Month: December 2024

Inspired by the Marx Brothers

~ Ken Mirvis ~ Leave a comment

I am not one of those people who can recite great comedy routines from memory. I do not know every bit of Monty Python’s hilarity. I almost never reference comics. But I do love good humor, especially when it perfectly captures reality.

In the email introducing my last entry, I gave a shout-out to Tom Papa’s “Well, I have” schtick. Now we have two in a row! For my money, the Marx Brothers were the funniest siblings ever on earth!

In Animal Crackers, Groucho plays Captain Spalding, the bumbling African explorer who once tried to shoot an elephant in his pajamas. (“Of course, in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa.”) Chico plays Emanuel Ravelli, a huckster musician who shows up to play at a fete hosted by the socialite Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont) one day before he was due.

The dialogue goes like this:

Mrs. Rittenhouse: You are one of the musicians? But you were not due until tomorrow.

Ravelli: Couldn’t come tomorrow. That’s too quick.

Captain Spalding: You’re lucky they didn’t come yesterday.

Ravelli: We were busy yesterday, but we charge just the same.

Captain Spalding: This is better than exploring! What do you fellows get an hour?

Ravelli: For playing, we get $10 an hour.

Captain Spalding: I see. What do you get for not playing?

Ravelli: $12 an hour.

Captain Spalding: Clip me off a piece of that.

Ravelli: Now, for rehearsing, we make a special rate. Thatsa $15 an hour.

Captain Spalding: That’s for rehearsing?

Ravelli: Thatsa for rehearsing.

Captain Spalding: And what do you get for not rehearsing?

Ravelli: You couldn’t afford it. You see, if we don’t rehearse, we don’t play, and if we don’t play, that runs into money.

That has been one of my favorite comedy routines for about sixty years. Thanks to this EV adventure, I finally understand the logic, and it is brilliant!

We stopped at a charger the other day owned by the City of Kearney, Nebraska. I plugged in, went through the App/Apple Pay abracadabra, and then sat back to grab a few quick kilowatts. The text message from the charger that came to my phone went something like this: The time you spend charging will cost $0.00 per hour. Once you are fully charged, the time you stay hooked up will cost $3.00 per hour.

There it is! The Marx Brothers in real life: For charging, you pay little to nothing. But for not charging … you can’t afford it! (BTW, I did pay for the electricity, but at a very reasonable rate.)

One of my biggest fears on this EV-charging adventure is that we will arrive at a charger. Some inconsiderate SOB will have a car hooked up and fully charged, but I cannot get to the charger. High “idle-time fees” are the answer. Charge a minimal break-even amount for the charging itself, and then break the bank for bogarting the charger once its work is done.

I expect we have a new Marx-Brothers-inspired business model here: provide an essential product for free and charge exorbitant rates for not using it. I am smelling fame and fortune with this one. Anybody interested in investing?

Poltergeist X 2

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 1 Comment

Our usual scout-the-room, jawbone-the-desk-clerk motel-finding practices are long-gone on this trip. We need overnight charging!

Fortunately, a bunch of motel-finding websites, like Hotels.com, Expedia.com, and AAA.com, have EV-charging-station filters. Finding a motel with an EV charger isn’t very hard …. as long as the chargers work and fit your car.

Best Westerns along our route have had lots of chargers. Luckily, we have lots of Best Western points thanks to a credit card promotion and a few hundred dollars-worth of Best Western travel cards I bought at a steep discount to raise money for my daughter’s chorus. As long as we can stay in decent Best Westerns for free and they have chargers, we are good.

We stopped at our first Best Western in Bentleyville, Pennsylvania. It met all of the criteria. We ate supper and went to bed. (How’s that for a good travel adventure?)

Rebecca and I have traveled A LOT. We have stayed in tons of hotels and motels. Neither of us has ever been awakened by a phantom television that comes on by itself in the middle of the night. But that is just what happened in Bentleyville.

At 3:00 AM, I awoke to a loud episode of Seinfeld on the TV. It just came on. No trigger; no nothing. I turned it off and went back to sleep. Ten minutes later, it happened again. It happened the third time around 3:40. I felt pretty smug when I yanked the plug, but the damage had been done. I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon.

Seven-plus decades of travel. I’ve been awakened plenty of times by pre-set alarm clocks; loud TVs; drunks, fights, and parties; and, of course, way-too-loud hanky panky in the next room. But this was the first time I had ever been awakened by a rogue TV.

In the morning, Jessica, the fantastic desk clerk, listened to my tale of woe and promptly returned my money.

All’s well that ends well. I was a little tired but at least the room didn’t cost anything.

That was Bentleyville.

