Gary’s Excellent Coast-to-Coast Tesla Adventure

This was my sixth cross-country trip in recent history. There were at least four earlier in my life, before kids, with Abbey along, and one life-altering, ur-trip with my parents and grandmother when I was eleven. One of many and, I hope, not the last.

The risks involved – not only the varying levels of range anxiety, but the fact that this was, in fact, someone else’s car – seemed to reduce the long reveries about history and culture, and how geology shapes both of them, that characterized other trips. I did engage a lot with this kind of thing, but there was way too much glancing at the map and mileage readouts to really get lost in the country.

I did think a good deal about solitude. These trips serve as occasional retreats for me, vacations from the diverse, engaged, responsibility-laden and often stressful life I’ve chosen to lead. This was certainly the case this time, but the risks – again – added a sense of danger that was not something that I’d like to experience again in the future.

The last couple of days were through very familiar territory, with a snowy mantle. The cold, sunny, cloudless sky followed me to Oneonta, but on the last morning it turned distinctly more winter-like, a sloppy, featureless grey we would all recognize. Didn’t matter. I was heading in. I could smell the sea.

What a joy it was to pull up to Randall and Lily’s house, which I had seen only in Zillow pictures and Google maps. Lily had the door open before I reached the doorbell. And there she was: The Cutest Grandchild in All of Human History. I was home.

I arrived in Weymouth on Saturday afternoon, having started in Oneonta and having skipped two chargers along the way! I finally had enough confidence in my “range math” and it worked out fine. Randall asked me, “So are you ready to buy yourself a Tesla?”

The answer is ‘no.’ I love the luxury appointments, the tight suspension, steering and brakes, and especially the part about no gas. But being a little bit obsessive, range would always be in the back of my mind; I would always be checking my mental map of chargers and doing math. I suspect that this position is largely the result of my driving long distances in a highly unrepresentative situation, fully loaded with bikes on the back.

If I had been driving a Tesla with just me and my suitcase, I still would have been stopping more frequently than I wanted to. Superchargers are almost always placed conveniently near Interstate exits, and usually near a place to get whatever you need for the road and use the restroom. Tesla just needs to increase the range by maybe 20%, and I could happily drive west.

Enough for tonight. The last two (maybe three) posts tomorrow night. Thanks for reading.

This post is about the routines I follow on a trip, which coincidentally serve to explain how I can afford to drive west so often. You may not be interested in this, so feel free to skip it.

Abbey and I use one credit card for nearly all our purchases, and pay it off each month, thus generating a lot of reward points. I convert these points into Marriott gift cards. This trip, I used gift cards at all five hotels (night six was at my house; night seven at Randall and Lily’s). That in turn generates more Marriott account points that I will turn in for free nights in the future.

I only stay in Marriotts that offer free breakfast. They are a little more expensive, but the alternative is wandering around a strange town at 6AM looking for a place to get breakfast. Their breakfasts are, if not gourmet, varied, nutritious and filling. After I eat, I put a schmear of cream cheese on a bagel, grab a banana, and I have lunch. I look for Subways when I have to stop during the day, and get a foot-long veggie, for no other reason than I really like them. The Subway veggie is dinner for two nights; I’ve always traveled in the winter, so refrigeration is not a factor (even though I usually put the second half in the hotel room’s mini-fridge).

So room and board for this trip was less than twenty dollars.

Some stuff about the car:

There’s a lot that I like about the Tesla. There are a lot of luxury-car amenities like heated leather seats, built-in nav system, and infinitely adjustable seats. There are some great things that may be unique to Tesla and may not (I don’t know much about cars, except how to drive them). For instance, the emergency avoidance system (which, actually, kicked in a few times when it shouldn’t have), which has a great feature: If you’re in cruise control and you’re coming up on a slower vehicle ahead of you, it gently matches speed, a safe distance behind, and will stay matched until you do something about it. On a long Interstate trip, this is invaluable. The phone lock concept – the key for getting into the car and starting it up is your phone – worked much better than I had hoped. If you leave your phone in the car, it’s OK, because as long as your phone is about 30-50 feet from the car, it’s unlocked. As soon as you walk further away, it locks itself, turns on the sentry guard (reports attempts to enter it), and folds in the side-view mirrors! That still doesn’t avoid the ‘left my phone on the bedside table’ problem, but I never did, maybe partly because all my books and music are on my phone. All I had to do was be more vigilant about keeping my phone charged, and I did that.

There is a list of things I don’t like about the Tesla:

• The outside and inside door handles: Outside the door handles are perfectly flush with the body (aerodynamics are important), but to get them open involves movements that do not feel natural to my old, arthritic hand. Inside, the door opens at the touch of a button – a button that is not conveniently placed.
• The side-view mirrors tilt down automatically when you reverse (so you can see the parking lines when backing into a supercharger?), so I can’t see anything I need to see.
• No window wiper or washer on the back window
• Everything is done on the touch-screen (which is more like a 15″ monitor, not a 22), which means everything requires that I take my eyes off the road. There are an enormous number of actions that take two or three touches. I prefer controls I can operate without looking at them.
• The cradle designed to hold and charge your phone was not well-thought out. Because I had a standard case on my phone, it didn’t fit, and Randall had to partially disassemble it. Really? All Tesla owners have to have stylish thin phones that they never drop? More about this at the end.

