We awoke to a 430am sunrise, well, luckily a bit after the sunrise, and promptly packed our tent and setup our work station. I had two meetings which went on without any problems. The MarCom team also provided us with a large power-bank that helped keep us all charged up. Besides that, we had ample outlets in the van to charge our devices over the previous drive. Thimm also had a few meetings, and in general, we were thrilled with how easy and well the experience of working the entire day outside was. With the workday in our back pocket, we packed up and got ready to drive the remaining 30 minutes to Rondane.
That is… until we tried to start the van.
We left the doors open the entire time we were working, as often we’d go in and out for this or that, and we also had a phone plugged in here or there. Apparently, instead of using the powerful hybrid battery to charge these devices, it uses the completely separate 12v starter battery. And apparently, there is no dedicated reserve charge to ensure that the car can still start. So this means that some combination our phones and the doors being opened drained the battery, and left us stranded halfway up a mountain on a Friday evening. We could have probably rolled down the hill, and started in motion, but of course, the parking brake was electric too, and the doors, well, those didn’t close anymore either.
No problem though, we quickly found someone who would come give us a quick jump, as the manual clearly said it could not be done by another car, as you would do traditionally, this would be much too much voltage for the little starter battery. He arrived in about 30 minutes, meanwhile we found that we would be covered by the insurance we had up to 100 euro, thumbs up!
The man arrived, literally took out a little battery charger, clipped it, pushed a button, and we were good to go. I counted about 22 seconds, and you know since I took off the battery cover myself - easily over half of the work - I was also able to haggle a bit with him on the price and get it well under our covered amount. ;)
It’s aliiiive! On we go!