Steve and Judy's Travels!

(Never mind the gold car in the driveway.  Temporary car shuffle with a neighbor.)

When we got the Tesla on Wednesday, it didn’t come with the correct charging cable.  Carvana agreed that wasn’t right and put one in the mail to us from San Antonio.  It should get here Monday.  In the meantime, we bought an adapter and used the cable that came with the car to charge it up some at home.  That’s okay.  We needed a couple days to study up on what we can control and how to do it.  We’re very comfortable driving it; starting, stopping, turning and such.  Just figured out the adaptive cruise control yesterday.  Once we set it while we’re driving it does everything until we touch the brake or turn it off, even to a full stop in traffic at a light, then back up to speed when the light turns green and traffic moves again.

Today’s adventure was to drive to a supercharger in McAllen to confirm we know how that works, in case we ever need to stop at a supercharger.  The closest one to our house is 20 miles away.  The car navigated us there.  We backed into an open spot, plugged in the cord, and the car and the charger talked to each other.  After 20 minutes, when they were done, our credit card was automatically charged, it’s in our Tesla account, and we had 200 miles of range.  (We only requested to be charged up from 20% battery to 80%.  It cost us $9.  It would have cost less than that for the same amount of charge at home.)  Unplug and drive away.  Seamless.  The standard household outlet at home will add about 60 miles a day to our range.  That’s more than we need for errands around town and driveabouts, so we keep it plugged in when we’re not driving it and over the course of a few days we’ll be topped off at 100%.  That should be about 270 miles in the tank.  The older Teslas were advised to only charge to 80% for normal usage around town, and then charge to 100% before a trip.  Our newer model recommends we just let it go to 100% any time we have the opportunity.

Tomorrow’s challenge will be operating the lane control feature, autosteer, which along with adaptive cruise control will do almost all the highway driving we need.  The adaptive cruise puts us at the appropriate speed for each road while keeping a safe distance from any vehicles around us.  The autosteer will keep us well centered in the lane for as long as we’re on that road.  Not fully self-driving, that costs extra, but impressive driver assist as-is.

This is a very smooth car and very different from anything we’ve ever had before.  And strange but true, this wasn’t spendy.  Buying a 3 year old Tesla (with 17,000 miles) didn’t cost us any more than buying the Maza did 13 years ago!

It grows this big.

I give it a good whack back each year so it can have a fresh start each spring.  I thought I’d give it a break this year and only cut it back to waist high.

It didn’t appreciate the consideration.  It only wants to grow back right from the ground.

I had to get out the loppers and remove more dead stuff.  Now it won’t take long for the rest of the old stalks to disappear inside the new growth.

The Esperanza is looking happy with these warm days and cool nights.

Even Mighty Mouse is going for it.

But he still needs a tomato tower around him to make sure no lawn mowers accidentally mistake him for a weed.

A law school student in Florida wrote a paper espousing an unpopular belief; that our original constitution, when it said “We the people…”, only meant white people.  From there, the paper went on to describe how everything should be now, based on that interpretation.  Apparently, the paper won an award, not because it was right, but because it was well written.  There is outrage that a paper with that premise could win an award, even if it got a good grade.  An interesting debate: Should a person be recognized for writing something disagreeable if they do a good job writing it?  So many threads to pull on there.

All these years, and it still won’t break so we can replace it.  Well, after 13 years we finally gave up and traded it in for a newer used car.

We found what we wanted on Carvana, and they offered us a fair trade on the Mazda, so we took it.

A 2023 Model 3.

It looks good in our driveway.

Same size and shape as an American robin.

Only different in the color.  And the range.  American Robins are ubiquitous in the U.S. and Canada, only occasionally visiting here in the Valley in the winter.  Here though, and in Mexico and Central America, the Clay-colored Thrush is a year-round resident.