot proof enough you can plug it in while wearing mittens.

This is what the pigtail looks like hanging off a generic old ATV. Someday I’ll use zip ties to “clean up” the install but it was getting cold. I’ve got similar pigtails coming out from under seats or access panels on all of my motorcycles. They’ve ridden thousands of miles that way with no issues. There’s a little waterproof cap on the pigtail too.

Pics or it didn’t happen. Here’s the biggest baddest ATV of two decades ago when big and bad meant “it has 4×4 and a massive 325 cc motor”. I’m rather impressed how well the little ATV has held up.

In 2022 I decided to get my mechanical ducks in a row. I’m half-assing my way in that general direction. My machines and gear are/were a bit of menagerie. Most stuff is well used (over used?) and my budget is low so it’s slow going. Plus life is chaos.

Anyway I did some stuff in 2022 and more in spring 2023… then the world temporarily ended. Shit happens. And machines degrade while you’re otherwise occupied.

If you’re not dead you haven’t been defeated so I started moving forward again. To my great delight and relief I managed to start two long ignored machines (plus handled a routine happenstance).

The zeroth challenge was that Mrs. Curmudgeon’s car wouldn’t start. Her car really is a daily driver so that sucks! But it was darned cold out and the battery is long in the tooth. These things happen. It was -20 Fahrenheit (or maybe a little less). The little car just couldn’t fire up.

I keep a Noco Boost Sport GB20 battery pack with my dirt bike. I never leave home without it. I wandered into my stone cold garage and grabbed the device from where I’d strapped it to my bike. It started her car like a boss! I can’t overstate how impressed I am with these things! (I also use mine for camping. It can charge phones and my SpotX and an iPad or my shortwave radio. Also it’s a flashlight. Really nice piece of kit!)

I don’t use it on cars much. I was so impressed how easily it started a car that I went out and ordered a second Noco Boost GB20. This way I could put mine back with my bike and gift a new one to Mrs. Curmudgeon. I was prepared to buy a bigger unit for use with the car but Noco recommended the diminutive GB20 for “normal sized” cars (it won’t start my diesel truck I’m sure).

The story gets better. It came via Amazon a few days after I ordered it. I handed it to her but Mrs. Curmudgeon didn’t open the box. The very next day it dipped down below -20 again. As before her car was bricked. (I sense a new battery purchase in the near future.) Mrs. Curmudgeon was convinced you need a Y chromosome to operate anything involving a car battery. I assured her that unlike most of my gear, this one was easy to operate. I mean it. It’s stupid easy to operate and has a thousand safeguards. Heck, it’s almost cuddly! She clipped the thing to her car’s terminals and jump started her car with absolutely no drama. Those little battery packs are miraculous!

So now we have two, mine lives on my motorcycle and the other is in a regular car.

The first challenge was my old ATV. It was serviced in 2022 but time flies when you’re in the shit. It sat all winter from fall 2022 on. In spring 2023 I shamelessly raided it for the battery. No regrets, I needed the battery and I was broke. The poor thing sat unused (with the seat removed and everything) until this weekend. The battery had been taken off its temporary duty and had been sitting on a maintainer for at least 6 months. I rolled the ATV into a warm-ish place where it was 40 degrees instead of -20 and gave it a week to warm up.

I installed the battery and buttoned it up. I had no optimism it would start.

But it did! In a fit of joy, I tore off on a dirt road to “warm it up”. I wasn’t well dressed for a winter ATV excursion and promptly froze. I only went 4-5 miles. But that was enough to get everything up to operating temp. It’s running pretty darned well actually!

Back in the past, I’d parked it plum full of gas and that was the hint I’d shown some foresight. The gas hadn’t gone bad! I can only assume past Curmudgeon had the minimal intelligence to top it off with Stabil and non-oxygenated fuel. Nor were the carbs mucked up. Probably I’d run the carbs dry during “decommissioning”.

Damn it’s nice when past me doesn’t fuck over present me!

