As some young men are want to do on a fine Sunday, we took a motorcycle ride - over the hills, through the lovely valleys and vistas of the Bay Area. We ended up in Lafayette, as one of our intrepid group was on an electric motorcycle, and the Whole Foods there has multiple charging stations available for those of such an evolved persuasion. The second ChargePoint station was available, and after a brief negotiation with the ChargePoint app, his bike was charging with mine tucked up behind it, and we headed into the store to pick up a few small items. On return to our motorcycles, I walked through the now completely empty row of charging spaces to busy myself with re-arranging the contents of my topbox to fit our groceries as a BMW i3 haltingly backed into the charging space next to us, where the high voltage charging spaces are.
After coming to a premature stop 2/3rds of the way into the space, an older woman steps out, and with lips pursed and disapproving expression, snaps open her i3's charging door, and takes two firm steps towards the ChargePoint station in front of Jeff's bike before she notices that the charging handle is missing from the station. She regroups for a moment, traces the wire from the station and discovers that it is plugged into Jeff's Brammo Empulse. I watch her expression cycle from haughty disapproval to a sort of incomprehensible confusion, as if he's here only to vex and trick, before she notices that it's whirring away, covered in blinking lights, and is clearly interacting in some meaningful way with the charging station.
There's a beautiful, awkward three second pause as she realizes that not only do the young miscreants have some pseudo-reputable business with this charging station, but also that in her haste to prove what assholes the youth are, she had traveled past an open ChargePoint station to block one that's incompatible with her car. I watch her cycle through a range of emotions before she turns back, closes the charging door on her car with a hollow plonk that robs her of any remaining moral high ground, and slowly rolls towards the open ChargePoint spot. However, due to the lot traffic she ends up sitting across 2 handicapped spaces, with no ability to back into the open ChargePoint spot, and after a few abortive attempts to bend time and space to get her i3 into charging range, she ends up backed into the open ChargePoint spot sideways. A beautiful five seconds are shared between us, too short for me, an eternity for her, before she slowly rolls away, taking the ruins of pride with her as she abandons the electric watering hole to those disreputable youth and flees to the plebe parking lot, far from insouciant motorcyclists.
Lafayette Whole Foods, never change. You're beautiful just the way you are.