Fog

It came down solid this morning, smooth curls acquiring shape as they leaned over the cliff.  Nothing to do with little cat feet.  More like gray blind pythons nosing their way.  From the solid nest above, flicking tongues slid tenderly across the cliff, searching.  It was the omnipresent unseen made precisely visible, the exact edges of a temperature gradient flowing down to taste the topmost branches of a pine tree, resting there a moment, then moving on.
 
The sun rose murky over the mountain, like fresh snow against the sky. It was a broad dim glow, revealing nothing. 

I opened the window a bit to hear the river.  The chill came in.  It was good to be warm in bed with a modest sense of dread, watching white glow flow thickly through the trees. It was like the memory of a childhood not my own.  Like Hansel and Gretel.

I got up and turned the heater on.  By the time I opened the door, the river had vanished.  But you could feel it there, thick and real as muscles moving under a shirt. 

Am I going out in that?  Moisture beaded on the inside of the open door.  I thought about it. 

Then I did.

Patience Tester

Let’s get something straight right from the start.  Mr. Internet says if you really want to precisely keep track of your RV batteries, you need one of these:

http://www.xantrex.com/power-products/power-accessories/linklite-battery-monitor.aspx

If you get it from Amazon, by the time you get the connection kit and pay tax, it will run you close to $400. Then you have to install it.

I didn’t do that.  I used a cheap voltage tester and an even cheaper hydrometer.  And I had success.

I also ended up with a lot of figures that I don’t particularly trust.  I asked Miss Calculate to look them over, but she declined.  She just tossed that adorable red curl back up on her forehead, and said “I don’t do fudge.  If you want fudge, try the ladies down at St. Olaf’s, on Saint’s Day.”

But I’ve come to believe that any discussion of battery charging involves plenty of fudge.  And the more precision you get, the less accuracy you are likely to have.  I do not mean any of my figures are intentionally false.  It’s just that there are so many variables – in battery type and construction, in temperature, phantom drains, timing, surface charge, connection – that it is hard to know what the figures actually tell you about the deep innards of your batteries. Fudge factors tend to cancel out conclusions.

I have never tried the Xantrex Linklite, nor am I likely to.  I just don’t trust precision in these matters.  Your mileage may differ, and in any case there is a comfort in numbers appearing on a pretty display.  They just seem so trustworthy.  Besides, they wouldn’t put it out on the Internet if it weren't true.

Voltage Testers, as a class, should be ashamed of themselves.  They pretend to tell you things that they do not know.  In that they are the very model  of the iconic Internet maven.  In a practical sense, the readings are almost information free.  Okay, if your reading falls below 11.9V, you probably need to charge up your battery.  But if it reads 12.7V, that doesn’t mean you should stop.  At 12.7V, one battery may run all your gadgets for 2 hours.  Another may do so for 2 days. 

So what are these readings good for?  When the news is bad in every way, voltage testers can give you a hint that is so.  But they won’t tell you when happy days are here again, or how to get there.  Voltage testers are for people who value a false sense of security.

The battery hydrometer, on the other hand, is a simple tool that yields good results, but they are the devil to use.  People just don’t like how easy it is to get that icky sulfuric acid all over the place.  The hydrometer is not precise, because after all it is measuring the progress of ever shifting chemical reactions.  It gives you a range of results, best read as “green, white, or red”.  And it is frustrating to use because an accurate result means lots of waiting for chemistry to settle down, and having to isolate the batteries during measurement.

Who has time for that?  On the other hand, what else you got to do?

Let’s face it.  The battery hydrometer is nasty business.  No instant gratification like with that wonderful Voltage Tester.  And all the hydrometer reads is specific gravity.  That’s all.  But that’s important, because a low specific gravity means you have mostly water in your electrolyte, and a high specific gravity means you have mostly acid.

And acid is what makes it all work.

When I started this trip, my 5 year old golf cart batteries tested right up there at 12.7 Volts.  And way down in the red on the hydrometer.  That means I couldn’t get much work out of them.  Effectively, they were on life support.

These were big batteries.  And they were acting like small ones. 

As I explained in an earlier report, the lead plates had become sulfated, and thus taken out of action.  But it isn’t a matter of just adding more acid.  The answer is to apply large charging voltages over a considerable length of time, and thus force that dead sulfate off the lead plates and back into the surrounding fluid – thereby getting back the acid your batteries started with when they were new.  Or some of it, anyway.