The second challenge was my old truck (sometimes I call it “Jeep-thing”). It’s an old 4×4 beast that I haven’t seen fit to unveil on my blog. It is a bad ass off road machine but it’s still in recovery after long neglect. One serious limit is that it doesn’t have heat. I don’t mean the canvas top and the ungasketed windows are drafty, I mean it’s utterly 100% unheated. The components that once did that are long gone. There is no insulation anywhere and no heat at all. In winter it’s like riding in a vibrating refrigerated steel box.

Patience old truck, your time will come again.

Anyway, it hasn’t been started since the beast playfully forced me to spend a weekend driving around in the dirt… back in October. (The story is here: My Truck Takes Me For A Walk, Parts 1, 2, 3.)

Without a battery maintainer, I feared the dual batteries were toast. But, and this was the second miracle of the weekend, it started!

I took it for a 20 mile jaunt. It ran like a top. I returned half frozen but grinning.

Enjoy every little bit of good luck. Then build on it.

I’m slowly improving my “fleet” of battery maintainers. You may think this is lame but it’s a major achievement to me. My personal battle against entropy starts with keeping batteries charged.

This will be the year I have maintainers on all of my motorcycles! I didn’t have one for my ATV but I will soon! In my garage I had a NOCO GC002 X-Connect M6 Eyelet Terminal Accessory. I bought it in 2022 and never got it installed. It’s a miracle I hadn’t lost it! (ATVs and motorcycles and lawnmowers have pipsqueak batteries. They need a smaller pigtail than things with “regular sized” batteries. All of the Noco stuff I’ve bought comes with the bigger pigtail. I have several stashed in my toolbox.)

Even though I had the pigtails I didn’t have another maintainer. I ordered a NOCO Genius 1. It’s a tiny spud of a maintainer but it’s plenty for a motorcycle or ATV. I haven’t tried the tiny Genius 1 on a car, it seems a little too small for that. (I have used Genius 10 on cars, and that works fine. I did have a Genius 10 malfunction after it got froze into a snowdrift and flooded in snowmelt many consecutive times. I don’t blame that on the device, the user (me) beat the shit out of it. ) A NOCO Genius 1 looks like this:

I put a NOCO Genius 1 on all my toys that sit unused all winter. When the ATV maintainer arrives I’ll have assembled a “fleet” of 3 NOCO Genius 1 devices and one battery tender. (The battery tender pigtails came pre-installed in the 1989 Pacific Coast 800 I bought in 2023. I didn’t feel like swapping to different pigtails so I just bought the right maintainer to go with the pigtails. It’s kind of a shame because it would look super cool to have 4 identical maintainers all lined up.)

But wait there’s more! I was on so much of a roll that I changed the oil in my tractor and generally gave it a minor service. The tractor has a block heater but had no maintainer. It’s a Kioti tractor and it is a bit cold blooded. I decided to go nuts and buy a maintainer for the tractor too. That’s a bigger battery and I use the tractor in the coldest weather. So I bought a Noco Genius 10:

It’s a little bigger than the tiny GB20 but a tractor needs a lot more grunt than a motorcycle or basic car.

I also learned to open the hood of my tractor when I park it. The tractor gets hot and melted snow runs down the hood. When you shut down that ice freezes the hood shut like it’s welded! Took me a few years to learn that! (I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out on day one but maybe I’m dumb.)

Between the block heater and the battery maintainer the tractor starts like a champ. On the other hand I replaced the tractor battery last summer, so it hasn’t been tested over time with an older battery.

So long as I’m on the topic, my Dodge has twin 12v batteries in parallel and I have an on board maintainer installed in the truck. I use it anytime it’s not particularly warm. I think it makes the batteries last longer too. I can’t remember the brand I installed, it wasn’t a Noco though.

Now I’m shopping for one last maintainer. My 4×4 truck has two 12v batteries in series making 24 volts total. I have no idea who sells a maintainer for a setup like that. If you know of one, shoot me a comment. Thanks.

My story of Project Daily Driver (2022) is here:

• Project Daily Driver / Gift From Past Me
• Project Daily Driver: Coming Apart At The Seams
• Project Daily Driver: Who Are You Calling An Antique?!?
• Project Daily Driver: Strange Observations In The Hinterlands
• Project Daily Driver: Pre-Paid Emergency Room

Note: I get tiny kickbacks if you buy from any link on my blog that goes to Amazon. It costs you nothing. But that’s not why I linked all that stuff. I really am impressed with Noco gadgets and I’m super stoked whenever winter doesn’t kill expensive batteries. I have good luck with Noco and battery maintainers in general are a good way to make my life easier.

