{"id":53885,"date":"2013-06-03T05:41:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T11:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wend.ca\/?p=53885"},"modified":"2020-04-05T13:59:33","modified_gmt":"2020-04-05T17:59:33","slug":"planes-phones-and-a-clown-bike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wend.ca\/?p=53885","title":{"rendered":"Planes, Clown Bikes and an Electric Car…!?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know it’s been a while since a commute post… but the last few weeks have been one big chaotic commute. The beginning involves 4 countries in 48 hours… temperatures ranging from 0C to 35C… four airlines… two rental cars driven on opposite sides of the road… clown bikes, and food poisoning. The end involves an electric car and finishes with an 11.5-hour flight from San Francisco to Calgary, which should have been 2.5 hours… and for the record: a flight from Chicago to Sao Paulo is 10-hours… and a flight from Calgary to London is 9-hours. I don’t want to talk about “the 11.5 hours”.<\/p>\n

The real lesson in bafflement comes with the electric car. This was my first electric car adventure and was a head-scratcher. An electric car doesn’t need a key, it runs silent, and it’s nearly impossible to tell if the car is on or off. I learned that the act of turning a car on and off using a key is an undeniable visual\/audio cue. Your car is off when you pull the key out. Take away the key and it’s really easy to walk away from a car that is still running… and leave the keys sitting somewhere in the car. Yep… I did that… more than once.<\/p>\n

Said car proved many times to be smarter than I. I couldn’t figure out how to start\/stop it. I couldn’t figure out how to charge it. I couldn’t even figure out how to control the windshield wipers because they turned on and off with the moisture on the windshield. Forget about the stereo and climate control… all touchscreen (give me buttons!). So upon arriving at my destination at 1am (yet another delayed flight) I had an I’m-stupider-that-this-car-and-I-hate-technology<\/em> moment.<\/p>\n

But I eventually mastered the car and as fate would have it, my new project location has charging stations in the parking lot.<\/p>\n

Did I mention the clown bikes? Thank God for clown bikes. They make me happy every time I see someone riding one. And, I spend a lot of time looking for opportunities to cruise around on one of these bikes. There are memes all over the Internets about said bikes and I’m glad that I finally got to meet them.<\/p>\n