Fed Ex succeeded in getting the battery from the west coast to Detroit overnight. However, once it hit the Detroit suburbs, it stopped dead. On Monday, FedEx reported that they were swamped and couldn't manage to move a small box two miles.

On Tuesday, it was the same news.

By Tuesday afternoon, both MedPlus and my friend were ready to scream. They each found different suppliers that used different shipping systems and ordered batteries, again to be shipped "overnight."

On Wednesday, FedEx managed to deliver the first battery that had been ordered.

It was utterly useless. The battery had no charge and would not accept a charge.

This battery is a weird square thing that's apparently only used this device an some sort of high-end game controller. The gaming stores sell these batteries in pairs, to go with a pair of controllers.

My friend decided that a gaming store would probably have the battery in stock, and would move enough stock that it wouldn't be too old to function.

She won.

On Friday, that overnight delivery reached MedPlus, and the batteries were good. I haven't heard if the supplier the MedPlus folks tried has come through or not.

On Monday, the better batteries were installed, tested, and the machine was declared as happy as it would ever get. I got called just after lunch on Monday, so, I loaded Caz into the car and we tooled off to Detroit.

The techs showed me a printout of the machine passing 11 QA tests in a row, and demonstrated that there was a tiny leak in one membrane. The issue, per these guys, is that the machine came with six unused membranes.

But "Unused" is not the same as "New." After months (years?) of sitting on the shelf, the material had deteriorated slightly.

Just to be one final test, I took off a shoe and sock and put my best foot forward, and (assuming the machine is working) my bones are just fine.

On Tuesday, I once again loaded Caz into the car and we drove to Cleveland.

In Hybrid mode, my car has just about a 250 mile range. Caz, however, has about a 150 mile range. He was happy to snooze and look out the window for just about two hours, then he put his snout on my shoulder.

When I didn't pull right over, he moaned and crossed his legs. The moaning got louder and more insistant with each bump in the road.

His timing isn't too bad. He wants to pull over when the car has about 3/4 of a tank of gas. I'd normally run until it's almost empty, then fret and worry about whether or not I'll find a gas station before I'm stuck on the side of the road.

Caz counts as a furry pacifier.

Trying to coordinate arrivals when I'm leaving from Webster Church, MI and my friend is leaving from Webster, NY (a suburb of Rochester), was tricky.

I ended up arriving before the friend, so Caz and I found a restaurant for lunch, then took a walk around the block in Cleveland.

There's a section of Cleveland known as AsiaTown. Years ago, this would have been ChinaTown, but nowadays we know the difference between Chinese, Korean and Thai, etc.

But, like the other Asian cities I've visited, AsiaTown has no concept of the square block. Caz and I walked around five sides of a long, narrow block, and got back to the restaurant to find my friend on the sidewalk looking up and down, trying to guess where I'd gone.

She was pretty sure she'd found my car - I identified it as covered in mud, and it was the only car in the parking lot with so much mud that she couldn't see the license plate to see if it was from Michigan.

She did see the doggie-hammock in the back seat, with no dog in it, so she guessed we were out for a walk.

She and I had a fun lunch at a Korean restaurant, and caught up on what's been going on in our lives since we last saw each other some 4 or 5 years ago when Carol and I drove to Maine for a family get-together.

Driving home, Caz made it as far as the Michigan border, and *NEEDED* to stop *NOW*.

There's a Marathon station just off US23 with a dog park. Caz had it all to himself - just him and every scent you could imagine. He ran out of marking fluid before he ran out of fence posts, but it was close.

The epilogue is that my friend tested the Achilles on Wednesday, and it failed to work. She refilled the water, turned it off, let it set, and tried it again, and it was happy.

She's tracked down some "new" membranes that might actually be new, and hopefully that will keep the machine running reliably.