leaf

I read some advice that suggested one of the things I might try each day is writing for 10 minutes.   They said just to let it flow.

The last couple of nights Kate has been waking up a couple of times a night, I think because she is growing and hungry.  It has been difficult for me because I have been getting to bed later than I should and then we I am awakened it is difficult to go back to sleep.  Saturday into Sunday morning was bad.  Kate woke up sometime after 1:30 and by 3:00 am I still wasn’t asleep so I took a couple of ibuprofen for my head ache.  After 30 minutes I still had a headache so I thought I would take a shot at driving to Park city.  I’ve always been affaid to make the attempt because it’s mostly uphill.   I had let me car get a full charge and so I headed up.  I was surprised to see my car, a Nissan Leaf,  made it all the way to Park city with only draining half a charge.  I was pushing the car and I went over the speed limit a couple of times.  I really was not try to conserve any electricity going up. Once arriving on the main street in Park City,  I then reset my miles per Kilowatt hour meter and started down.  I didn’t realize how much I had heated up the battery, because the two hills I charged up on the way back really drained my battery and kept my average to 7.7 by the time I arrived home.  I will try the drive again, but I am going to let the car rest a bit before coming back down.

It was fun to see th potential distance for a full charge at 117 the next morning.

Last week end we drove up Big and Little Cottonwood canyons with the leaf, while listening to the second session of General Conference.  We also drove up the canyons to check out the leaves.

My goal was to see how the leaf did up the hills and how much it would recharge going down the hills.   Up the first canyon we  were down to about 25 miles and 40% battery when we turned around.  by the time we got to the bottom were up to 47 miles and 50% battery.  It’s pretty cool that just going downhill can give the car more juice.

The second canyon we were down to 13 miles and 32% on the battery.  At the bottom we were at 42 mile and 40% on the battery.

Another cool effect was the next morning on a full charge it said it would go 116 miles.  It’s never been that high before.

The next uphill drive is going to be up to Park City.  We’ll see how that goes 😉

Last night on my way home.  I was stop at a light right next to a corvette.  I thought I’ll give this a try.  So when the light turned green I put the pedal all the way down.  The corvette tried to keep up and finally passed me when we were doing about 55.  Two lights later it was red again and I pulled up next to him.  He had the top down.  I pulled up along side him and said,  “I’m driving an electric car I just wanted to test it out.”  He said back, “I was surprised you kept hanging in there.  You’ve got a lot of torque.”  I smiled and turned the corner.