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.

A Thanksgiving Rant: We Are Not Doing the “Smart” Thing

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 3 Comments

Taking a long road trip in winter in a car with a range of 200 or so miles that takes real time to recharge in a landscape of limited chargers and minimal information (like lists of motels with chargers) really isn’t the smartest of choices.

EVs are perfect for short-trip driving: drive all day or all week on a charge, and then charge up again and keep doing it.  

For longer trips, plug-in hybrids make a lot more sense, at least they do from a traveling convenience point of view. Drive where you want and fill up when you need to. No hassles. Precious little to think about.

Rebecca and I are neither smart nor in search of traveling convenience. We are thirsty for adventure … and for doing everything in our very, very limited sphere of influence to make the world a better place.

Despite what this country’s incoming administration may espouse, climate change is real and one of its primary causes is the unbridled use of fossil fuels. Anyone who believes otherwise either has their head buried deeply in the sand or their brain stuck in the OFF position.  It’s not a matter of “ours versus theirs” science.  It is not a matter of belief.

I wonder if climate change “skeptics” also believe that their closed cars do not heat up to stifling temperatures in the summer sun.  The physics is the same: some substances trap heat from the sun and amplify it.  That is why plants can grow in greenhouses year-round and why cars get hotter than their surroundings in summer.  Greenhouses trap heat, and that includes the blanket of greenhouse gases above the surface of the earth.

These are not debatable matters. They just are.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas.  Period.  Fossil fuels contain carbon that stopped being recycled millions of years ago.  Burning those fuels releases that carbon, increasing the planet’s greenhouse gas blanket.  Period.

Petroleum has been and will continue to be a remarkable substance. It is chemically complex and has uses I cannot conceive of. It is way too important a resource to just burn up wantonly, especially when burning it is destroying our home.  

Burning petroleum is not destroying our planet: earth is in great shape and will continue to be so for millions of years. Instead, it is destroying our home: the sliver of earth that contains just the right climate to support human life, as well as a whole of bunch of other critters we share our home with.

Sure. We could be road tripping in our trusty old Ford or in a new hybrid that combines the best of EV and IC (internal combustion) technology. But we don’t want to. Burning petroleum is burning petroleum.  

Being the lifelong hypocrite that I am, I do continue to use some fossil fuels: I do not yet have an induction stove.  I still heat water with my very efficient on-demand gas water heater.  I still use gas for back up heating … on cold days when the heat pump cannot throw out enough. In Vermont I have a gas-fired stand-by generator so we don’t freeze when the power goes out in winter. I have an outboard motor boat that I truly love.  I still fly. I’m a long way from perfect.  Hell, I even still eat meat. But I want to make a difference. That is why I spend extra money for electricity to be sure my power is coming from a renewable source instead of something dirty and polluting.

Making a long road trip in an EV will be work. It will test our patience and our planning skills. But it will feel great to drive across the country without burning any gasoline

We are doing it because it will be fun and will be an adventure, not because it is smart. But mostly we are doing it for our grandchildren.  We want them to have a clean home to raise our great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.  We hope that this trip will help get us all a little closer to weaning ourselves from fossil fuels.

Continuing to exploit oil resources and develop oil-centric infrastructure is a misguided, tragic mistake. What a gift that we can do even a little to help us change course.

It’s Only a Credit Card. No Big Deal.

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 1 Comment

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!

Newbie EV Learning Moments

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 2 Comments

Within a week of taking possession of “Mo,” our Nissan Ariya EV, we took a family trip to New York City, driving to Albany and catching an Amtrak into the City. We figured we’d have plenty of time upon our return to Albany to find a charger, figure out how to work it, charge up, and get home. We were mostly right.

We started at the closest charging station. It was in a public parking garage that charged a $20 flat rate for some event that evening. In addition to the charging rates, we’d have to pay the extra $20 just to spend a few minutes at the charger. I am way too cheap to fall for that one. The next option was a few miles away, so we plugged the address into the GPS and off we went. Everything was as advertised, and the charger worked fine, but it was in a seriously sketchy part of town. We hung close, playing with knobs and buttons trying to figure out more of the inner workings of our new toy.

Once the dashboard showed that we had 100 miles of excess driving capacity to get home, we bolted.

LESSON: When the dashboard says 100 miles, don’t count on.