Whew.  Enough ancient history.

So here’s what happened in my little experiment last week with desulfation. There were 4 sessions, about a day apart.  Each time I charged the batteries up with the PD 4645 converter/charger until the automatic routine tried to “taper off” from 14.4V to 13.6V.  Then I used the “Charge Wizard” button to force the converter back to 14.4V for the duration of the session. 

The sessions were 2,4,4, and 2 hours long.  After each session I did a hydrometer test.  I did it the same way each time, in a manner that suited convenience rather than accuracy.  I did not disconnect the batteries for the test, but I did shut down all but phantom loads and let the batteries rest 30 minutes after charging.  I did it this way because what I was after was not the numbers, but rather the change in the readings over time.

The results over 5 days were entirely and consistently positive.  On Friday, July 19, I left the batteries charging for 21 hours, plugged into house current and letting the auto regime run its course.  Nonetheless, the next morning the hydrometer was still slightly in the red, though the individual cells were consistent across both batteries.

On Saturday night and Sunday morning, I did the desulfation routine for a total of 6 hours.  Afterward, the hydrometer reading was low but firmly in the white.  After each of the following three sessions the reading rose steadily through the white and into the green.  After the last session the readings for both batteries were at the very top of the green, and equal for all cells.

Success!  And in the nick of time, because I was getting really tired of running the generator.  This would have been a lot easier and less annoying to accomplish back home. 

Nonetheless, I am pleased.  Before, every day I would charge to 12.7V, and end up the next morning with 11.9V.  After the last desulfation, the next morning the reading was 12.44V.  I did no charging that day.  The morning after that, after almost two days of use, the reading was 12.23V.  I changed nothing in my usual routine of use.  That I was aware of (fudge factor).

So I seem to have gotten back 2 new batteries, which can last at least two days between charges.  And all it took was the PD 4645 converter, a $5 hydrometer, and a $7 voltage tester. 

Well.  It also took a degree of patience, a quality not everyone ascribes to me.  It is rather a relief I don’t need to gin up any more of it for this purpose.  Or even talk about it much any more. 

Whew.  At last, everything just works.



PS:

Please remember I was doing this with Golf Cart batteries.  These are heavy duty numbers, able to take a lot of abuse.  If you hook up a 10A dumb charger in boost mode to a cheap car or motorcycle battery and walk away for a day, you may really wish you had not done that. AGM batteries might not take it well, as easy outgassing is a critical part of the scheme.

You must watch what you are doing, especially if you don’t have the PD 4645 to watch out for you and shut things down when the batteries get hot or dry out.  So don’t do that.

All that can happen with some batteries, according to rumor, but I saw no sign of it with mine. There was benign gassing.  Nothing got hot.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

Lying Low

My little house is oddly on the level.  The hitch is down in the dirt.  The back end is 2 1/2 feet off the ground.  But not over half a bubble off, inside.  Me neither.

I got here last Friday, and managed to make it all the way to Tuesday before turning my right ankle getting out the door.  Not too bad, at first.  But then Wednesday I had to test the dang thing by going after ice cream up in Granite.  By the time I got out of the car and in the door of the Sage Café I was limping like the guy in Gunsmoke.  Then while I was spooning up Pralines N’ Cream and commenting on the rain with the waitress, there was BAM!  BAM! BAM!  BAM! – four distinct reports – sounding like they came from the road in front.  She froze, and then carefully peered out the front windows.

“Sounded like firearms, “ I said, helpfully.

“Yeah.  Crazy Ed was just here.  You saw him.'”

Actually, I hadn’t.  Ice cream has that effect on me.  As there was no answering fusillade, I went on spooning it up.  She kept looking out the window. 

“Tell you what,” I said.  “I’m unable to run in my present condition.  So if he comes back, you scurry out the back, and I’ll just sit here looking vulnerable.”

She chuckled. 

“O, I reckon he’ll be back, eventually.”

After surviving the drive-by, and hobbling around camp a bit, I decided in a flash of brilliance that the way to treat this foot problem was to lace it up tight and go hiking up a rough trail.  Maybe clamber down the bluff to the river a couple of times.  That’ll teach it.  Thursday night, way into the wee hours, I woke up with my foot on fire.  And knew past doubt the next couple of days were going to be murder.

