North America 2021 Roadtrip #6: San Francisco, Reno, Providence, Park City, Eugene, Portland and Seattle.
Wow I continue to be way behind in my posts! I’m in Seattle now, headed to the Canadian border as I got my required COVID test result back this morning. I’ve got 10,253 miles on the Tesla and everything is humming along nicely, self driving about 90% of the time.
Leaving Paso I entered the San Francisco Bay Area in the pouring rain, and then it got dark. Never a good combination for me.
I had made arrangements to meet up with Ryan McCaffrey, host of the Ride the Lightning: Tesla Motors Unofficial Podcast. I’ve been listening to his weekly show for over five years, he’s right at the top of the list for Tesla news, events, interviews, tips & tricks and listener calls. We talked non-stop for an hour and a half over a beer, a true highlight of my trip to meet him and the chance to tell him how much I appreciate his efforts. I support him on Patreon but nothing beats a person-to-person connection.
I stayed overnight in an apartment via the Couchsurfing.com program. No parking in the area meant a $34 parking garage fee. Ugh. I enjoyed my stay with Emmanuel and his dog but I’ve decided that the constant hassle of dozens of clueless hosts and one true a-hole in the program has really killed my desire to use it in the future – you know who you are Daniel!
Breaking news the next morning about the Hertz deal to buy 100,000 Tesla Model 3s. Great for everyone all around, and the stock price continues its march to the heavens.
I drove out to the Tesla factory in Fremont, my second visit there but still special to stop in at the Center of the Universe. Factory tours are suspended due to COVID so I plugged into a supercharger and went into the gift shop. I then drove down nearby Kato Road to see Tesla’s new battery cell R&D facility. Nowhere to park so I parked illegally, ran down, took 13 seconds of video and ran back to my car. This is the location of the next major breakthrough in Tesla’s battery cells in the 4680 form factor and new chemistries.
Heading east towards the Tesla Gigafactory just outside Reno Nevada, I had to drive through the Donner Pass, where it was snowing and sleeting, brings back those bad stories of cannibalism with the early settlers. I stayed overnight in Reno at a nice downtown hotel, amongst run-down and abandoned casinos, hotels and restaurants. Not sure if it was just COVID that hit the town that badly. Charged up in the morning at a downtown supercharger station where a team of Tesla techs were performing preventive maintenance on the system, I made sure to thank them for the efforts that make Tesla a viable long-trip vehicle.
I stopped in Carson City, home of the new Redwood Materials company. It was started by JB Straubel, Tesla’s VP of Engineering from the very earliest days until his retirement a couple of years ago. Redwood’s mission is to do full lifecycle EV battery recycling, something that will lead to a circular battery recycling / production program without the need to mine any new materials.
I finally made it to the Nevada Gigafactory. Again, no tours due to COVID so I parked nearby and flew my drone around the site, following all FAA protocols. Video coming soon.
I then hit the road towards Rose Dutson Lovell Atkinson’s house north of Salt Lake City, hitting every supercharger along the way. She had a Family size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos waiting for me! I spent 5 days at her house, amidst a flurry of happy activities including floating in a pitch black salt water isolation tank, decorating the house for her yearly Monster Ball party where I dressed up as Spike the vampire from Buffy including white hair and glue-on fangs, Tarot card reading, cigar smoking, a Witchy Dance downtown, sightseeing to beaver dams and mud, visiting her office at the Northrup Grumman site and Rocket Garden, the Golden Spike location connecting the trans-continental railroad, the Spiral Jetty – a very cool art piece in the shallows of the Great Salt Lake – a drone video will be coming soon, over the mountain to Bear Lake for dinner in a freezing cold restaurant, wine in the hot tub, a trip over to Park City and lots of deep conversations about life, the universe and everything.
Sadly pulling away from Rose’s house I made my way to Boise Idaho via the supercharger location in Twin Falls with an incredible view of the Snake River Canyon and steel bridge, wow! I stayed in a hotel right next to the Boise supercharger station and thanked them for hosting the chargers for Tesla drivers. The manager said he gets a lot of Tesla customers, so the cunning charging plan is working well for both drivers and businesses.
The next day was a very long drive to Eugene Oregon but holy cow, the sights of plains and mountains and forests along the way were fantastic. I stayed in a room at the top of an old AirBnB house. I realized with dread that I had entered the land of grey skies, constant light rain and cold. Ugh. I’m not built for this anymore!
