Good read. Our own Doug_G was mentioned there and may chime in about Alf..
Yes I met Alf because he wanted to top up his car before heading out on his adventure. He had just picked up the car, and found our nearby office's CS-90 charging station on the Sun Country Highway web site.
My wife and I had been running errands and were on our way to the office when I got a call. There was an elderly gentleman with a Roadster trying to figure out how to get his car to charge. As it happens we were about two minutes from the office. I pulled up beside him in my Model S and went to investigate. Crown Assets didn't exactly give him the same overview of the car that Tesla did for me! He hadn't found the little slider switch on the Roadster adapter that engages the proximity signal. I slid that forwards and the car started charging.
At that point I invited him in for a chat, and later we drove over to the local Tim Hortons for lunch and more chatting. Alf is an interesting fellow and had lots of fun stories. I gave him a lot of information on "best practices" for Roadster road trips, having done a few myself. Some obvious things he had already thought of like "always keep a good reserve charge"... but also less obvious things such as how huge an impact speed has on efficiency, the effect of temperature on range, etc.
I was also able to tell him a little bit about the history of his car. I had previously met one of the engineers who had been testing it. We took the opportunity to download the logs from his Roadster, to see what sort of things they had been doing with it. There were quite a few endurance trips at very precise speeds. It looks like they had been driving in circles on a track at a constant speed to verify the range capabilities of the car. That matches some of what the engineer told me, but it was cool to see some of the data (no doubt they had more a lot more instrumentation than the car's logs).
We both enjoyed our chat, and by the time we got back his Roadster was topped up and ready for his grand adventure. Off he went! We've stayed in touch and I got occasional reports from his daughter on his progress. As you can tell from the article, he made it to Vancouver safe and sound, with only a few minor glitches and misadventures along the way.
Gotta say, it's impressive that anyone would go on a cross-Canada road trip on his first time ever driving a Roadster! It took me a bit to work up the nerve to drive to Toronto. Of course, back when I first got my Roadster there wasn't a single J1772 in the entire province of Ontario! It's really wonderful having the Sun Country network in place, so that adventures like this can happen.