We had driven south on a flat 2-lane road, toodling along at 55 or 60 on a warm afternoon. “Mo’s” computer calculated the 100-mile margin based on that trip. We drove back north on a cold evening through big mountains on an Interstate … with no chargers nearby. We planted the cruise control at 75 and enjoyed the ride. Then I noticed the 100-mile margin beginning to disappear. Cold weather, high speeds, and mountain roads, we learned, suck a lot more electricity than warm, slow, and flat. By the time we got home, the dashboard was blinking red warning lights at me screaming that we only had 20 miles of battery capacity left.

I guess I’ve experienced plenty of times when the gas station I thought would appear around the next bend never materialized. Fortunately, we made it home safely, and if all goes well, we will not experience that sort of “Oh shit, what are we going to do?” moment again.

A New Adventure: Maybe the Best EV-er! 5,000+ Miles of Uncertainty

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 4 Comments

“Mo”

I had my last car for 10 reliable, maintenance-free, super comfortable years. I called him “Barney” for the first few years of his life because he was nothing special. Just an old Ford. Then, in St. Louis in 2017, as Rebecca and I were driving the length of the Mississippi River, we changed his name to “Mr. Bixby.” Horace Bixby was the riverboat captain who took the young cub pilot Sam Clemens under his wing and taught him the river. Mark Twain’s stories of Mr. Bixby in “Life on the Mississippi” are mesmerizing. His no-messing-around teaching style, his encyclopedic knowledge of the Mississippi, his civil war exploits, and his union organizing made him one of my heroes. Finding his headstone in the Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis became one of the high points of our trip. Mr. Bixby has been in 42 states and a lot of Canada. He’s never once acted up. Even with 160,000 miles under his belt, he’d do great on another road trip. But it’s time.

Like sailing ships, the steam engine, dial telephones, and black-and-white TVs, time is passing him by. He runs on gasoline, powered by an old-fashioned internal combustion engine. Imagine! In 2024!

Both Mr. Bixby’s

A few weeks ago, I signed a two-year lease on “Mo,” a brand-new all-electric Nissan Ariya. I still have Mr. Bixby. I can’t quite let go of him yet. He’s been a gem of a friend. But “Mo” has some serious “MoJo”! I wanted to name him after an aria. (He is, after all, an Ariya.) But my knowledge of opera is limited at best. As I struggled to think of an aria that would make a fitting name for a new car, I landed on two of my favorite operas (or one opera and one operetta, if you are a purist), “The Magic Flute” by Wolfgang Mozart and “Der Fledermaus,” by Johann Strauss. In the absence of a specific aria, I figured the composers would have to do. “MoJo” it would be; “Mo” for short.

”Mo” drives like a dream: comfy, peppy, and full of autonomous features like automatic lane control, windshield wipers that sense moisture, and high beams that never forget to switch off. When I drive past gas pumps, a snarky inside voice gloatingly whispers, “suckers.”

Now it is time to figure out if the world of 2024 is ready for an EV road trip … on back roads, acceding to our whims of the moment.

Here’s the plan: On December 14, our granddaughter Ella opens a show of four years of her art at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. On December 21, grandson Seff graduates from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln with a degree in horticulture. Plus, we have a brand-new great granddaughter in Omaha whom we have not yet met. The drive to Nebraska would normally take us five or six days. We will allow two weeks. “Mo” supposedly has a range of about 270 miles. I am dubious! We’ll be driving in winter at highway speeds. My goal will be to plan a route with chargers every 100 miles or so. That is easy in the densely populated east; it is harder in the farmlands of the high plains and the stubbornness of the deep south; and it is even harder in the wide-open expanses of the far west.

When we arrive at a charging station, it may be out of order. It may be in use. And who knows what else might go wrong! Regardless, we need to be prepared. In the worst case, we have AAA Plus, which gives us 100 miles of free towing … but a tow truck won’t do the job. We’d need a flatbed. Since there is no neutral gear on an EV (because there is no transmission), turning wheels always engage the motor, and since “Mo” is 4-wheel-drive, when a wheel turns, a motor turns. No more tow trucks for us.

Mostly, I suspect we will need lots of patience and a good sense of humor.

Finding charging stations, I am learning, is not so easy! Tesla has an extensive network of high-speed chargers, but they don’t work on other cars. One day, Tesla will adapt its chargers so they work on cars like “Mo,” but the change is coming slowly. We’re not there yet. Maybe next year. 

Then there’s the issue of charging speeds. Level 2 chargers work fine but take 5-10 hours to charge the batteries. That is fine for an overnight, but not a quick juice-up-and-go. Level 3 chargers will charge to 85% in about a half hour. Not bad if you have the right connector – a CCS in “Mo’s” case.

