Well Day 4 was fun, interesting, delicious, frustrating and tiring all wrapped up into one neat package. I am reminding myself as of this writing now that we are tucked into our nice little room in Salina KS, Dave (thats what I call myself…usually) this evening I am leaning more towards dummy. Dave you wanted to do this. Repeat after me. 😂
Its experiences in life that makes it worth living it. If you sit in a room and not experience the world, then why are you on this 17,000MPH big blue ball in space for? I am really loving the adventure so far and it will make for some great stories in my repertoire when I get home and indulge in some very nice bottles of wine.
Today started out in St Charles MO. We had a quick breakfast and then went and got Bucky ready to accept it’s new driver - Cheryl. We got the rig all setup for her in about 20 mins, and then she played around testing how it accelerated and drove. Our plan was for her to drive while I got on a Microsoft teams meeting for my new job, that I wanted to listen into, but alas, the cell service was having none of that fancy communication stuff. So I just played the dutiful co-pilot for Cheryl the whole day. I must admit, I suck as a co-pilot. For example the first time I tried to open a bottle of water, I for some unknown reason squeezed the bottle and gave myself a second shower for the day. DOH!.
We made our first stop in Ozarkland MO, which is just off the hiway on I-70. It is basically one of those stores that has all of the kitchy souvenirs your heart could desire. Thankfully nothing screamed out TAKE ME HOME. Now I have to admit the 6 year old road trip kid in me want to buy every damn thing in the store. But I am now 56, not 6, so I resisted. Good Boy Dave.
The first fun thing happened after Ozarkland as Cheryl was getting on the hiway. We were on the on-ramp stuck behind one of the 4.2 million trucks currently in Kansas and Cheryl wanted to get onto I-70 to beat the traffic. She is urging the truck along in front us, when she decided to floor it to make haste and get around him before the end of the on-ramp. Make haste is EXACTLY what Bucky did. As our heads slammed into the headrests, Bucky jumped from 30Mph to 110mph, which seemed like it was an instant! Cheryl yells out. HOLY SHIT!!! I’m giggling like a school boy at his first middle school dance as Bucky lept from the on-amp at about 2 miles down the road at Mach 2.2. The look on the truckers fave as we past, was priceless. I am sure the truckers on I-70 are still chatting on the CB about the crazy lady jumping on I-70 like she was trying to launch an SR71 into the Sky. After we got down to a respectable speed of say 85MPH, Cheryl looks over at me and says “ Whoah!! - I LIKE IT! Hahahahahhahh, Priceless. My thoughts turned to - am I gonna get this car back when we get home. Sheesh.
Next up was a charging session in Boonville Mo. Yes it was at another Wally World. I swear these “ free charging sessions” at Electrified America, are costing me about $30 a shot since Cheryl inevitably finds some new things she needs at Walmart.
We charged up to about 86% at Boonville and then headed to the Church or Meat at Jack Stacks in Kansas City MO for lunch , Oh Nom Nom Nom, Oh more please, Nom Nom Nom. I ordered way to much, but Sweet Jesus, pass me more of those Burnt ends and Cheesy corn please! Cheryl rolled me out of Jack Stacks and then we headed off to Topeka Kansas where we learn two valuable lessons.
Lesson 1) check your iPhone when using Apple Maps in settings and make sure you do not have AVOID TOLL ROADs selected. I could not figure out why Apple Maps had us jumping off I-70 onto state route 1012. The road and route BTW - was absolutely beautiful. While it was not a 4 lane hiway, the scenery more than made up for it. Nice rolling hills, beautiful farms and scenery. Just a beautiful drive. I was playing around in my phone when I discovered this setting and realized why we were on this road. It really did not take us to far of the way to get to Topeka, but just look longer in time to drive since it was not an interstate and just two lanes. I think it was probably one of the best parts of the trips so far. It was during this part of the trip that we learned the next lesson.
Lesson 2) One of the things Cheryl has been doing before each charging stop is to look up the charger location in the Electrify America App to see what chargers are available and which are of the 150KW and 350KW variety. She asked me to look that up (me being the co-pilot) and to my initial horror I see that the station is “OFFLINE” 😱 😡🥵🤬🤬🤬. A quick look at the state of charge on Bucky, and we were at State of charge of 23% and range of a little under 80 miles and we were still 12 miles outside of Topeka on our beautiful little road. A quick check of the app to see what other DC fast charging stations might be available close to Topeka showed the nearest in Salina KS - 110 miles down the road. Man I wish I had a lump of coal next to me at that point, because I could have put that between my butt cheeks and had a new diamond to give Cheryl at that very moment.
