The plastic zip ties that held the battery in place on my son’s friend Mauro’s motorcycle were failing. He asked me if I had some he could use, and I sort of did, sort of didn’t, but in any case he clearly had no idea how to rig them as the previous person had. Nor did I.

I noted a mount for an obviously-missing bracket, from the back of the car grabbed some wood I had just salvaged from a friend’s remodeling project, cut a chunk, drilled a hole, put in a screw, and voilá!

The wood appeared to be made to order. Mauro laughed delightedly – imagine that, a gringo showing an Uruguayan how to fix things with nothing!