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Walmart fast chargers
Saturday, July 17 2021
This morning we had a relatively-truncated version of our Saturday morning routine out on the east deck, where I heard the first dog day cicadas of the summer (one of which sounded sort of like a hangover, not that I had one, since I hadn't drunk any alcohol yesterday). The panagram in the New York Times Spelling Bee was "hyacinth" (with "y" in the middle), something Gretchen saw immediately but which eluded me until Gretchen gave a hint of "nature."
Gretchen had originally planned to drive up to Albany today to do some sort of poetry event with Powerful and then maybe continue out to the cabin north of Gloversville. But huge downpours were predicted for today and all that was canceled. But now Gretchen had changed to plan to one of just visiting Powerful at his room up in Albany and also to test out a fast charger that had just been installed in a Walmart parking lot, also in Albany. Such chargers are suddenly dense enough on the eastern seaboard to possibly permit long road trips in our Chevy Bolt (including to Staunton, Virginia) if, that is, the chargers can charge the Bolt fast enough. Now Gretchen wanted me to come along as well, making it out to be a "date." I didn't really want to go, but she said we'd be getting pizza at Little Anthony's, a treat that is almost worth sacrificing an entire Saturday for. Also, I was excited to check out new vehicle charging possibilities. So we left the dogs behind and started driving north up the Thruway.
As I said, the fast chargers were in a Walmart parking lot. Unlike the more-conventional 240 volt chargers in town hall parking lots (many of which will charge an electric vehicle for free), these fast chargers used cables nearly as thick as gasoline hoses and required a credit card to begin a transaction. The company providing them is Electrify America, which is funded (in part) by a settlement from Volkswagen after their diesel vehicle emissions cheating scandal.
While our car was charging, there weren't a lot of options for where to spend our time. There was obviously a Walmart there, but we find Walmarts deeply depressing. Instead we went into a Panera, but Panera is just as vegan-hostile as it was since the time I ventured into one three or four years ago.
All around us were obese people waddling around in sweat pants. "We're in a deeply mainstream part of the world," I observed, and Gretchen had to agree.
Inevitably we went into the Walmart, and it was the biggest one we'd ever seen. It occupied two floors connected by an escalator, and there was a huge void in the upper floor allowing us to look down on the lower one. We stood there for a moment basking in the mundane horror of it all. There's something about the Walmart color palette, with its blue details and vast expanses of unbroken shabby white of the floor tile, that inspires anxiety, at least in us. And this is compounded by the people happily going about their business in that environment.
We went down that escalator and tried to put find some food to stave off a growing hangry feeling in both of us. After going past the deli and its display of many chunks of now-lifeless animals, we managed to find some crackers for me ("Town House Dipping Thins") and a kind of chip made out of popcorn for Gretchen, which we bought along with a tub of hummus (the only size for sale was way bigger than we wanted). We ate our food our at our car in the parking lot. It had just experienced some sort of charging error, which a nearby woman in her car had somehow witnessed, but our car had managed to charge back up to 73% of battery capacity (range of 139 miles) from 41% (range of 75 miles) in about 30 minutes and 17 seconds, a charging rate of 118 miles per hour. Because batteries charge more slowly in their top half, this implied that a full fast-recharge of the battery would take about an hour, meaning charging would only add three hours to a drive from Hurley, NY to Staunton, VA. The only downside of this sort of charging is that it is expensive, at least compared to free. Today's charge has cost $8, which makes driving an electric car about as expensive as driving a gasoline-powered one.
While we were near the Crossgates Mall, Gretchen wanted to go to Pottery Barn, mostly to look at furniture options for the lake house. It was very bougie experience, with us immediately getting our own sales lady when we walked into the store. I'd be happy outfitting the lake house with furniture from an alley, but Gretchen wants nicer things. I could see the value of getting a couch with a hide-a-bed, but not at Pottery Barn prices. They did, however, have a very comfortable chair that could both rock and swivel, which caters nicely to my inner autistic child. Gretchen wasn't thrilled about available colors, but our sale lady said that the palette we were seeing was the Pottery Barn palette, which centers on "oatmeal" and ranges from olive to muted earth tones. Anything more colorful was best had from the West Elm, a down-market sister brand. By the way, it bears mentioning that Crossgates Mall remains vibrant even in 2021, with nearly all the storefronts occupied and mobs of shoppers streaming in the common walkways. I didn't know shopping malls could still be this healthy, especially after seeing the decline of places like the Hudson Valley Mall.
Rain was falling as we went back to our car across the Crossgates Mall parking lot. From there, we drove over to Powerful's new place, which required driving through familiar neighborhoods close to St. Peter's Hospital, the place where Gretchen had her hysterectomy back in October, 2017. Powerful's new place was in an old lived-in house with glassed-in porches on the front and back on the first two floors (there were many similar such houses on the street). Inside it was a bit cluttered, particularly on the first floor porch, with artifacts of Powerful's landlord's food scrap salvaging business (she's a leftie do-gooder who probably thinks socialized medicine would not plunge America into a post-apocalyptic hellscape). Powerful's new place is a small room on the second floor, with access to a furnished living room, kitchen, and dining room cluttered with books and such. He also has a housemate living in a nearby room (we met him, and he seemed like a quiet guy who can easily be provoked into loquaciousness).
