BC2BC: B4N!

Today, Sabrina and I took my wife, Tanya, and son, Charlie, up to Blaine, WA.  While we have been officially done with the BC2BC All Electric Vehicle Rally for some time, we've only been home from our trip a few days.  Today's 85 mile trip north completed our BC2BC...2BC rally.  Driving this last leg today with our whole family provided some closure for the trip.  I was not expecting to feel this sense of "closure" however, and as such, I am trying to sort through why today's experience of driving back to Blaine has me thinking more introspectively.

British Columbia to Baja California to British Columbia: BC2BC2BC

The memories that I seem to perpetuate nowadays are those that involve my family unit.  Creating memories with Sabrina was certainly a major, if not the, determining factor in deciding to drive an electric vehicle more than 3500 miles in just over two weeks time.  Not only was I hoping to have memorable daddy/daughter experiences on the road, but I also hoped to create an event that would become part of the Coram narrative.  Our family can look back on this trip in the years to come and say, "Wow!  That was nuts!"

Yes, driving a Nissan LEAF that far is nuts.  But it is not as outlandish as one may presume.  Driving a quick charge-capable EV, like the LEAF, from state to state is actually a fairly painless experience.  Of course, with the current state of the CHAdeMO (the particular quick charge supply equipment for the LEAF) infrastructure, long-distance travel is only easy in Washington and Oregon.  If these two states can be traversed in a day each, then one may ask why it took us another week to travel the length of California.

 West Coast CHAdeMO Quick Charger Locations

Looking at the map, it is evident why driving a Nissan LEAF the north-south length of California is tough.  It will only be a matter of time, however, until the CHAdeMO infrastructure is completed enough that families will be driving their respective EVs from Seattle to Disneyland.

It is remarkable what Washington and Oregon have done to make intra and interstate travel possible.  Why California, which has more CHAdeMO stations by number than either of its neighbors to the north, chose to focus so heavily on the the Bay Area and L.A. is remarkable.  A remarkably big mistake.  In the Puget Sound region, people who do not own an EV are surprised when they hear that our family does not own a gas-powered car.  In California, it was the Nissan LEAF drivers who were in complete disbelief that we owned two LEAFs and no gas vehicles.  For them, a LEAF is an in-town proposition only.

That brings me back to today's experience of returning to Blaine.  Easily driving our LEAF to the Peace Arch Park today made me think that perhaps the more enduring memory that Sabrina and I will look back on is that it took us so long to drive to Southern California back in 2013, and how ridiculously nuts that was!

With our trip being over, I do hope that we have the opportunity to stay in contact with folks both from the rally and of those who we met along the way.  And just maybe, we will have a chance to meet up again and share some stories of the fun and frustrations of the drive...or perhaps race for the border again!

Memorable Moments