(Obviously I’ve finally learned how to use bullet points).

Even though the trip isn’t over yet (today is day 7), the stats post is ready!

Day 1 – Fremont, CA to Kingman, AZ 592 miles

Day 2 – Kingman, AZ to Gallup NM 332 miles

Day 3 – Gallup NM to Weatherford, OK 609 miles

Day 4 – Weatherford, OK to Fenton, MO 553 miles

Day 5 – Fenton MO to Westerville OH 451 miles

Day 6 – Westerville OH to Oneonta, NY 544 miles

Day 7 – Oneonta NY to Weymouth MA 260 miles

Total – 3,301 miles

I’m not going to go back and count the charge stops – generally, four or five a day.

Gallons of gas: 0

Audiobooks:

On the plane, I finished a book by Bill Bryson about European travel in the 1990s

Started on the plane, finished on the road: “Lafayette in the Somewhat United States” by Sarah Vowell, a snarky view of the American Revolution, if you can believe it.

“Forever Peace” by Joe Haldeman, a 1997 sequel to “Forever War,” a legendary sci-fi masterpiece written twenty five years earlier.

“Earning the Rockies,” a book about how geography shaped American history, which I didn’t like nearly as much as I thought I would. But it’s got a driving west trip in it.

“Caliban’s War,” the third novel in the sci-fi “Expanse” series, which follows the unbelievably excellent series available on Amazon Prime.

“Stardust” by Neil Gaiman, because who doesn’t love Neil Gaiman?

I finished “Stardust” last night and will get into “Disappointment River” today, a history of Alex MacKenzie and the Northwest Passage, written by a man who retraced MacKenzie’s adventure down the river that bears his name.

I think a lot about the difference between driving east and driving west.

I’ll often describe what I’m doing on a trip as “driving west.” West is out, east is back. West is the trip unfolding, expanding; east is eventually contracting to re-enter the real world. West is the midwest as appetizer and then wham! The Rockies and the basin and range and the great Southwest, and finally over the last mountains to the Pacific (the Pacific Coast Highway, if I’m lucky) and Randall and Lily. East is also through all that great landscape, but then the final two days are familiar and flat. Driving east is after all the visiting is over.

When I took the furniture out to California in January, it was a west without an east; I flew back home. I missed having a second half, but it was a real “driving west” experience. This trip is all east, with no west. The Tesla made up for that to a great extent, but east is east.

Time zones contribute to this. Going west, you get an hour back almost every day, to do whatever you want with. It’s like a reward. Going east, an hour is taken from you, and the trip seems longer – is longer! You think you’re making good time, and suddenly it’s an hour later.

So I like west. I’d never give up east, but it’s got it’s own character and suffers from being the trip home, meaning the trip’s going to be over soon, and the search for an excuse to drive west again begins anew.

Pulled in to Oneonta at around 6PM tonight. It was nice to make turns without having to watch the nav system.

I had Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C for topping up the battery before making the run to Albany tomorrow morning. Plan A emerged while charging in Binghamton, when I went through the case of adapters that came with the car. One is a normal household three-prong plug. We’ve got an outdoor outlet right next to where we park the cars.

I drove up Dietz St. anyway, to check out the charger there, and it’s not a Tesla charger. It’s a big post with a bunch of cables (or maybe one long cable) hung on it. Good to know. That was Plan B. Plan C was the Hampton Inn.

Plan A worked. It’ll take 23 hours to fill up, but I only need a few dozen miles to top off the tank and remove any range anxiety on my way to Albany. So the car’s in the driveway, plugged in.

By the way, this is a blog. If you have a question about anything, leave a comment and I’ll respond.

This is a car post.

The charging routine is working well (more about that in a future post); my only concern was, ironically, the stretch between Binghamton and Albany, which is 145 miles, a little more than I’m used to. But add to that the complication that I’d like to stop at our house in Oneonta (halfway along) and stay overnight. I was afraid that the detour, and the long night worth of maintenance routines, would further drain the battery.

There is a destination charger at the Hampton Inn on the west side of Oneonta. A destination charger provides a much slower (usually overnight) charge. I was trying to figure out how to leave the car there, get home, stay over, and get back to the car in the morning. A cab each way was my best guess.

I called the Hampton Inn to make sure the charger was actually there, and talked with Kerry, who was very helpful. She said the charger was out back by the dumpster. We did some problem-solving, and had a workable solution, when she asked me, “Where in Oneonta do you live?” I told her, and she said, “Just the other day I dropped a guest off at a brand new Tesla charger in the Dietz St. parking lot, just across from the Lizard Lick” (that’s what it’s called – I”m not making that up). So – there’s a Tesla charger in Oneonta! Apparently, it’s not on the map yet. Problem solved – I can walk home from there. But I don’t have to – fifteen minutes of charge and I’ll get to Albany with power to spare.