One last note, “jump start” and “maintain” are two different things:

A “boost” or “battery pack” will jump start a dead car. That’s all it does. (OK fine I use mine for charging USB gadgets and as a flashlight, but it can’t “charge” a car battery.) The “boost” carries within it a battery with the energy to do jump start engines. It works wherever you are and you’ll feel smug and superior when you don’t have to beg someone to help you with jumper cables.

A “maintainer” won’t do jack shit if you’re off grid. It’s not for wilderness use. It’s plugged in at your house. It uses “shore power” (the AC power grid) to keep you car’s battery thawed and topped off. It’s not meant to jump start a dead anything. However, any functional battery on a maintainer will be more or less at peak performance for its age. It also takes a lot of stress off winter stretched batteries, I think they last longer if carefully “maintained”.

[I’m getting nowhere with wordpress, so here’s a fun distraction post.]

It’s a short list but there are some songs which I like but which also cause folks to break out in hives. Among them, is “Brand New Key”. I don’t care what anyone thinks, it’s sweet. Anyway, the artist “Melanie” has died and I’d like to honor her memory (and/or torture you with an earworm).

Comic geniuses “Kids in the Hall” seized upon “Brand New Key” as an ideal post-apocalypse torture:

Another song on my list is “Vehicle” by “Ides of March”. I think it’s a damn fine song with a rocking beat and lots of brass. Mrs. Curmudgeon says it’s a skeevy stalker’s anthem. Can it be both?

I contacted my hosting service:

“Can y’all help me hide or password protect some posts?”

“Your business is important to us. Type some shit so our bot can ignore you.”

“Open the pod bay doors HAL.”

“I’m afraid I can’t understand you.”

“I’ve got a fever and the only cure is more cowbell.”

“I’m afraid I can’t understand you.”

“You maniacs! You blew it all up! God damn you! Damn you all to hell!”

“Please give me a phone number so I can call you.”

“xxx-xxx-xxxx”

“We will call you in 24 hours.”

The next day the phone rang.

“This is the hosting service, ‘your ball are in our vice’. How can we help you today?”

“Can y’all help me hide or password protect some posts?”

“Sure, how many posts?”

“About 2,500.”

“Standby while I put in touch with a developer.”

“Sure thing dektol.”

“Hi, I’m a developer. What’s dektol?”

“I want to hide some posts. About 2,500 or so.”

“Glad to help. I can do that in a jiffy. It’ll be $165 a month.”

“The fuck you say?”

“$165 a month. Pretty good deal for unlimited support.”

“I’m a guy that writes stories about talking squirrels. $165 isn’t going to happen.”

“But sir it’s unlimited service. In fact…”

“You maniacs! You blew it all up! God damn you! Damn you all to hell!”

“Um…”

“Why don’t I hang up now?”

“OK, have a nice day.”

Standby while shit gets real. I’m reaching for a hard drive with a screwdriver and a pick axe. I’m sure this’ll work out fine.

[Warning: Nerd content and authorial navel gazing below.]

When I started my blog, I promised myself I might fret over things I write but I’d never spaz out over “content management”. I’ve done so. I’ve been so careful to avoid “content management” that I hate the term “content”.*

“Content” is the kind of vocabulary used by folks who can’t create but want to be “creation adjacent”. It emphasizes transmission over subject. It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes where the kid tries to float a fancy cover page past a teacher who’s seen it all. “Content” considers everything equal and beneath the importance of the technology delivering the message. The medium of transmission should never surpass in importance the thing being transmitted! The glorious prose of Shakespeare, a fruitcake recipe, and the shit some thug scrawls on the side of a boxcar with spraypaint… these are not the same.

Anyway, there’s intent and there’s reality. I held out for years but could avoid it no longer. I’ve been forced to address some behind the scenes maintenance. This cost me $65 in software and 3 hours in hassle… and more will follow. Ugh! (I also pay a couple hundred to “self-host”. It’s worth it to be out of the wordpress.org sandbox but freedom ain’t free.)

