Trike Trolling Again

Trike Track Today
Jacque made the strong suggestion to get out and about on the trike today since it's been a week or so since she has been able to ride, and her trick knees work much better with less pain when she rides more or less regularly.  So out the door we went.
Except.....  The battery was dead in the Explorer when I tried to start it today.... dead after sitting idle for 3 or 4 days unattended.  Batteries should last longer than that.  So I start Jacque's Subaru to jump-start the Explorer (The Explorer has the only trike rack available).  It sounded very whiney when the engine started, so I opened the hood to see if I could detect which belt-driven doohickey might be making all that noise.  Since she just returned in it from a trip to California, it has been noticably worse.  It most certainly seemed to be the alternator making a horrible extra-bad whine.  So.  I used it to jump-start the Explorer and added a Subaru alternator to our list of needful things. 
We went on our typical mail-run trike ride with no interesting disasters;  just the usual small cluster of admirers for the dogs and the trike.  As well as the fact my battery started dying within the first 100 yards of riding, which seemed to act like a loose wire until I remembered this Lithium self protecting battery shuts itself off when its voltage drops too low.... I switched to my backup AA Ni-Cad pack, which hasn't been charged in over a month, meaning it was very low on juice too but didn't drop out even below 11 volts, so the system worked... mostly.  I let the GPS and APRS tracker run but turned off  the voice radio to conserve power.
When we arrived back at the Explorer we decided to go on out to the Autozone store in Edgewood to get the aforementioned alternator.  Of course they didn't have one in  stock, but while we were there I had them test my Explorer battery, and wouldn't ya know, it tested bad with a dead cell.  It was an Autozone Duralast battery with a few prorated months left on it so I was able to buy the currently $140 priced battery for sixty-something.  While I was removing the old battery for the trade-in, the positive battery clamp disintegrated, ka-ploop.  So I had to buy a new battery clamp; which of course I already had at least 3 of at home, but home was 12 miles away and we needed the battery NOW so we could continue driving.
As is often the case, troubles seem to come in groups.
Went on into Albuquerque, the SECOND autozone we stopped at was out of stock ("We sold 4 Subaru alternators so far today!") so we went to the store on Eubank which still had one and forked over the 200 bucks for the alternator and serpentine belt to go with it.... I'll get 45  or so bucks for the old alternator when I bring it in.
Beginning Battery Voltage:  12.9        Ending Voltage: 12.7 (First batt, then it died)
Beginning Battery Voltage:  10.6        Ending Voltage: 9.3 (Nicad backup)
Lowest Temp  48 F      Highest Temp:  63 F
Stats from the GPS: Total Miles:  4.14
Overall average speed            Moving Avg               Max Speed
  2.8 MPH                                5.8 MPH                    29.6 MPH
Total Trip time                       Moving Time             Stopped Time
1 hour 30 minutes                  42 mins  36 secs         47 mins 25 secs