The sun is out in the middle of a hot July summer day. Lazily getting up, it took my time enjoying the weekend morning. I had plans to pickup an office desk. I got into my 2004 Ford Explorer SUV and found that I couldn’t get the vehicle to recognize that the gear had shifted out of park. Unfortunately, my hybrid 2010 Honda Insight car is also inoperable. Due to the pandemic, I haven’t driven it for a few months and the battery has died. The only operational vehicle at the moment is… the CitiCar. Really? This?!? At least I’m within range of a couple auto-parts stores.

After calling around and making a few arrangements due to my predicament, it was time to enjoy the rest of the day. Teddy and I hopped into our little electric car and started driving. The right rear brake had a sound that concerned me, so I made a few adjustments back in the driveway and continued on again.

We visited both Gertrude E. Miller Community Park and walked over a little bridge to Lions park across river. Teddy waded in the Happy Creek river a little bit and started laying down when he realized we were about to leave. I’ll admit, if it were cooler, we would have stayed longer. I was getting hot, thirsty, and wasn’t inclined to drink and wade in the river.

We drove over to pick up Ice Cream. Just like last week, Main street was blocked off. It probably put on an extra mile on the odometer, but the car seemed fine on battery charge, setting on the third tick of five, when we parked. Teddy had some dairy-free strawberry mint ice cream as a reward for doing a few of his tricks in some shade at the town square. We could see the ice cream man and his wife, while dressed as pirates, had stopped by the car to check it out.

On the way home, I had some concerns regarding how much load I was putting on the battery as we were on one of the last inclines. We stopped on a side street just before continuing home. Teddy and I had a bit of a serious discussion regarding the batteries and how much power the motor was drawing. After a minute or two, with clear traffic, we pulled out and continued on our way.

As I held down the breaks for a couple minutes going down hill, I was thinking of how much power was being wasted. Ideally, I could just let off the brakes and coast all the way home, but I wouldn’t even attempt that in my hybrid car with regenerative breaking. As we coasted into the garage, I could hear the motors fan blowing and wondered if I should leave the power on to help it cool off. I also considered if I should wait before charging the car.

In all, we go just under nine miles on our trip from a full battery. The fuel gauge read at 50%, half way between the red dot and the next tick. The owners manual states that the red dot indicates a ¼ charge. We could have probably gone an extra mile or two before fully depleting the battery.