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Sixty-seven days. Five provinces. Ten states. Fourteen thousand kilometres. I’m guessing about 160 hours driving my all-electric Nissan Leaf.

Thousands of photographs which I will spend the summer and fall processing.

Scores of podcasts. Four audio books. Lots of stations on Sirius radio. Eventually, I got sick of both the sad-girl station and the complicated-man station. (Also, a whole station just for Dave Matthews?) Many hours of listening to BBC in the car, and some MSNBC, CNN and CBC. Quite a few hours of radio silence.

Twenty-seven hotels, motels and AirBNBs. Ten stays with friends and family. An amazing amount of hospitality and generosity, in some cases from people I barely knew.

Many hikes, but many more walks in circles around Walmart parking lots.

I don’t even know how many Walmart parking lots I charged my car in. A lot.

Quite a few crappy meals at restaurants near to the chargers at the Walmarts. But McDonald’s and Starbucks: love your reliable wifi.

Dozens of old friendships renewed. Several new friends made.

I saw my first wife for the first time in 30 years. It was lovely. She is lovely.

Given my age, and therefore the ages of many of my friends, I encountered sickness and sadness. Those are things I have reflected upon, along with the joy and excitement of the trip, and have to consider whether I have a way of writing about.

One cracked windshield. One case of Covid (me). One day I momentarily worried about freezing to death.

One laptop computer lost—then recovered after a few hours.

One packing cube of underwear lost—then recovered more than a month later.

One little girl who thought it was fun to tie my shoelaces.

One little boy who cried when I left. (Bless you, Taym.)

One long ride on an e-bike.

One evening out to dinner with friends for their wedding anniversary. Not coincidentally, one ride in a gull-winged Tesla X. Smooth.

One “steak on a stone”—a steak cooking on lava rock as you eat it—at a friend’s bar across the street from the Pittsburgh Pirates’ stadium. Scrumptious.

Zero accidents. Zero flat tires. Zero problems with the car, other than those I wrote about here, because it’s a new technology sustained by a less-than-robust charging network.

Zero episodes of Succession once I got to the States. Catching up now. No spoilers!

A near-empty fridge when I got home. (Somehow The Boy survived while I was gone.) Lots and lots of mail to go through.

Twenty-six Substack posts, including this one.

I’ll let you know if I end up writing up a larger piece for publication about the hope and reality of driving EVs in North America based on my experience. Otherwise, I expect this Substack to be mostly quiet for a while, at least until I hit the road again.

Thanks for coming along for the ride.