“If you live long enough, you'll make mistakes.” - Bill Clinton
The dull straight highways are killing my vibe, so I change the routing preference in BMW's navigation software from “Efficient” to “Winding”, setting the dial down to 50% so the algorithm doesn't add unnecessary goose chases along the way.
It totally works: this turned out to be my favorite stretch of the ride: dilapidated barns, rough roads, smelly hog farms, loose cows, and curves. The sky is hazy from the smoke of distant wildfires.
The loose bull did freak me out a bit – while I've hung out with cows on a farm, I've never been stared down by one on the road. He stared intently at me the entire time as I gave it as wide of a berth as possible without going offroad.
Not long afterward, I spy a dip in the pavement, and as I am about to hit it, I spy orange tape alongside it. THWACK! My shocks bottom out, causing the scoot to bounce violently though without any loss of control. That's only the 3rd time in 3,300 miles of riding this bike that it's happened to me. I think to myself, “I hope those Skenes didn't fall off,” and move on, wishing for a brief moment that I still had that GS, until I get to a stop sign and again feel the rush of the instant torque electric motor.
While making trip plans the other night, I found an
unreviewed charger listed at Deacon Jones Toyota that wasn't listed elsewhere. It's along the way and has a higher kilowatt rating than the other charger I had in my plans, so I circle around the parking lot to confirm its existence and find nothing. I suspect it was inside the service area, but I have never seen that before.
Not feeling dejected, I head on to Nissan of Clinton, where I arrive with 28% state-of-charge and find that this charger is now under lock & key. I look back at the reviews on PlugShare, and see that the last review had noted, “It looked like the power was turned off.”. This kind of comment usually means you need to hit a reset button or flip a power switch, so I thought nothing of it.
I walk back toward my bike and audibly scream “FUUCCCKKKK” into my helmet: not because of the lockout, but because I realize that my 3rd backup charging was no longer available. The bag I had attached to the back of the bike containing an emergency J1772 EV charger cable was no longer there. The ROK straps dangled impotently, still clipped as if nothing had happened. Thinking back, I recall playing a little fast and loose with the straps when I squeezed the water bottle back into the bag in Dunn.
A lovely employee at the dealership, Ryan, walks by, gawks at the bike for a moment, and asks if it's an electric bike. I confirm and then ask if it's possible to reactivate the charger. He calls up the GM, who drops by looking a bit grumpy and confirms that this charger is no longer available. He was sick of people coming by for a free charge, so they disabled this charger when they installed the new one for their use only. He doesn't seem to be an EV guy, so I don't get into the whole AC vs DC issue. He directs me to a new charger recently installed by Duke Energy a couple of miles away.
Ryan shows off Nissan's latest electric car, the
Ariya, before I head to the new charger. I've got 22 miles of range, so I'm not worried. I recalled that Ryan was good enough to suggest that I double-check the charger before going out of my way to it, so I pulled over after a mile and did so: it was a good call, as this new charger is also DC, and the BMW CE-04 is only compatible with the slower and cheaper AC-based chargers.
With 3 charging options out of the picture, I researched other charging options within 20 miles and found a charger listed at the Piggly Wiggly in Warsaw, about 14 miles from here. I'm extremely concerned at the prospect of running out of charge, so I baby the throttle and ride just below the speed limit on Highway 24. The local truckers behind me are not amused with my life choices, honking at me when I pull out to let them pass.