HEAD IN THE SAND. OR MAYBE NOT.

 

Skyler, during one of many summer thunderstorms

I can empathize.  That was probably the worst of this summer’s frequent thunderstorms.  The loudest, anyway.  Fair to say, Skyler has not enjoyed this summer a whole lot, since he doesn’t like hot, humid air and has no interest in getting into any kind of lake, river or pond, and isn’t a fan of rain, water in another form after all.  Still, it's the electricity in the air that he picks up on, even before the storm arrives.  

Where the bridge ended up after a major torrent:  Flood water pushed it up to the culvert where it stayed until it got pulled out.

 

I can’t say I’ve enjoyed all the rain either.  It’s been too wet for my field to be mowed.  Again. The grasses have grown unchecked, so high now that I can’t see anything in the field besides grass.    In some places the paths are almost tunnels. There a section, a swale, that channels rainfall most of the year, melting snow in the winter, into the pond.  That area tends to stay damp long after other sections have gone dry and hardened up.   Non-stop rain last summer prevented mowing too, so this is year two without mowing–so far.  I’m afraid it will lead to more invasions of poison parsnip, purple loosestrife, and who knows what else.  All of them nibble at the edges of nearly everyone’s meadows.  It’ll be trees, eventually.   

A tight fit between the sumacs and grasses 

 

As I said, re Skyler, I can empathize.  Until Biden announced he would not, after all, run again I had my head under the bed too, metaphorically.  I averted my eyes from news that had anything to do with the election, especially polls.  Thinking about Ruth Ginsburg having stayed on the Court when she shouldn’t have, and when her mind should have been on legacy.  So many egos  wrapped up with past glories, wanting more, just a little bit more. When you read about yet another ruler whose narcissism led him–usually a him–to assuming some form of total control, the phenomenon is pretty obvious to the world, but it looks less reprehensible when the person hanging in there is a nice liberal democratic leader. 

Well, that’s changed.  Now I can pay attention. But still afraid to get too excited.

I suppose I could just cut off the top half...

But I was talking about electricity.  How about the non-thundering kind? 

That kind of electric!

I'd been ignoring the movement toward EVs.  Not ignoring exactly, but figuring it was something I'd consider at some time in the future.  Although there are a couple of Teslas in the hands of family, me actually getting one seemed like a leap.  Although I like being driven in one, being the driver seemed like a whole different thing when I looked at the dash and there' wasn't a single instrument or dial in sight. It looked so cool, but I wasn't warming to it.  I felt like I might drive myself off the road trying to find the windshield wiper.

After waiting around during yet another oil change and service at my VW dealership I got to thinking about their EVs.  I strolled around the showroom, just passing the time.  I chatted about the one VW makes and when I got back home started researching the whole EV spectrum.   The rebates are pretty stunning, $7,500 for certain models, plus $2,500 here, $2,500 there and it started to look compelling.  Most convincing, though, was an article my daughter passed on to me about two NPR reporters who took a round trip in a new 2024 Hyundai Ioniq EV from Boston to Washington, DC, and back, half the route on major highways, the other half on local roads.  They reported they never waited longer than 20 minutes for a recharge.  I thought, I can do that.

So I did it.

Yet another piece of equipment 

Learning how-to has been interesting, in a feel good kind of way.  There was nothing to be gained by reading the manual. It's loaded with endless warnings–Warning! Danger!–and chock full of safety advice.  Either that's because of our litigious society or maybe the fact of a new focus on safe driving, or because everything to do with driving really is dangerous, I couldn't say.  But two pages on how seat belts could maim seems a little excessive.  (You insert them across one another over the two rear seats when not in use so that some injury I can't even imagine could be prevented.)  Far more fun to learn by poking around the screens and finding out what leads to what.  Ideally before driving.

I began to enjoy driving it.  I'd never heard of regenerative braking, but now I love it.  Using it I found I could drive over the Gaps without once needing to use the brakes.  Seriously.  I even tried almost-autonomous driving which I found to be more comfortable that I'd expected.  As with many electronic products, there are bells and whistles (almost literally) simply because there can be.  Like magenta under-dash lighting.  Didn't realize I needed that.  Not as many really fun things as Teslas of course, as they can even make farting sounds. My college age grandson thought that was a fun option, an opinion obviously shared by Elon Musk which tells me how his mind still works at age 50-something.