Two nights later, we stopped at the Best Western in Morton, Illinois. It too fit the bill, even though it had the distinction of having the smallest bathroom ever. (And just in case you are interested, Morton, east of Peoria, is the “Pumpkin Capital of the World.” The Nestle’s plant – two blocks from the Best Western – processes and packs 85% of the world’s canned pumpkin. That’s a lot of freakin’ pumpkin!!!!)

At 2:00 AM, I awoke to a bizarre noise. The TV had no picture, but it seemed to have sound. It must have been our next-door neighbor with the sound turned up too loud. I listened a while hoping I was dreaming then called the front desk to ask them to have our neighbor turn down the volume. But the telephone receiver didn’t work. I could hear the clerk; the clerk couldn’t hear me. I hung up. The clerk called me back. The receiver still didn’t work. By now, Rebecca and I were both awake, totally pissed at the inconsiderate SOB in the next room. I had the hotel number written on a slip of paper. I called it from my cell phone and asked the clerk to please have the neighbor turn down the TV. Then I realized I had given the clerk the wrong room number. When I called back, the clerk laughed. I had called the wrong motel. The noise continued. I really did not want to walk to the lobby.

Rebecca suggested that the sound might be coming from our TV. I clicked the clicker. Silence. For some crazy reason, our TV had half-turned-on. No picture and only a touch of sound. I never could get back to sleep.

In the morning, with bleary eyes, I told the manager what had happened. Once again, I had my money refunded apologetically. I gratefully accepted. There was some solace in not having to pay for yet another night of minimal sleep.

It was weird enough the first time a TV came on randomly in the middle of the night. But twice? Both at Best Westerns? At almost exactly the same time? Somebody has got to be pranking us. 

We stayed at another Best Western the next day in Ottumwa, Iowa and slept through the night. Maybe the spell is broken.

(And just in case you are interested in yet another ridiculous factoid, according to Wikipedia, Ottumwa has been “The Video Game Capital of the World” since 1982 and is home to the IVGHoF — the International Video Game Hall of Fame. I had no idea there were so many world capitals in the rural midwest.)

Dammit!!!!

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 2 Comments

I thought we were getting into the swing of this EV travel thing. Maybe; maybe not.

We did it all correctly: We had a travel distance we could manage in one charge. We had a motel lined up with a charger (the Best Western near Purdue in Lafayette, Indiana just in case you keep a file of places NOT to stay). We called the motel to be sure that the info we had was correct. (It was.) By the time we arrived in Lafayette, we had 30 miles of capacity left. No problem. We had a room with a charger all set.

The hotel guy was almost right: They did indeed have an available charger. He just neglected to tell me that it wasn’t working, and I had not asked. 

There we were: 30 miles of capacity remaining, in the middle of freaking nowhere late on Saturday afternoon. So, I called the Nissan dealer. Yes! They had a charger. The guy on the phone told me that the manager had a key so we could get a charge at no cost. Five miles later, we are down to 25 miles of capacity. My heart was pounding.

The guys at the dealership were (pardon my language) assholes. They had two high speed chargers, but we couldn’t use them. They had one Level 2 pay-for-it charger (that would require 15 hours for us to charge). Everything else was just out of their control. (They were open for two more hours then closed all day Sunday.)

They told us that the nearby Walmart with four high-speed chargers would be the right option for us. Off we went. Two of the Walmart chargers were out of commission, and the other two had long lines.

Once again, I started looking for motels with chargers. Great! There was a Residence Inn. Having learned my lesson, I called with specific questions: Yes! They had ample chargers and they worked, but they were only for Teslas. Crap! (Note to self: Spend whatever it takes to have a full array of Tesla-to-Nissan adapters!)

We had one last option: the Doubletree. I called. I asked. All was good. We went. I plugged in. It worked. We made it. We checked in: $50 more than we wanted to pay, but Mo was charged by morning.

We took a load of stuff to the room then came back out for a few more things. There was another EV, a Chevy Bolt, parked next to us … but with no available charger. I like being a nice guy, but I was not about to move for someone else. I told the desk clerk that my car will be charged at 5:00 AM. I will move it then, but not before.

All we need is more infrastructure. Please ask the incoming Trump administration for some leadership on this issue. I’d appreciate it. 

Cheap and Easy So Far … but No False Sense of Security

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 2 Comments

I hope we have not experienced a calm before the storm, but I fear we might have!

We are nearing the end of our first week on the road, and we’ve travelled about 1,000 miles. The trip has been easy, gorgeous and chill, all on back roads laced with stone walls, beautiful mountains, nifty villages, plenty of manicured farms, and, not unexpectedly, a mind-blowing number of Trump signs. 