We took Powerful to Little Anthony's in our car, which meant I had to sit in the way-back where there is still a large space with no backseat. Since the pandemic is over, at least for us non-crazy people who are vaccinated, we could eat in Little Anthony's dining room. It's not the most appealing place to eat, but there aren't any better options nearby except (maybe) that cemetery up the street. As I have on other occasions, I got a calzone with mushrooms, jalapeño peppers, and faux sausage. Powerful only wanted two slices of vegan pizza, but if you want your pie vegan, you can't get it by the slice (this makes sense, since vegan slices are only fresh for so long and are hard to sell). So he and Gretchen got a whole pizza, each half with different toppings. This would mean lots of leftovers. Unusually, we all also got soft drinks (in my case root beer). Usually we pay for everything when we're with Powerful, but this time he insisted on paying.
Back in Powerful's neighborhood, for some reason Gretchen still wanted icecream and Powerful had said there was an place with vegan icecream nearby. So we walked over to nearby Delaware Avenue and went to Emack & Bolio's Ice Cream. It's a surprisingly big place, more like a coffee shop than an ice cream parlor, and there is a great place in the back with couches and even games like Big Boggle. There are also lots of things for sale, mostly the kinds of games and toys one can buy in a bookstore. I told Powerful that if I lived here, I would be hanging out in Emack & Bolio's lounge all the time. While Gretchen was eating her icrecream, Powerful and I got large cups of oat milk cappuccino, and then, while he stood there drinking his (he rarely sits down in these situations) and Gretchen and I sat, we talked at some length about the cleverness of inmates he observed while he was in prison. This included new methods for making fire and even bombs made from match heads. I mentioned that some of these tricks were ones I'd discovered independently as a kid, for example the way steel wool behaves when it is used to short out the two terminals of a nine volt battery.
A couple doors down from Emack & Bolio's, there's also Sweet Basil Thai restaurant, one of Gretchen's favorite restaurants in Albany.
On the drive back south, Gretchen wanted to visit our friends Jasmin, Mary Ann, and Moore in Greenville. Tomorrow Jamin and Moore would be moving to Rochester, followed by Mary Ann some weeks later. Google sent us there entirely via back roads through beautiful rolling countryside, much of it agricultural. Unfortunately, it was also raining for nearly the entire drive.
We arrived to find the three women with three yapping chihuahuas, all of them apparently incontinent and outfitted in doggy diapers. Jamin and Moore lived in this apartment and Mary Ann (Jasmin's ex-wife) lived in the one next door. They're big apartments but carpeted wall-to-wall, which explained the diapers on the incontinent dogs. All the small stuff had already been boxed up, but most of the furniture was still in place.
Someone asked if we wanted "cherries" and I thought she meant "sherries," and I said, sure, hook me up. I ended up with a tall tumbler of white wine, seated on an improvised seat in front of a bowl of delicious red cherries. The dogs were initially skittish but curious, though eventually Birdy, the old short-haired female, decided I was a provider of quality neck scratches. I'd never really felt the skull of a chihuahua before, and was surprised by how globular and featureless it seemed to be. Aside from the dogs, topics of conversation included the dismaying stupidity of vaccine hesitancy (all of us were vaccinated), how cheap and wonderful Rochester is, electric cars and bicycles, and ghostwriting memoirs. We weren't staying for dinner (which was polenta), which set a firm end on the evening, but before we left, Jasmin wanted to show us the garage, which was full nearly to the ceiling with neatly-labeled cardboard boxes containing all her worldly possessions.
As Gretchen began driving us home, she started out going in the wrong direction on Route 32, and when Google Maps started re-routing us, she busted a left at an intersection. A cop apparently saw this and immediately came in behind us with flashers flashing. I've been watching a lot of sovereign citizen videos on YouTube, which is a sure-fire way to develop an appreciation for the cops, but still, nobody likes getting pulled over by the cops. It turned out that we'd just pulled into a park that closes at dusk. The cop didn't even get out of his car but just pulled up along side us to tell Gretchen this. He also noted that I had a slice of pizza in my hand, which Gretchen had handed me before executing her move.
Gretchen drove us back to Hurley in what amounted to an unending torrential downpour, which, given my background level of anxiety, was not a pleasant experience. Google sent us down to Saugerties on Route 32, where I suggested we switch to driving on the Thruway. There was evidence of unprecedented rainfall along Hurley Mountain Road, where there were at least three mudslides that had intruded into the roadway. There were also a number of tree falls, one of which had only been cleaned up partly. Up on Hurley Mountain, there was no power in our house. So I poured myself some tequila and surfed the web on my phone.
Later I was deviled by serious acid reflux which made it difficult to sleep. Gretchen was having her own sleep troubles, so she eventually took an ambien. Not long after she conked out, the power came back on. Soon thereafter I checked the time and it was 4:00am.
Gretchen in the Albany mega-Walmart.
Gretchen and Powerful at Little Anthony's.
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