Ever since I was a kid I wanted an electric car. Once I drove my neighbor's model S in 2012, I knew that a Tesla was for me. Once the Model 3 was announced, I got a reservation for one. Three years later I took delivery of my 2018 Model 3 Performance.
I'm never going back to gasoline. There's no need to burn fossils...
It's good to be home! We took the 101 instead of Interstate 5, because it's less boring and takes the same time to our house. It also avoids the grapevine, which I had heard required chains. Since I have single-use, fabric "chains", I'd rather not use them just to get out of LA...
The drive was straightforward and without incident. When we were in Oxnard Suzanne noticed that there was a Krispy Kreme Donut shop, so we got some for the road.
Today's Drive (469 miles @ 351 Wh/mile):
The drive west (4,668.17 miles @ 334 Wh/mile):
The full road trip (7,765.75 miles @ 321 Wh/mile):
We got up and out of Wilcox for our trip to Aptera to meet up with Steve. It was an uneventful drive until we were crossing over the mountains between the Imperial valley and San Diego. On the Valley side it was dry and sunny with some occasional clouds. In the mountains it was raining with visibility of maybe 40 feet at times. Everyone was driving with their hazard flashers on and crawling along until we got out of it. Once we got below around 1000 feet elevation it opened up and it wasn't raining at all.
It was another not great day for efficiency with a total of 347 Wh/mile bcause of the high speed limit (and speed) in Arizona (75) which means that we were going so fast (and not being efficient).
Steve met us at the Aptera R&D facility and toured us around and told us about all the really cool progress they are making. Everything he told me was amazing, but unfortunately I can't tell y'all about it... You know NDAs and all. We visited the factory building too. It was big and empty. Almost ready for them to move in next month. We gave Steve the apple pie from Annie's in Wilcox and he had made some boiled peanuts for me. Wow! Homemade boiled peanuts...
Today was a long day and we really needed to be at Apple Annie's Country Store before they closed at 5:00... We made it with 15 minutes to spare. Whew. Suzanne's friends told us about the store when we were talking to them about Wilcox and our favorite Mexican restaurant - La Unica, so we picked up some pies to give to folks during our visit with Aptera tomorrow afternoon.
We are really looking forward to seeing Steve & Chris, and the other Aptera folks.
With sadness we left the in-laws in Sugar Land... I think they were ready for us to leave, but didn't want to say it. Honestly, we are ready to be home - to sleep in our own bed with our own pillows.
On the first day out of Houston we try to meet up with an old high school friend who lives in Kerrville. This time our old high school friend Scott was in town (he's a navigator on off-shore boats and was off-shore every other time we passed through Kerrville). We had lunch with him, his wife, and son at a really nice restaurant in the old train depot building. Then we got to spend a couple of hours at his house and took some time to just hang out sitting on his front porch catching up and throwing the ball for his dog.
We arrived in Ozona and I dropped Suzanne off at the hotel and I went and charged up the car for a quick getaway tomorrow. We want to get into Wilcox before 5:00 because we hear that Apple Annie's Country Store has amazing apple pies and we want to pick some up before they close. We are also looking forward to having dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant of all time, La Unica.
Here is the map for today's drive:
Here is the map of the west-bound drive so far (3,047 miles):
After several weeks in Sugar Land and Georgetown Texas visiting family, we are finally heading home. During our time visiting family we mainly charged at 120V with an occasional Supercharger session. It was great seeing everyone, and yes we were careful of COVID exposure.
Texas is big, but luckily everyone we visited was in the South East corner. Still we drove 1,150 miles in the 18 days.
Tomorrow, we will be heading out on our way home and will be stopping off to see an old friend in the Texas hill country (Kerrville). They just happen to be on our path to Ozona (our stop for the night).
This drive had the most weather of any of the segments so far. We were in rain (some quite heavy) from Mobile, through Mississippi, and all the way to Baton Rouge. We got a nice lightening show in the morning too.
There was a pileup on the causeway over some swamps in Mississippi that caused us some delay, but other than that, everyone drove relatively sanely...
Here is the data for the day:
Now the trip is at 4,584 miles (at 308 Wh/mile / 191 Wh/km), about 2/3 of the way...
We will visit with our families until after Christmas, and I will start blogging again then (unless something interesting comes up while we are in Sugar Land).
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an
environmentally conscious, socially responsible, non-addictive, gender-neutral
celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the traditions of
the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice
(with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others
or their choice not to practice such traditions at all).
Furthermore, I offer my (non-binding) best wishes for the onset of the
generally accepted calendar year of 2022, but not without due respect for the
calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have
helped make America great (which is not to imply that America is any greater
than any other country or is the only "America" in the western
hemisphere). These wishes are offered without regard to the race, creed, color,
age, physical ability, choice of computer platform or sexual preference of the
wishee.
Happy (if happiness is in your belief system) Holidays (if you recognize them)
* This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no
promises by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for themselves
or others, is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole
discretion of the wisher. This wish expires within one year or upon the
issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.
We had a nice dinner with our sweet amazing friends that live in Melbourne Saturday night. On Sunday they took us to the beach ad we drank mimosas and chatted while enjoying the warm sand and beautiful weather. They took us to a seafood restaurant that they like and we had a nice late lunch. They then drove us around the area.
Crazy thing is that the server in the restaurant had is home town on his name tag (Port Aransas) and that go us talking about where he was from. It turns out that he lived a couple of streets over from where I lived when I was in high school! It really is a small world!
We headed off Monday morning for Mobile and had an uneventful drive, except for the crazy squall line and serious rain from east of Pensacola Florida all the way to Mobile. Tomorrow we will drive to my in-law's house (in Sugar Land, TX) where we will set up base for a while...
Thanksgiving with the family was great, and we had a memorial service for Laura at the family cemetery. It had been a long time since we were all together and it ended way too soon... But everyone has their life to get back to.
We then spent another week taking care of the built-up chores around the farm. Our forester had thinned one section of the pines earlier in the fall and it was nice to walk around in that tract with all the open space and light now getting in. Even with it being as dry as its been, the areas around the creek were still too wet, so I couldn't walk the property along it.
We did get one really nice sunset over the cotton field while we were there. The beginning:
Later, zoomed in to the bright part:
It was also cool to see the preparation for another tract that we are going to plant in longleaf next fall. In case you don't know, longleaf pine is amazing. Gary gave us a book about it (Longleaf, Far as the Eye Can See: A New Vision of North America's Richest Forest) and I have fallen in love and now see longleaf pines everywhere!
The machine that they used to knock down and cut up the scrub trees that have grown up since the last harvest of this tract was pretty amazing, well at least to me. Here's a short video of it at work:
That big drum chops up the trees into 6" long pieces and aerates the ground.
We are also raking and selling the pine straw in an older tract.
We ate at every fish place in the area and visited with cousins, and I was able to work (emails and Zoom) from there as long as I kept my video off.
We left to visit friends half-way down Florida in Melbourne on Saturday morning, so you can see that drive below. We will hang out with them on Sunday and then start the first of our west-bound segment to Sugar Land Texas on Monday morning.
The drive to Melbourne was uneventful and we were met with steaks and (probably too many) beers.
