On day one the morning began not with the steady hum of an electric car but with the sinking realization of Jenny’s passport sitting forgotten on a bed back in Connecticut where she lives. We spent the first two hours in a frantic high-stakes zig-zag across state lines meeting like couriers on a mission to retrieve that one small, vital booklet. By the time we finally pointed the car toward Erie Pennsylvania, the sun was already carving a much different path across the sky than we’d originally planned.
But once we hit Interstate 86, the morning’s stress evaporated into the vastness of Western New York. The landscape transformed into a rhythmic procession of emerald peaks—one mountain rising just as the last one dipped. We swept past wide-open fields and dense stands of dark fir trees that blurred into a deep green wall at seventy miles per hour. The road was a gift: wide, gray, and almost entirely our own.
Inside the car, Jenny and I filled the hours with a lifetime of conversation and a soundtrack that kept pace with the spinning tires. However, as we neared the Pennsylvania line, the dashboard issued a cold, mathematical warning: negative four percent charge upon arrival. Watching a car predict a negative number is a strange modern brand of anxiety. We kept hoping the mountain descents would flip the math in our favor, but the computer remained stubborn.
With only twenty miles to go, we had to pull into a charging station. It was a brief, twenty-minute pause—just enough time to stretch our legs and turn that nerve-wracking minus sign into a guaranteed arrival. We rolled into Erie three hours later than we hoped, with the sky a deep indigo, but the day felt like a triumph. A good car, great music, and the very best company. Day one of a lifetime journey is finally in the books.
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