Today, among the last-minute shopping for our trip, I decided to try to pick up another battery for my Nokia 770. I figured, with a twelve-hour flight ahead of us, I might as well make use of that time by working on a novel that I've started. Unfortunately, the battery won't last nearly that long (the official limit is four hours, but that's with the wireless in use; I've managed to get nearly eight hours out of it when I was just reading ebooks on it). Then again, using a Bluetooth keyboard for text entry would probably use more juice, so a second battery would be just the ticket.

One review of the 770 said that it used the same battery as a particular Nokia cellphone, so I assumed it would be a fairly easy part to obtain. I was wrong. I tried several cellular stores, as well as Radio Shack, all to no avail. Karen suggested that perhaps Tallahassee had an all-battery store (like Tampa has), so I searched the Net and found one.

It looked like an auto mechanic's shop; indeed, most of it was given over to car batteries. The employees, clustered in the auto bay, looked like extras from Deliverance. In the main shop, where I had entered, there were a few shelves of other batteries: lawnmowers, laptops, cellphones. They had a couple of Nokia batteries, but not the one I needed. I figured, what the heck, it couldn't hurt to ask.

Yellow CAUTION tape separated the shop from the mechanics employees; eventually, one ambled over to wait on me. I asked for the battery by model number: Nokia BP-5L. "Is that for a cellphone?" he asked.

"Well, I'm told it is, but I'll be putting it into a PDA."

He flipped through his catalog. "Nokia don't make no PDA," he informed me.

"I assure you, they do," I said.

He gestured to his catalog. "No, they don't. Nokia don't make no PDAs." He showed me the page — which listed PDA batteries by PDA manufacturer — as though it were the ultimate authority.

I pulled out the 770 and showed it to him, the name NOKIA prominently displayed on the cover.

"Well, this say they don't," he said sullenly. "But it is from 2004, so maybe your PDA's new."

"Yes, it is," I allowed. "But I'm told they also use the same battery in one of their phones."

"Do you know what model it is?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't."

He shook his head sadly. "Then I can't tell you what battery it uses."

"It's the BP-5L," I said. I had started the conversation with the model number. I opened up the back of the 770, pulled out the battery and showed it to him.

"Naw, we don't have that one," he said. "We're an aftermarket supplier; we don't get the new styles of batteries for a couple years after they come out, 'cause usually nobody needs 'em that quick."

Sigh.