It was an adventure, but we made it to Assateague. Our Honda is in the shop getting fixed. It was supposed to be ready Friday. We had two options. We could rent a car and driving from Assateague to home today to pick up the Honda. Or we could drive our E-car to Assateague and back. We decided to take the E-car and not return home this weekend because the forecast called for 3 to 8 inches of snow today. As it turns out, the snow petered out into nothing. But –surprise– our car won’t be ready until Monday. If we had rented a car, we would have to pay for an extra week. We made the right decision for the wrong reason.
Driving the E-car was quite an adventure. Our car’s range “guess-o-meter” said we had 105 miles of range. We decided to stop at a charging station at a Royal Farms 82 miles away, driving without heat. We made it to the charging station with 17 miles to spare. (When the car gets down to 16 miles of range, it starts issuing warnings and displaying the closest charging station. Don’t ask me how I know this!) The charging station clearly stated they took major credit cards. But there was no slot to insert the credit card. The Royal Farms folks were very nice, but they knew nothing about the charge station and couldn’t help us. After dithering for a while, we noticed a phone number on the display. We called and were quickly connected to a phone operator. We were supposed to have signed up for service at this chain of charging stations and received a wireless card. Not to worry, the call operator was quite helpful. We could enter our credit card on an automated system. Only the cell signal wasn’t very good, and it was quite windy out, and we just couldn’t get the credit card number, expiration date, and CCV all entered. After two tries, they gave us a complimentary charging session. This was a high power station. We were fully charged in half an hour, while we went into the Royal Farms and had a cup of coffee.
Our next stop was to the local library, where we used the internet to create an account with this charging chain. We had plenty of charge to make it to the next station at a Royal Farms in Ocean City. The second charging station was in the same chain. It should have been a piece of cake, except that the station wasn’t working. That call operator sent us to a slower charger which also didn’t work. But the second call operator sent us to a third station which does work. And it’s totally free — just plug into your car and accept the joy. It wasn’t a high power charger, but it was good enough to give us plenty juice for a round trip to Assateague, while we ate lunch sandwiches we had purchased at the second Royal Farm store.
When we got to Assateague, we found that the park had purchased a Chevy Bolt and had a charging station. But we can’t use it. That’s misappropriation of government resources for private gain. Our car comes with a very slow charger that works from a standard 110V plug. Fortunately, I had packed a heavy duty extension cord. I plugged our car into that for 20 hours and got the battery up to 85%. We’ll be charging the car with our slow charger at nights and should have no problems getting a full charge for the trip home.
We spent Thursday moving into our new living quarters. Assateague uses lots of seasonal and temporary help. They have 6 houses for all their temporary workers. We have a master bedroom in one of the houses, which means we have a private bath. This is quite rare and we are very lucky to get it. Plus, for the first month or so, we will be the only people in the house. The place is quite comfortable, but is an old beach house. We are the first people to move into this house for the season. We did the check-in and walk through. After we noted all the preexisting defects and the park official left, the water stopped working. They got a maintenance man out right away. It turns out there was so much sand in the water line that the faucets got totally plugged up. They got the lines flushed and the faucets cleaned out quickly.
Yesterday was a very good day. We had our first day of training. Our supervisor is a talker, and she is exhausting. Combine that with being in a new environment, and trying to learn all the local stuff, and all the excitement we had on the trip down — we were totally exhausted by the end of the day. But the HughesNet satellite internet man arrived on schedule and installed our internet access. That works very well. We have unlimited access for 20 days, then we get 10 GB/month. That’s a good thing, because with my computer downloading Windows updates and us watching a couple of TV shows, we used 10 GB on the first day. Obviously, we won’t be watching TV over the internet after our initial 20 days.
Today we made it into town to buy stuff. We stopped at the local library and got library cards. That will be a good source of movies. I have unlimited internet data between 2 and 6 AM. If I can find legal ways to download movies, I can download at night and watch in the evening.
For the first 2 months, we’ll be working Monday – Friday. (That’s when the school groups come in for presentations.) We’re looking forward to Church tomorrow morning, and we found a good breakfast restaurant within walking distance of the free car charger in Ocean City.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.