North America 2021 Roadtrip #4: Austin, McGregor, Roswell, Santa Fe, Albuquerque
Long time no post but I’ve been constantly on the move, seeing the people and the sights between long stretches of self-driving on the highways.
Leaving SpaceX and Boca Chica I headed north to Austin. For a city flooded with Teslas, the supercharging kinda sucks. I charged three times at the charging station in the Arboretum – it has 18 stalls but only what we call Urban chargers at 72 kilowatts as opposed to the V2 chargers at 150 and the V3 chargers at 250. Rather than 15 minutes to charge, it takes an hour, hence the need for 18 stalls and one time they were all filled with two cars waiting. I see Tesla has plans for more charging in the area, which is a good thing.
I stayed with my IBM buddy Jim Lewis and his girlfriend Elizabeth and had a great time catching up. I tried to go to the DMV to change my driver’s license from California to Texas (insert long story about taxes) but there was a sign on the door saying “By Appointment Only” and the earliest appointment I could book was in 7 weeks! There’s some good government efficiency for you!
The highlight of my visit was the wonderful timing of the wedding of Tori Beechinor our next-door neighbour back in the day in Austin. Jordan and Tori grew up together and I was so happy I could attend and share in their happiness. They had a dinosaur theme to the wedding and a Chuy’s creamy jalapeno dip fountain and unlimited chips, I kid you not. I need one of those in my life!
I also met up with old IBM friends Bill Tims, Robert L. Tycast and Fred Behning, at Chuy’s of course where I inhaled several more years worth of creamy jalapeno dip and chips. Ahh.
Then the moment I had spent a lot of time and energy on – I flew my drone around the new Tesla Austin Gigafactory! As a fully FAA Part 107 licensed Small Unmanned Aircraft System pilot (vigorously pats self on the back), I did my best to fly the site while staying legal – no flying over people or cars, no flying into controlled airspace, no flying it out of line of sight, etc. I follow several YouTubers who fly drones on the site every day who seem to be pushing the boundaries of what is legal and safe, but hey it’s Texas and you can do anything you want, oh except get an abortion or electricity in a snowstorm or a driver’s license… but I digress.
I drove around the old IBM site where I worked for years and years. The low buildings and grassy areas where we used to have our summer picnics is now all bulldozed and called The Domain. A twisty mess of boutique shops and restaurants. Not an improvement in my eyes.
I enjoyed Jim’s band’s gig at the Great Hills Country Club Family Day special event. I took the opportunity to fly the drone, safely of course, and developed a fan club of small children who wanted to know everything about the drone.
Saying my goodbyes to Austin, I headed just north to McGregor where SpaceX has their rocket engine test facility. A very stern guard at the front gate said I couldn’t get inside the site, which I completely understand. So I drove back about a quarter of a mile, pulled out the drone and got some great aerial views of the site. I went straight up to 400 feet, set maximum zoom and stayed well outside the property boundaries of the site. Sadly I didn’t catch a live engine test but I did see a truck pull through that likely had some engines inside it.
I jumped back in the car and headed west, with the eventual goal of Roswell, New Mexico. I stayed overnight in the parking lot of a Love’s truck stop in Midland Texas that also had a set of Tesla superchargers. The staff were happy to let me sleep in the car and showed me where to park. I got to try out the custom mattress for the car, along with a surprisingly good privacy shade that suction-cupped to the windows. I put the car in Camp Mode and it maintained the temperature all night, only using about 12 miles of juice from the battery pack. It was good to have access to a bathroom through the night, trust me on this.
In the morning I charged up to the brim and headed towards Roswell. I arrived with only 34 miles left in the pack, that’s a squeaker I don’t want to live through again. Unfortunately in this region there are very few places to get a good charge. Luckily the owner of the “UFO McDonald’s” in Roswell is a Tesla owner and he installed two slow destination chargers in the corner of the parking lot. I plugged in and walked through town, hitting the alien t-shirt shops and museums. I stopped in at the town visitor center and discussed EV charging with the lady working there and I think I convinced her that getting Tesla and other charging network chargers installed would be a good idea for future tourism. I drove down to the airport which also acts as an aircraft storage boneyard due to the altitude and extremely low humidity. I could see hundreds and hundreds of modern aircraft from major airlines sitting waiting for air travel to get back to normal, spread across 4000 acres. I had Thai food for dinner and saw the new Sopranos movie. That night I slept in the car again at Mickey D’s while the car topped up its charge.
I got an email from Tesla saying that their withdrawal from my bank account for the price of the car didn’t go through – wow! That’s weird because the delivery agent took my account info and said the transfer succeeded right there when we picked up the car. I gave her the information again and this time it went through. Too bad I didn’t make any interest on the money as it sat there waiting to be collected.