Partly this is just deferred maintenance. Partly it’s a little bit of paranoia. I’m starting to wonder how much of everything is being used to train LLMs (counterfactually called AI). More importantly, how much I can opt out? I don’t have issue with AI (so long as it gets kneecapped whenever it comes up with even the slightest hint of a novel response there’s no “I” to go with the “A”). I do have issue with my dumb little blog going into the vat that made Frankenstein’s monster .

So… many posts may disappear. Don’t worry. What is not seen is still on archive on my private hard drive. Unless I screwed up my efforts this weekend. Yikes! That’s a loss I’d regret! Presumably, it’s still there. Theoretically, I can unearth it at will. Likely all I’ve done is avoid feeding the gaping maw of a LLM… maybe.

This is a delicate operation best done by a skilled practitioner of wordpress programming. I’m self-taught and my teacher was lazy. I’m coming at the wordpress database like a maniac with an axe. The whole thing may blow up!

If it does, I’ll come back… probably. Just be patient.

Thanks.

A.C.

P.S. In case you’re wondering, this burst of maintenance is good news because it’s related to squirrels. I’ve hammered out about half of another chapter. I’m about 9,000 words into a two chapter 25,000+/- word final stretch. The exciting conclusion isn’t written but it exists in my pointy head. Soon, though don’t hold your breath because I mean weeks and months not days and hours, the whole story will be finished. Huzzah!

*When tapping your feet to a Jimi Hendrix solo you don’t emote over the FM radio that received it or the FM station that broadcast it. Who gives a shit whether your radio is AC powered, bolted into your car, or handheld? What matters is that big booming power chord 32 seconds into Voodoo Child (Slight Return)! In a society that gets excited about the fucking radio, listen to the song!

This isn’t my first rodeo. I was suited up like the Michelin Man. I had three layers of jacket, heavy boots, insulated overalls, fur bomber’s hat, choppers, etc… (Choppers are a variety of mitten that’s well suited to stupidly cold weather.) My pockets were crammed survival shit; two flashlights, matches, SpotX etc… Just as I left I realized the SpotX (which I thought I’d charged) had a dead battery. No worries. I had cell phone reception, wasn’t going far, and Mrs. Curmudgeon was literally waiting for me in an idling car.

I hiked away from the car but immediately slowed to a crawl. I was exhausted. And for no good reason! My bum ankle was making me limp. The dog (on a leash) was dragging my ass around. It was tough walking and everything was going wrong in small but disturbing ways.

Stumbling on a bum ankle in -10 degrees is nothing like zipping along with my dirt bike. Covering even the shortest distance took forever.

At least the dog was having a blast. There were deer tracks everywhere.

Eventually I decided I must be on the wrong trail. It was a big wide trail but there was no sign of ATV, hiker, or snowmobile. No sign of humans at all. I assume it’s a snowmobile highway when the snow’s deep but that’s not the case yet.

I veered west, took an adjunct trail, and popped out on the plowed road only ½ mile from the car. I could see the headlights. Uncharacteristically, I used the cell phone to ask Mrs. Curmudgeon to come get me rather than my usual habit of hiking all the way back. I felt like I’d hiked all day instead of just a few minutes.

In the warm car, I directed us down more roads. Left, right, straight, etc… It was all pretty well plowed. I found another trail crossing. Maybe this was the correct one? Presumably, I’d started on the wrong one just a few miles away.

I stepped out again. This time the dog was less eager. It was brutally cold. The dim January afternoon was fading to dim January dusk.

I trudged out into the trees; trying to compare the winter wonderland before my eyes to the campsite I’d found by dirtbike in 80 degree warmer temperatures. This section of forest was dead silent. No deer tracks. No rabbits. No birds flitting about. The sun’s true location was hidden in a cloudy sky but it was nearly sunset. As the general diffuse light faded, the temperature seemed to be dropping like a rock.

Like I said, this isn’t my first rodeo. I know all about woodcraft and caution. Every ten yards or so I’d stop and assess the situation. I couldn’t pinpoint why I was moving so slow but I acknowledged it. I had a mental checklist of the thousand things that could or had gone wrong. Nothing was going swimmingly but I wasn’t doomed yet. Nothing was out of my league… yet. However, I was disappointed in my weakness.