I wouldn’t have got anywhere without my Arkansas Thump Stick.  This is the Mammy Yokum model.  I am well aware that thump sticks up in Arkansas tend to be a lot heavier than this flimsy noodle thing, at least for grown men.  But it was good enough to lean on, and got me outside to do the one thing I absolutely had to do Wednesday:  transfer 26 gallons of fresh water from the truck to the trailer.  After that I went back to bed and whimpered.

I hate that, going backwards once I’ve been arguably up for the day.  I also hate taking pain pills, which tend to make me goofy.  But when your foot can’t bear the weight of a single sheet on it, sometimes you are led to modify your opinions. 

I’m a terrible patient.  And a worse nurse.  No patience at all.

Over a long life, I have managed to survive 6 years of jumping out of airplanes, a decade or so of fairly reckless downhill and cross-country skiing, and 30 years working at the Fire Department.  But all those things have conspired to evolve from the delicate bones and sinews of my feet and ankles a regular mess that holds together about as well as a large helping of hashbrowns.

It’s never been bad enough to operate on.  In my opinion.  But this happens every year or two.  Like Chubby Checker, I just “do the twist”.  And go down.  The most important thing I’ve learned – or should have - is to stay off it and it will get better.  Preferably while I am comatose.  So with the help of Tramadol, I slept the clock around Thursday, just about. And stayed as level as I could.

It’s Friday now.  I can get a shoe on it, if I’m careful.  It hurts, but doesn’t glow in the dark and throb like it did yesterday.  And as if this weren’t enough, I just had the oddest conversation with the BLM park manager.  First time I’d seen him, and I’ve been here a week.  He came by to find out how many days of the 14 I had left, so I told him.  He asked if I was panning, and I said no, just enjoying the weather and trying to get back to where I could walk again. 

And then out of the blue he warned me about John Hart, the guy who has the mining claim on the sandy S curve of the river here.  The one who tacked up the flashy mustard yellow notice in my campsite.  “He has strong opinions about what people can and can’t do on and around his claim,” he said.  “Last year we had the Sheriff down here because he was waving his pistol at some fishermen.”

“Can he tell them not to fish on his claim?”

“No.”

“Did he get straightened out?”

The guy shook his head, looked off, and said in a level wistful voice, “Yeah, he got straightened out.”

After he left I got to wondering why he felt the need to confide in me about this.  Was it like a Bear Warning?  Am I in imminent danger of being shot for camping in a designated site?  Am I to be done in after all this time by some guy with a crazed notion of his hobby rights?

Well, just lovely. 

As a practical matter, it takes a coward and a bully to wave a gun at an unarmed fisherman.  And it only takes a single man of low character to put a chill in paradise.  I hope he doesn’t come up here, waving his gun around.  My foot hurts, and I’m not in the mood to put up with him.

Stone Cold Cabin

This little bit of BLM bliss I’ve been staying at is designated on maps as The Stone Cabin Recreational Site.  It’s on the Arkansas River just below Clear Creek dam, near the town of Granite.

I took a hike late Wednesday afternoon to go look at this cabin.  I don’t know anything about it.  There’s no sign or plaque.  If I find out more later, I’ll add it here.  But it was interesting just as a piece of home-made adaptive architecture.  I don’t think it’s ancient.  Too much glass for one thing, both in windows and doors.  And the free standing fireplace has a modern look.  If I had to guess, maybe the 1930s or 40s.  Just a little more ancient than me.

While I was having pancakes at the ongoing food fight that is The Evergreen Café in Buena Vista the other day, I asked one of the flying waitresses what it was like around here in winter.  She stopped cold, so to speak, and looked me in the eye.  “Empty.  Bleak.  Freezing.”  Then she was off and away again.

And there you have the environment that shaped the Stone Cabin.  Built back into a hillside on the west.  Bedroom on the north, near the fireplace.  Entry on the south.

A raised level berm for a front yard in front of the long porch.  Beyond that, a slope down to the river.





Large masonry arms reach out to shelter the porches at both ends from wind and snow.





A neat little cold storage room that pushes back into the weather at the rear of the house, accessible at near waist height through wooden doors inside.  In the summer, I imagine this fellow had some sort of cooling arrangement with the river.






The main misstep seems to be with the flooring.  He laid what look like 2x4 joists right on the ground, and of course everything rotted.

There you have it.  Year round living in the Rockies, not all that long ago.  Heck, this would still make somebody a nice summer cabin, with a little fix-up.

Right now I'm living in something a lot smaller.