Oh, the shame, the shame of it all. Mea culpa and all that.
I used the air conditioner.
Look. I was getting all sweaty and sticky with fruit juices at the Justin Herman Plaza Farmers Market and tried to get some sympathy about the scorching weather from the folks at the Frog Hollow booth since it was 84 degrees out there today. Alas, they came right back at me that they were real happy to be in San Francisco because it was supposed to be hitting 110 in Brentwood today.
Rebuffed, I slunk back toward the car, noticing en route that the sidewalks were covered with the fallen from heat exhaustion, either that or the hot weather had caused a new spate of evictions and it was just more basking homeless.
Having been closed up in the sun, the car was just roasting. So yes, I turned the AC on for the first part of the return home. Not the MAX-AC, which the manual warns is an awful energy gobbler, but just to the Regular. I must say, it was quite nice in there almost immediately. So nice, in fact, that even though the most casual glance at the readouts revealed that I was sure not generating much energy, I left it on for the entire trip home.
Oh, and I can now report the first mechanical problem: I have been driving for three days now and the fuel gauge has not budged. Then again, I may be misinterpreting this since the window sticker did list as one of the features, “Full tank of gas.”