Had dinner last night with my daughters, my son-in-law, one of my granddaughters and Mitzi. The restaurant was right next door to a Whit's custard, so dessert was on the menu as well. Enjoyed seeing them all together. We ate at a restaurant in Atlantic Beach in an area of town known as "the corner." It was formerly Ocean 60, but it's an Italian restaurant now. In any event, I dread going down there because parking is nigh-on impossible. They implemented paid parking to try and alleviate the situation by keeping people from going to the beach and taking a parking place all day.
We began our second orbit when we noticed a car backing out on the left side of the street. I turned on my left blinker but there was a pickup truck headed the other way and I thought he would snag the spot first. He slowed, but he didn't pull in.
We were puzzled, but as we approached we saw that it was an "EV Charging Only" space, and guess who drives a plug-in hybrid? Woo-hoo!
Not only was the parking essentially "free." (I got a text from ChargePoint that the city begins charging $2.00/hour for the space after the first three hours.) When we left, the RAV4 was fully charged, and it only cost $1.65!
Normally, that round-trip would have been all electric, but we had to pick up and drop off my youngest daughter, so the extra mileage made it right at the ragged edge of our battery-only range. With the charge, we did the whole thing in EV mode with battery to spare when we got home.
After last night's large dinner and ice cream dessert, I didn't exactly feel like getting up at 0500 and walking. But I did and I'm glad.
While I was sleeping, Amazon delivered my "new to me" Makita DMP181ZX high-pressure inflator. I usually have to pump up the bicycle tires every couple of days and I have a compressor, but it makes an awful racket. The bicycle pumps work fine, and I know I need the exercise. But when we were on the road to New York a few years ago, we had a leaking tire. We'd stop every couple of hours to change drivers and stretch our legs, part of Mitzi's pain management, and have to add some air to the tire. We got it fixed when we got to our destination, but it made me anxious having to always look for a gas station to pull into and hope that they had a working compressor.
I'll be bringing this thing along with us this trip. If we have to top off a tire, we can do it anywhere.
Anyway, got back from the walk, opened the box and stuck in a battery. Pumped up both my bike tires in no time and it's much quieter than the compressor, and much easier than futzing with the bicycle pump. I was playing with the info screen on the RAV4 yesterday, and noticed that it reported one of the tires down about three pounds. So I'll top that off this morning before I head out to my dentist appointment.
If I'm looking at a Makita tool, I'll watch for an Amazon Warehouse sale. It only saves about 10%, which is what I could save at Home Depot, but Home Depot has it listed for $10 more than the Amazon retail price, so I still saved $10. I can't imagine why anyone would have returned it, it looks band new and all the little accessory fittings were present. Maybe they didn't like that you have to screw on the valve connector.
Later this week I should receive a 10" Makita 18v chainsaw. Also a Warehouse buy. It's not something I'm likely to use very often (if ever), but it's the kind of thing that when you need one, you probably really need one. And it's hurricane season. I don't think I'd need anything larger than 10". And if I did, we're probably in more trouble than some downed limbs. I have a bow saw and used it a couple of months ago when Mitzi wanted to remove a couple of cypress trees she'd mistakenly planted too close to the house. Between my little Fiskars hatchet and the bow saw, we got them down, but it was a lot of work.
Anyway, fools and their money and all that.
Originally posted at Nice Marmot 07:18 Monday, 10 June 2024