The previous post was a generic “get out and travel” post, a motivational (hopefully) message, a reminder of the beauty of travel, of meeting new people, of seeing new things. What I did not talk about was the adventure of travel and the stress and adrenaline involved.
As has been previously reported, I recently presented at a conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. To get there, I had to fight with the metaphorical Cyclops, lotus-eaters, and Sea Nymphs…
On paper the trip was easy: West Palm Beach, which has a cute little airport to Charlotte North Carolina – a behemoth airport, the 10th in the nation with 23.1 million passengers per year. From there to Raleigh Durham, another cute provincial airport, from there a taxi/uber to Chapel Hill.
Unfortunately, the equipment (the airplane for you Philistines) in Palm Beach was broken and we spent more than two hours on the ground getting it fixed. People left the plane to make other plans, but I had no options. There were no more flights to Charlotte and no other flights to Raleigh, I had to take my chances… We arrived at midnight at Charlotte, and I sprinted to the car rental area to try to get a car. Some booths were closing, others had long lines, most had no cars available. In all of Charlotte airport there was one, one car available, it was with Avis, it was electric, and it would cost me $270. But there was nothing else I could do. If I stayed in Charlotte to wait for the next day’s flight, I would miss the conference and an appointment at 9:00 the next morning. I had to take the car. I took the car.
I have never really driven an electric car (yes, ok little electric rentals in Madrid, but that does not really count). I buckled into the Hyundai IONIQ 5 SEL, a $50K rig. In theory it had over 200 miles autonomy for a 144-mile drive, plenty. The theory bit is that the autonomy calculation is at the speed limit, hahaha. Ooops. Not that I drove autobahn style, but it was late, I wanted to get some sleep, and I am a Mediterranean driver anyways, so I might have driven a midge over the limit. Watching the battery level and the mileage left was a hairy experience. The battery clicked to red, 9% as I pulled into the hotel parking lot -I was not going to hunt for free street parking at 2:30 in the morning.
Epilogue:
The next morning (after my breakfast meeting with the great Professor (retired) Frank Dominguez) I found a free charging spot at the chamber of commerce. Fortunately, a Tesla owner arrived at the charging post next to mine and explained that I should leave the car there and go live my life while it charged -Hmm, not your usual gas station experience. So I left the car there and headed to the conference. By late morning, the battery was up to 30%, enough to drive to the airport, return the damn car, and take an uber back to the conference…
Safe travels folks!