The campsite I sought is not hidden, nor is it far from the maintained road, but it eluded me. I found it hard to judge distance comparing a slow winter trudge, bootstep by increasingly heavy bootstep… to my zippy little dirtbike. I estimated I’d need to hike out ½ mile and return an equal distance; probably much less. Every time I stopped to rest it seemed like I’d only need a few hundred yards before I’d be right where I wanted. The hike wasn’t long. It should be easy peasy!

The campsite didn’t appear. I kept feeling like it was just around the next bend in the trail.

The sun had set. Most people are scared shitless to be alone in the dark. I’m not. I’ve hiked in the dark plenty of times. In the winter, when the snow is bright white and you’re on simple terrain, you can hike all night provided there’s the slightest hint of moonlight.

“The moon on the crest of the new fallen snow gave the luster of midday to objects below.” I quoted to my dog, who was starting to look concerned.

When I say “my dog” I really mean my wife’s dog. It’s a Great Pyrenees. She’s genetically built from the ground up to be a sheepherder’s guardian dog. Great Pyrenees don’t herd sheep, they kill predators. That’s literally their whole purpose. They’ll gladly take on a pack of wolves. They gleefully turn coyotes into chew toys. They’ll square off with a grizzly if they need to.

Yet genetics is only one part of the equation. There’s the matter of temperament. Our last dog (same breed) bonded with me. Like me, it was gruff and standoffish and walked around with an air of “get off my lawn”. It tolerated kids but wasn’t cuddly. It was very protective. Plumbers and electricians never went anywhere without me there to assure the dog they were allowed. The UPS truck was on it’s best behavior at our house. My dog was fiercely protective. It would have taken on a dragon if it thought I was threatened. For that matter, anyone who messed with my dog would personally experience retribution worse than that of John Wick. We were a good set. I miss my dog.

My wife’s dog is the absolute opposite and perfect for her. It’s a big white fluffy ball of love that likes belly scratches and car rides. She (the dog) is cuddly and sweet and lovable and an absolute joy. She’s the absolute perfect companion for my sweet lovely wife. One effect of this is that the dog is not a forest lurker like me. My wife’s sweet, fluffy, cuddly, pup is literally afraid of the dark. Dumbass that I am, I’d brought the dog into a dark foreboding forest.

The dog was looking at me as if I needed an intervention. “This has gone on quite enough! Return me to the warm car and give me a nice treat. This cold weather is hard on my toes and my fur is all covered snow; which is your fault. I’ve enjoyed our walk but you’re nuts. It’s time to go home!”

There was the slightest hint of a rustling in the trees. Almost certainly a deer, though I’d seen no tracks. It could be anything from a porcupine to a yeti.

The forest suddenly seemed “wolfy”. Make of that assessment what you will. I’m not afraid of wolves, but I’m not stupid about it. I wasn’t sure if my dog was protection against them or bait to bring them in. If anything happens to my wife’s beloved dog I’ll be in deep shit! Nor was I armed. Most of the time I’m the biggest bad ass in the forest. Top of the food chain. The absolute definition of the thing that shit that goes bump in the night runs away from! This night was different. I was not at peak performance. I was exhausted and limping and had the constitution of a butterfly.

I waited a minute or two in case my second wind came back. It didn’t. I felt ever so close to that campsite but the goal no longer mattered. I hiked back out. Slowly, deliberately, carefully. I could see well enough. It never occurred to me to use either of the flashlights I was carrying. No need. But I moved slow. My ankle was gimpy and it wouldn’t do to twist it worse.

Back at the car, the dog gleefully dove in the open door. It immediately fell asleep in the car’s heat. I complained that I was unrealistically winded and slumped in the seat as if I’d been in the forest for weeks instead of hours.

I’m convinced I was no more than 50 or 100 yards from the campsite. Sometimes 50 yards is too far. You gotta’ know that truth and make the right call when the time comes.

Epilogue:

The next day I was completely laid out. My hamstring had not gotten better with exercise as I’d hoped. It got much worse! My tooth was worse too.