Interestingly, the Trump signs pretty much disappeared in the 60-mile stretch between Columbus, Ohio and Dayton, Ohio. In the center of that stretch sits Springfield, Ohio, a small-ish town with a rich immigrant population that was recently made famous by both Trump and Vance for their ravings about the Haitian immigrants eating their pets. We made a point of stopping there to try to get a sense of the place; we walked around the local Kroger supermarket for a while and engaged in some friendly banter. Yes, the people are more darkly hued than in the surrounding towns, and yes, they do have accents and appear to be less well off than others, but they were all extremely nice.  Just sayin’.  Trump won the county by 30 percentage points, so the electorate was no different from other places, but the visible, in-your-face Trump-ness was absent. I have no explanation; only observations.

But this blog entry is not about politics, flags, or yard signs. It is about keeping an EV charged and running. Our first few days, I fear, provided a false sense of ease and security. Chargers were plentiful and mostly free. Our first 800 miles cost just $15 thanks to motels with free overnight charging and really nice Nissan dealers who let us plug into their high-speed chargers.  

As we move west from the comfortable “woke-ness” of the east coast, the chargers get scarcer, the distances longer, and the cost, higher.  So far, the drive has been less costly than gasoline-powered travel. Now that we are entering Indiana, though … followed by southern Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska … I expect the cost and hassle to rise, perhaps by a lot.

Up until now, we have taken the straightest possible route that follows the AAA-map dotted highways, the scenic roads. That strategy is ending. Now, our goal is just to stay charged, regardless of time, cost, and distance. Running out of juice would really suck!

And the other great uncertainty, in addition to the location of charging stations and time required to charge, is the effect of cold. The last few days have been sub-freezing. Our battery capacity has fallen from 270 miles on a charge to 240 to 210. Tomorrow, we start seeing temps in the 40s and 50s again. What will the effect be? I’ll let you know. All I know for now is that I don’t want to go more than about 120 miles without a charge.

Our totally chill, relaxing drive will either stay that way … or it won’t. Stay tuned.

Three Clicks Got Dorothy Home

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 1 Comment

Dorothy only needed three clicks to get home.  We needed five.

Just before Thanksgiving, we headed from home in Vermont to home in Boston for the holiday. This time, I had the mid-trip charging situation a little more under control … or so I thought.

Midway through the drive, we stopped in White River Junction for a charge. White River has a couple of options, so we figured we’d be safe. I pulled into the Mobil Station, drove all the way around it, and never saw the chargers that were supposed to be there.

No problem. I could see the Chevy dealership up the road that also has a charger.  Off we went for our first (of what I expect will be many) dealership charges. The people were nice. The charging was easy. We sat and played a game of cribbage while we waited. (Rebecca beat me, dammit.)

The battery charged almost to the point we needed, then it just stopped. We wasted about a half hour thinking it was still working, but apparently it wasn’t. The lady at the dealership said that happens sometimes. (Note to self: Make sure things keep working.)

We still needed a bit more charge to get to Boston worry-free. I asked about the chargers that were supposed to be at the Mobil Station. They are there, she explained, but in another parking lot behind the station. No wonder I couldn’t find them the first time.

We pulled up to finish the charge. This time I was a pro at using ChargePoint chargers, so no more lost credit card fiascos. We grabbed a bite to eat then came out to leave.

Techno Side Note: Level 3 EV chargers look a lot like gas pumps and nozzles. The similarities stop there. Instead of a rubber hose, EV charging cables are about 50% larger in diameter and are filled with very densely packed wires. They are heavy, and in winter (and maybe in summer; I just don’t know yet), they are stiff and hard to maneuver. They carry up to 350 kV of DC electricity. That is a lot of juice! The plug, which looks a lot like a gas pump nozzle, needs to be wrestled to get it to line up with the charging outlet in the car. The whole operation is not really hard, but it takes real work, at least for a novice.

When we returned to the now-charged car, the plug was stuck. I didn’t know how hard to wrestle with it. I surely didn’t want to break anything, but it just wasn’t coming out. I punched and punched and punched the little release button. It clicked responsively but nothing budged.

So, I did what I am getting used to doing: I called the lady at ChargePoint. I think I got the same lady who taught me to use my credit card properly a few weeks earlier: sweet and knowledgeable with a very heavy accent who asked way too many unnecessary questions.

She instructed me to lock the car and close the windows, then click the “unlock” button on the key fob five times. Five clicks later, the charging plug lifted gently from its nest, and we were headed home. A new lesson learned.

Dorothy ain’t got nothing on us. We both made it home. I wonder how many more lesson-learned moments await us.