The next morning I headed to the nearby Arcimoto factory, the maker of 3 wheel Fun Utility Vehicles. I stood outside the big door in the side of the building just looking and had a great chat with Jesse and Jacob, two long-time employees. I explained I was an early shareholder and had done a test drive down in Key West. They gave me the lowdown about the factory layout, production processes, scaling difficulties in the world of COVID supply chains and the plans for the move to the new factory site. The founder Mark was on a promotional road trip so I didn’t get a chance to say Hi and Thank You.
I drove to the Eugene Air & Space Museum, which turned out to be closed for the day. Oh well. I headed down to the 5th Street area, a cluster of shops and restaurants. I found an electric bike shop and spent time talking with the owner about all things electric, he’s an Arcimoto investor too and had a Tesla.
I found an Arcimoto rental location in the Graduate hotel and booked it for an hour. I drove around downtown Eugene in the cold rain but it was OK with the windshield wiper and seat warmer to comfort me. This unit was far better than the early design I drove down in Key West, glad to see they’re making progress. I’ll make a video of the two test drives soon.
My last Eugene stop was at Vintage Underground, an auto restoration company that was planning on restoring and converting a Jaguar E-Type to electric. What I didn’t know was that’s a small part of their overall business of the highest-end auto restoration I’ve ever seen. The shop was full of rare and beautiful cars including an Aston Martin DB5 (James Bond) Jaguars, Ferraris, MGs, ACs, and others I’d never heard of. Kyia took the time to give me a full tour of the shop and details of what they’re doing for each car. If I needed a restoration performed, this is definitely the place I would go.
I had developed some pain in my right shoulder and arm, unsure if it was from sleeping badly or my driving posture. I spotted a Chinese massage therapy clinic in a shopping mall and that guy beat the living daylights out of me. I was whimpering in pain, hoping that it would address the problem more than creating new injuries. Alas, still a bit of pain days later.
The next morning I made the short drive up to Portland. I took the TriMet Max train from my hotel in Clackamas all the way to downtown, enjoying more train adventures. It was dry but brisk with a strong wind as I walked around the area, settling on an Israeli restaurant for dinner, filled up on hummus and pitas.
The next morning I made another short drive north to Seattle and found Bryan Blair’s house. He’s a Tesla owner, follower of my YouTube channel and lived in Thailand for over 20 years. He and his Thai wife graciously offered a couch for me. They had a full house with another visiting couple from Bangkok. As we headed over to a local pub we stopped in at the new Rivian showroom and spotted two of their brand-new electric pickup trucks and two prototype electric Amazon delivery trucks. I quickly edited and posted the video for that here @https://youtu.be/vkR94eGMT8E
In the morning I drove around the city trying to find a sports bar showing the Formula 1 Mexico City race. I ended up at the George and Dragon for a nice breakfast of fish & chips and British beer. After the race I drove to the Boeing Future of Flight museum. I was disappointed I couldn’t do the famous aircraft factory, due to COVID closure of course.
I then headed over to my high school girlfriend Laine Mazurek Discepoli’s house in the horse country northeast of Seattle and was immediately welcomed/attacked by her 3 dogs. Many happy and sad hours of conversation spanning the last 40 years of our lives. Preparing for my Canada border crossing I booked a PCR test. When I got to Walgreens the pharmacist said all tests were running the full 72 hours due the huge volume of tests flowing in. I booked my Canada border appointment (yes) at the 48 hour mark, hoping for the best. I met Laine for lunch and got a quick tour of her company where they make prosthetics for people with lower-body issues. I liked the exposed carbon fiber on some and custom-requested images inlaid on others.
Likely completing the last stop on my Elon pilgrimage, I went to the SpaceX Starlink R&D and manufacturing center for their Internet satellite and home receiver dish technology. Again, nothing to see due to COVID but I had a nice chat with the security lady at the front desk and she gave me two SpaceX badge lanyards – score!
The next morning news broke that Elon promised to sell 10% of his Tesla shares, because people who don’t understand taxes say he doesn’t pay enough in taxes. This of course caused the stock price to plummet by 10%. That was the single worst day of my Tesla stock holding, but I’m not worried because it went down for reasons nothing to do with the forward-looking value of the company. We’ll climb back up and above that level soon.
When I woke up the next morning I had an email with my negative COVID result! Less than 48 hours to process and I could easily make my border appointment. I said my goodbyes to Laine and the dogs and headed back up to my homeland, The Great White North.
Next up: Vancouver and Western Canada.