Soooooo - yep our first charging snafu and first rookie mistake in doing long distance road-tripping in an EV was here. I was hearing my buddy Rob at that moment asking me where I was putting the Honda Generator and the gallon of gas at for the trip. Very Very Funny Rob……
We went ahead to the Wally World EA stop in Topeka hoping beyond hope that it was an error in the app. Alas when we arrived, the entire parking lot around the chargers was all torn up and the chargers offline. DAMMIT! What’s really frustrating is, this is where the ABRP (A Better Route Planner) sent us. WHY did they lead us astray? Did I read the route wrong, I mean what the hell! Now what???
Its 5:00pm in Topeka now and we are sitting in the parking lot next to the useless, offline EA chargers, when I started running scenarios on what do next to do in my brain. Come on Dave you planned for contingency’s. You read the nightmare stories like this. Do not become a statistic. I have 60 miles of range left and about 20% battery pack at this time. My first thought was to call a BMW dealership locally to see if they had a level 2 charger. I did that, and of course I got the only receptionist in the world who had never heard about Electric Cars in her life (FML). She could not even transfer me to someone who might know what they were talking about. That girl needs to quickly apply at Taco Bell - she ain’t gonna make it at BMW if you ask me.
So the next thing I do is bring up the Plug share app and do a search for Level 2 chargers. Its gonna be slow, probably all night to get the electrons I need to get to Salina and find working (thankfully) EA DC fast charger. There was indeed a charger in Saline, I just needed to get there. I tripled checked BTW). Perhaps we could find a charger at a hotel. Then I see about 5 miles from my current location a Level2 ChargePoint charger available. Cool, I have a ChargePoint account, lets head there. We drive over to that location in Topeka and its in a parking lot between a Mexican restaurant and a store called Dillons, at least thats what Plug Share said. It took us like 10 mins to find it however, like a oasis in the desert we had found it. Not only that, but next to all the level 2 chargers (which I would have gladly used and hung out till I have enough coal-juice) was a brand new spanking ChargePoint DC Fast Charger. Hallelujah pass the hot sauce momma, we are in business! We got up to the charger, plugged in and low and behold it would not take the payment off my phone via NFC communication. There was not a credit card reader either. Uuuuugggggghhhh. So I called the 1-800 support number for ChargePoint and after two many menu selections to get to a real human (took 2 phone calls BTW) we got a very nice gentlemen who was trying to figure out what station we were at. No markings on the station whatsoever to help him identify it. ChargePoint, if your reading this, please fixed this ASAP on your chargers. With me explaining what zip code I was in, and info from plugshare, the nice gentlemen on the phone found the charger and reset it remotely so we could use it. Thanks bud - I owe you a beer!
As we were sitting there charging at between 35KW and 40KW, a nice couple with the cutest newborn showed up in a Ford Mach-E. ARBP did him bad as well and directed him to the EA chargers at the aforementioned Wally World. He plugged into the Level 2 chargers, while we continued to sucked in those sweet DC (not so fast charge) electrons. He came over and introduced himself. He was trying to get to Kansas City for the evening, he was in the Army and transferring to St Louis, he had just came from the Fast charger in Salina and confirmed it was working. We talked about Bucky and his Mach-E. He was amazed at the tech in the Beemer, told us he had a new life goal.
We decide to only stay as long as we needed to on that Fast charger to get us to Salina and Caseys General store where the EA chargers were plus a tiny amount of buffer so we could get this young service man and his little family on their way. It only took about 10 more mins and we had enough range to get to Salina. A quick unplug of the charger, some goodbyes to our new friends, and we were off to Salina.
We made it to Salina around 8:30PM and charged Bucky up for an hour to get him to 100%, I know I probably did not need to - but I wanted every electron I could get at that point. Caseys general store has a nice selection of one off cans of beer, and since I was the Co-pilot I had a cold one while charging away.
So that brings me to the close of our crazy day. Blog entry complete, time for some sleepy sleep. Tomorrow we are going to get Bucky the hell out of Kansas and into CO. This is going to be interesting with all the hill climbs and elevation changes coming up to see how it effects the range of the IX.
Until the next entry - have a good one folks. Catch you later.
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