Heading west again I stopped at a Comfort Inn in the beautiful pine tree mountain town of Ruidoso New Mexico. They have two Tesla destination chargers and charge non-guests $10 to charge up, which is fine with me. This is when I first felt the weather change as I’m gaining altitude. It was about 45F with a strong wind and I considered putting on long pants for the first time in 4 years…
As I drove west across the top of the White Sands Missile Range, I passed the entrance gate to the Trinity nuclear test site and stopped to take a picture. This is the site of the first nuclear weapon test, the end result of the Manhattan Project, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer. The scientists felt the Little Boy design was simple enough to not need testing, but the Fat Man design needed a test. They set off the bomb and Oppy was quoted as saying “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”
White Sands is also where the German V2 rocket scientists were snatched at the end of World War II and brought to continue their work that led to the early American rockets. Their leader Werner Von Braun eventually became the chief of the Apollo Moon rocket program. Leaving the area I passed a rock shop and slammed on the brakes and nearly made a Bat-turn in the road when I saw the word “Trinitite” on the sign. Trinitite is only formed at the site of nuclear explosions when sand it melted into glass by the heat of the blast. I bought a 1.5 gram piece that contains grains of iron from the tower that held the bomb. Zowie! Collecting Trinitite has been banned since the early 1950s but these pieces were legally collected before that time and can be sold.
I finally pulled into my hotel in Socorro New Mexico. I chose it because of course they have one Tesla destination charger. The desk clerk said the hotel owner has a Tesla (do you sense a pattern here?) and he approached Tesla to install a full bank of superchargers at the site. Tesla agreed and the project is at the permit stage and should be up and running within a month or so.
I had a much-needed shower and drove out to the Very Large Array, a radio telescope made in a Y-shape of out of dozens of radio antennas whose signals are brought together into one massive antenna receiver for surveying awesome things throughout the cosmos. The visitor center was closed due to COVID but I got as close as I could for pictures, then drove nearly off the site and flew the drone straight up again, full zoom and panned around the site. Unfortunately I think the video file is corrupted, which has happened several times before, my main complaint about the drone. I’ll try to extract the video somehow.
In the morning I drove north through Albuquerque to Santa Fe and then cut left to Los Alamos, home of the Manhattan project where they designed the uranium Little Boy and plutonium Fat Man bombs. I found that there’s no visitor center on the National Labs site, but there is a kind of one in the Bradbury Science Museum. I thought they named it after Ray Bradbury the science fiction author, but it’s actually named after Norris Bradbury, the site director after J. Robert Oppenheimer left.
I headed back to Santa Fe, an artist colony that I have always wanted to visit. My first stop was the Meow Wolf … place. I don’t know what to call it, perhaps art collaborative site? You need to book tickets in advance because the inside is made up of dozens of rooms and tiny interconnecting hallways on two levels and it could get very crowded without managing the number of people inside. Everywhere you look is some kind of art. Not paintings per se, but concept art, like a room with old TVs embedded in the walls, each showing some different weird video or pattern. You just have to experience it. Recommended by Rose Dutson Lovell Atkinson and Elan Bush so I knew it had to be worth a visit.
From there I headed to my cute little hotel with two Tesla chargers (pattern…). At dinnertime I walked in the blustery cold wind 3 blocks north to the center of town, past a wide array of galleries of many different types of art. I had a Christmas (red and green) chicken chile burrito made from the famous local chiles, along with a lot of sour cream to keep my mouth from catching on fire. Walking home I saw a man about my age sitting on a chair in a shop entrance protected from the wind playing acoustic guitar. For a request I asked him to play his favourite song so he played You’ve Got A Friend by Carole King & James Taylor. He used to be a cabinetmaker but now says his music is the most important thing in his life. We discussed guitars and I showed him the pictures of the one I made. I imagine his life has been difficult with the lack of tourists due to COVID so I gave him a token of my appreciation for his skill and dedication to his passion.
The next morning I walked around town in the brisk cold wind, past even more galleries. I took a 1.5 hour tram tour ride while sitting under a warm Indian blanket. The driver showed us the downtown area’s history of churches, government buildings and old stores along with examples of the two major architectural styles and interesting things in the outlying streets including the houses of Carol Burnett and Melinda Gates. Lots of celebrities have vacation homes here.
I packed up and headed down to Albuquerque to stay overnight with a friend of a friend Kati. She had two couples come over for the evening and we ate pizza and talked about Thailand, the Tesla, the and state of the world. One lady was from North Bay Ontario, small world!
Next stop – Phoenix and Vegas baby!
All videos need editing, so I’ll post them later.