If I were a motel chain, I would install a charger at every property, advertise the hell out of it, and allow EV drivers to reserve a charger when they reserve their rooms. A few hotels and motels, I have learned, are on that trajectory, but it is still precious few. 

Google Maps is in on this adventure too. If you put a route into Google Maps (on your computer but not on your phone) and then hit the “EV Charging” tab, it will show a lot of the charging stations on the route … but not all of the charging stations by any matter of means.

I have also downloaded apps from different charging companies: “PlugShare,” “Electrify America,” “EVGo,” “ChargePoint,” “ChargeWay,” “ViaLynk,” “ChargeHub,” and “FLO.”

NEWS FLASH … QUESTION: How fast is this landscape changing? ANSWER: As I was writing the last three paragraphs, I got an email from Nissan. In that moment, they notified me that they had added a charging station mapping feature to the “My Nissan” app that combines all of the charging apps from the last paragraph. Nissan has done a bunch of the time-consuming work for me. Regardless, I am still planning on an adventure and allotting a lot more time than I would otherwise just to control frustration.

Stay tuned. You’ll get the skinny as it happens. If we indeed choose to go with EV instead of gas, I expect no shortage of adventures.


EPILOGUE: About 10 minutes ago, Rebecca and I decided to go for it!!! The only uncertainty now is a major winter storm along the route, and I expect that would trip us up regardless of vehicle.

So Long Old Friends. Rest In Peace.

~ Ken Mirvis ~ 2 Comments

On February 5, I wrote about my father’s silver dollars. He, along with three best friends, received them from one of the fathers for good luck before leaving for Europe in WWII. The father who gave them the coins gave each a second one upon their safe return. My father carried those coins until his death in 1979. I guarded them for a short while until someone broke into my car and stole them. I replaced them with a Liberty half and a Kennedy half. Like my dad’s silver dollars, the Liberty half wore flat, showing virtually no signs of being currency. The Kennedy half never wore at all and still clearly showed the mint date, 1967. I carried those coins with me every day … until Thursday, March 14, when they mysteriously and inexplicably disappeared.

I have no explanation for their disappearance. I put my pants on in the morning, reached into my front pocket, and they were gone. My folding money and car keys were there, only the coins vanished.

The theft of my father’s coins decades ago brought me to can’t-catch-my-breath tears. This disappearance didn’t. Instead, it feels cosmic and karmic, like the completion of some sort of circle. Thursday, March 14, would have been my father’s 108th birthday. I was in New Orleans –– by far my favorite city in the world –– with Rebecca, my brother Joe, and his partner, Marsharee, who has been a good friend for 53 years and who adored my father. Joe and Marsharee left that morning; it was the end of our time together. My father loved New Orleans too: he never stopped grinning when we sat together in gritty NOLA clubs listening to traditional jazz; he downed oysters on the half shell with the best of them; he visited me as an undergraduate every chance he got. At every JazzFest, his spirit visits me when I sit and listen to jazz at the Economy Hall stage and I get in a good, very loving cry.

I took my pants off before going to bed and put them back on in the morning. Somehow, in that span, the coins bolted, headed for some new home in New Orleans. Maybe I should be sad. Instead, I feel liberated. At 75, I have now shed another thing I don’t truly need. Instead of feeling a sense of loss, I feel a sense of completion. I did my job with those coins and my father’s memory. Now, something inexplicable has taken responsibility for them. I’ll think of them every time I put my hand in my pocket for the rest of my life, but I won’t miss them.

A Side Note
Domilise’s is a funky, hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop in Uptown New Orleans one block from the river. (At Annunciation and Bellecastle, in case you are visiting and want the best po-boy ever.) For years, one of my favorite sandwiches there was their hot pepper wiener … a spicy sausage of some unidentifiable origin. Upon returning one year, yearning for a hot pepper wiener po-boy, I learned that they, in the vernacular of New Orleans, “ain’t dere no more.” Domilise’s supplier stopped carrying them, and in their quest for quality, they could not find a replacement.

Domilise’s dealt with the loss in true New Orleans fashion: instead of removing the sandwich from the menu, they taped over “pepper weiner” and replaced it with this thought: “Rest in peace Pepper Weiner.” I reckon that sentiment has been on the menu in that form for 40 years or more. (And disregard all spelling discrepancies; it is New Orleans and it really doesn’t matter!)

I feel the same way about my half dollars: Rest in Peace!