A day later, I went to a dentist appointment only to have the dentist cancel on me! That pissed me right off.

The next day a different dentist said my teeth were fine. He said I’d misdiagnosed a sinus infection as tooth related. A few hours later a doctor concurred and set me up with antibiotics.

When meeting with the doctor she said “one of the symptoms is extreme lack of energy, how’d you miss that?” I related the story of a short hike that wore me out. She shook her head as if to say “it’s amazing guys like you survive”. She and the dog could probably trade stories about the hike.

I’m recuperating now. I think I won’t go hiking for a while. So, how was your weekend?

A.C.

…I paused and breathed deeply of the dark icy air. The gloom between the trees had taken on an aspect of its own; an almost physical presence. The silence was almost physical as well. It was the deeper kind of silence. Caged domesticated people scarcely know such silence exists. If fact, for them, it doesn’t. Your average person would sink into angst if this level of solitude were forced on them. In such conditions you must use your intellect to make up for your emotional mind. Neither panic nor wimp out nor ignore warning signs. There’s just not enough room for mistakes. You can’t play loose.

There were no animal tracks in the snow. Birds were silent. The sky was impenetrable. The sun a forgotten thing from an hour ago. It was blisteringly cold.

My dog looked at me as if to say “what now”? Something about the forest looked “wolfy”. I’m not sure what I was sensing there, I’ve never had issues with wolves. Was my hundred pound Great Pyrenees an allied warrior or a leashed creampuff?

What was the point? Why was I here?

In the immortal words of Kenny Rogers “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, and know when you you’re gonna’ freeze your fool ass off”.

To my dog’s immense relief, I bailed out.

Now, the rest of the story.

Early in the week, the weather was tame. I started thinking of taking a three day weekend off to winter camp. Why not? I’ve been good. I earned a reward. That was my plan.

My plan fell apart almost immediately. I spent all week trying to adapt with newer lesser plans. I’d wanted to drive a zillion miles to camp with a friend who was also hankering for a winter expedition. But I was just too fried for the drive. So I decided to camp solo closer to home. My truck tires aren’t great and the last few miles of the access route were sketchy. So I decided to take my Jeep which would easily handle the terrain. (It’s not actually a Jeep but it’s like a Jeep so that’s what I’ll call it for now.)

My Jeep has no heat and the temp dropped to -20 farenheit. So I decided to trailer my ATV with my heated truck to a nearby spot and ATV the last few miles. The ATV is dead so I rolled it into the heated (well it’s maybe 40 degrees) garage to see if I could bring it back on-line.

Challenge encountered, solution proposed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Meanwhile I had a toothache that wasn’t going away and I was low on energy. I skipped a trip to the gym to free up a little energy. That night I put my feet up on an old box, leaned back by the fire, and read a book. In my defense I kept trying to adapt, did nothing illogical, and was carefully practicing self care. It was a good book.

Saturday rolled around and I felt like I’d been trampled by wildebeests. Toothache, vaguely generalized headache, etc… Also, I’d dinged up my ankle when I put my feet up the night before. Age is weird. I’ve never gotten used to how I can completely jack the shit out of myself by “sleeping wrong” or “sitting incorrectly”. Mortality is a bitch!

Anyway, I canceled my campout. Too many uncertainties had piled up.

One uncertainty was the location of a dispersed campsite. It’s not super far from a main road but you have to know it’s there to find it. I found it by accident on a dirt bike trip last autumn. A few weeks later I managed to relocate it a second time with an afternoon Jeep trip (it was the last Jeep trip of the season and even then I about froze in the unheated cab).

I’d been there twice, but wasn’t 100% sure I could find it in the snow. I decided I’d just take a short hike from the plowed road to the campsite. There’s only ankle deep snow out there so I’d do it on foot. Mostly, I wanted a short hike to commune with nature and maybe stretch out my suffering ankle.

Mrs. Curmudgeon offered to be my ride. She’s a keeper! We drove on well plowed dirt roads to the spot I thought the trail crossed. I dimly remembered a tree bent just so and a few other things. For a variety of reasons we’d been delayed. I stepped into -10 weather just an hour before sunset…

Stay tuned for part 2.