Hi,
Medical Update: The ablation procedure (to take a final stab at curing my AFib) will take place on the 21st of this month (less than a week from now). I feel very safe in my doctor’s hands. This is a very common procedure and he’s done a ton of them. But on to the reunion.
I spent last weekend (Friday and Saturday nights) in Deep Springs, the pseudonym for the Texas town I spent my high school years and few years of college in. I was at my 60th high school reunion (yes, I really am that old). We had a graduating class of 231 in 1965. If you went to a high school in a large city, that may not seem like a lot, but that was the largest graduating class in the history of the school. There were 30 or so of us at the reunion. About 80 have passed away, which means a little over a hundred of us either couldn’t come or chose not to attend. I considered not going myself for a while, but I’m glad I did. In the end it was good to see old friends and catch up on what we’ve been doing with our lives.
This post (and the two that follow it) will be as much about getting to the reunion and home again, as about being there. So, let’s look at Part One (from my house to Austin). Parts Two and Three will be about the second leg of the trip (Austin to Deep Springs), and about the third leg (coming home after the reunion).
A couple of posts ago, I said something about EVs and how they require a bit more planning if you’re on a long road trip than an internal combustion engine vehicle (an ICE) would need. That’s primarily because there are so many more gas stations (right now) than there are charging stations, but that’s changing. I didn’t have as many options when I was making this trip, and I was also concerned because my right hand, despite its good progress, was still healing and it would see a lot of use during the trip.
I would also be carrying a passenger (a high school friend of mine, Rowland Curry), and all the driving I had done in Evie so far had been alone or with Minay (who was very familiar with charging routines by now). I knew I would have to stop a few times to recharge Evie, but I didn’t know how Rowland would react to the extra stops. As it turned out, he was fine with it.
From Spring to Austin (Friday, May 2, 2025):
About eight months ago, Tesla opened its Supercharger network to non-Tesla EVs. My Bolt uses a CCS1 charging plug. Tesla charging stations have a NACS plug. Don’t worry about the acronyms, they both deliver electricity, but with a NACS adapter for Evie’s CCS1 charging port I can now have access to about 15,000 more chargers across the country. If I can’t find a CCS1 charger on my route, I might be able to use a Tesla NACS charger. Once the Tesla network opened up do non-Tesla EVs, I got an adapter for those rare occasions when I might take longer trips (like this one), so I kept it in the car. I didn’t plan to use GPS on this trip because I had driven it often enough to know it very well, but I did print out a map of the drive and marked charger locations on it, including Tesla’s.
I left my home in Spring with a full 80% charge, heading northwest on US 290. I planned on charging at Waller, only 33 miles into the trip. I stopped at a Buc-ee’s there because I knew they had 16 Tesla chargers, and it would be a good opportunity to test my adapter, get a quick charge, and empty my bladder of the huge mug of coffee I drank before I left the house. I found out that I didn’t need the adapter anyway. These chargers had Magic Docks, a built-in NACS to CCS1 plug. Not all Tesla chargers have them, but these did. I opened the Tesla app on my phone, it found my location, I chose the charger I wanted to use, started it charging, and walked across the lot to the store. I was back about ten minutes later. I had used up about 10% of my battery to get to Waller (it was down to 70% when I arrived). After a ten-minute charge it was up to 75% and it only cost me $1.03. Pretty good.
My next planned charge was at Brenham (33 miles away from Waller). At the time there were only a few fast chargers in the city, and there was a charging desert between Brenham and Austin, so I had to fill up in Brenham. At the Ford dealership I charged 65% to a full 80% (it took 15 to 20 minutes), and then I was on my way toward Austin again. That charge cost $4.68, and my GOM (stands for Guess-o-Meter) the information panel on my dashboard, showed a maximum range of 175 miles (but Max range is highly optimistic). The Median range was 149 miles, and the Minimum was 122. I usually go by the Median range figure because it’s fairly accurate. The Minimum range is a good estimate of how many miles I could get even under terrible circumstances. Including a slight detour to get to get to Rowland’s house, it was 104 miles from Brenham to a particular northern suburb of Austin, where I wanted to recharge. I would easily make it there without any other charging stops. The suburb is unnamed because of it’s actual location, and the charger I had in mind there was next to some restaurants. A perfect spot for a charging lunch.
While we ate (enchiladas for Rowland, and a delicious avocado BLT for me), Evie got filled up too. She went from 30% to 80% in about a half-hour, and we were ready to go again. Her GOM reading was 247 (Max), 210 (Med), 172 (Min). From that point forward it was a charging desert. Deep Springs was only (roughly) 150 miles away, so we were fine. There are very few chargers in Deep Springs (one was at our hotel, but I wasn’t sure we’d be able to charge there). The only other charger before Deep Springs was in a small town about 90 miles from our lunch spot, about 60 miles shy of Deep Springs. A car dealer had a charger there, and I wanted to use it in case we couldn’t charge in Deep Springs. We arrived at the car dealership with 30% remaining, and, to save time, just did a quick charge to 45%, knowing that would be enough to get us to Deep Springs. Even if we couldn’t fully recharge there it would be enough to drive around town a little and still make it back to the car dealership for a full recharge.
We were back down to 30% when we arrived at our hotel. I asked if the charger was available. It was, and the charge for guests was only $5. I pulled Evie into the charging slot and started charging (a level 2 charger like mine at home, so not as fast as public fast chargers). The reunion was the next day, so we unpacked, read a little, then walked down the street to a restaurant, and had a nice buffet-style supper (I had fried catfish, Rowland had barbecue). When we got back, Evie had a full 80% charge, so I moved her out of the slot, and notified the desk clerk it would be available for other guests.
The next post is about the reunion, what we did that day, and about potentially getting a final recharge before we left for home the next morning.
Michael
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