Last week, Rebecca and I embarked on our second shakedown adventure: A drive from home in Vermont to home in Boston, where we would have to charge up in route. I did my homework, creating a spreadsheet of every charging station along the way. I worked on that spreadsheet for hours. Then we stopped at a rest area to pee. I asked the attendant when he thought they would start installing charging stations at rest areas. He didn’t think that would happen because gas stations were already installing them. There were a few new chargers at the next exit, just a few miles away. My research had never turned them up.

“Great,” I thought, “let’s try them out even though we still have plenty of juice.” We arrived at the charging station five minutes before I had a scheduled Zoom call. We could charge up during my call and leave with enough juice to get to Boston.

But this charger did not accept credit cards. It only accepted payment through the ChargePoint app and a tap of the phone. I had already downloaded the app and put in a payment option, but apparently, I had not yet punched enough buttons.

So, we waited to try again until after my call. After the call, still no luck, so I called ChargePoint. The lady answered pretty quickly, but her accent was so strong that I could barely understand her, and the cold and wind did not help. Despite my inner urgings to stay calm, I was getting frustrated. After endless useless questions and identify checks, I re-entered my credit card information, got the information into “My Wallet,” and tapped the machine once again, this time successfully.

Mindless fool that I am, I laid my credit card on the hood. Then we sat for 15 or 20 minutes while “Mo” took on $10 worth of electricity. I unplugged, and off we went.

Everything worked great. We got good mileage. The drive was easy. The new Level 2 charger at our house worked perfectly. Then we went to a restaurant to pick up some supper. Oh crap! Where was my credit card? DUH! Wherever it blew off the damn hood!

While we waited for our food to arrive, I called the credit card company to cancel the card. No one had used it, so no problems. The new one is in the mail.

Of course, this was the card I use for all of my remote and on-line purchases, so I knew that my stupidity in leaving the card on the hood would cost me hours of work getting a new number into who-knows-how-many sites and apps.

My frustration was palpable. I hated the idea of those wasted hours at the computer and the inevitable one or two that I would neglect to do. I was really pissed at myself. Then the light bulb went off. I reached into my shirt pocket. There it was: the credit card. Instead of leaving it on the hood or putting it back in my wallet, I had mindlessly put it in my shirt pocket. The elapsed time between canceling the card and finding it could not have been a minute, but the deed had been done.

How many more times in this adventure will I multitask to the point of becoming forgetful? The count begins!