segunda-feira, 19 de setembro de 2016

Day 3: San Marcos, Texas

Because this year's roadtrip was not going to be prodigal in supercharger chasing moments (I mean, we were bound for the desert and who in their right minds is going to the desert?), we decided to make the most of civilized Texas before we headed to the deep, far West.
San Marcos was an absolute surprise: Tesla superchargers hand in hand with conventional superchargers. What a treat for the Tesla-geek aficionado travelling with me.
See what I mean?

sexta-feira, 16 de setembro de 2016

Day 2: Gruene, Texas

There's something about roadtrips across the American south that calls for good ol' country music. I don't know why, it just is. and I don't know if the feeling affects other folks, it does me. Last year we were told that the Texan capital of country is Gruene in New Braunfels so I knew immediately this year we would have to go to Gruene and to Gruene we went.
A very touristy kind of place very proud of its country soul and its German ancestry (obviously, Gruene is "green" or Grün in German). I told someone I was born in Germany and instantly we were like fellow citizens of a common origin.
 There was some country music scene in the Gristmill patio but I confess I had been expecting a tad more country playing. Never mind. By the time I was halfway through the buffallo wings I had ordered for dinner, my mind was only thinking about my burning tongue and my crying eyes and why I had had the stupidest idea of saying I'm ok with hot, spicy food. I'm not!!

quarta-feira, 14 de setembro de 2016

Day 2: Out of Houston

And time it was to leave Houston and head to the great American outdoors. A storm gathered just outside Houston's city limits and in my mind I could hear the befitting "The Thunder Rolls" by Garth Brooks. We're on the highway and around us, people take shelter as best they can from the downpour. I see bikers under viaducts, truck drivers hastily covering exposed tools and merchandise with plastic sheets and soon a wall of water falls heavily and we stop seeing anything. It will be the first of many walls of water we'll encounter in the following days of our journey but not the heaviest, mightiest, scariest of them all, o no, not by a long shot.
Just when the storm is over, a Model S is on the rearview mirror. I thought we had left the Tesla obsession back in Houston but, apparently, it is following us...

sábado, 3 de setembro de 2016

Day 2: Test driving the Model X

I thought it was going to be just five minutes for a couple of pictures at the Houston-North Tesla store where we had been last last year, right? Wrong! Turned out the store opened some minutes after we arrived at the scene. Turned out the nice, wonderful Susan MacHenry was there and remembered us (I mean, how often to you get to meet a Tesla-obsessed geek from Portugal?). Turned out she proposed test driving the Model X. You don't have to say that twice to the Tesla-obsessed geek from Portugal!
Before I knew it, I was standing under the (in)famous falcon wings of the Model X (boy, are they huge!) and the Tesla-obsessed geek from Portugal was in for a joyride! O joy!
To find out more about what's it like to cruise a Model X (and have the tech lingo to go along), please visit here, and here. I'm just the Tesla-wife not the Tesla-geeky-expert.

quinta-feira, 1 de setembro de 2016

Day 2: Where in Houston?!

Ok, it kinda made sense: last year we ended our all-American roadtrip at the Houston-North Tesla Store and you may guess I conceded in going there (again) as a kickstart to this year's trip. It was Sunday and we got there real early. I was safe, I thought. The store would be closed, there would be no one around. It was just a picture for the records and we'd be gone in a nick of time. Easy, hum?
Not quite...
We did take the (our) usual pictures. I even managed to take his photo right between the ICE we were driving and a white Model S that was charging and that looks like his. It was all going great for me and I already anticipated the wide open road, the deserts and all the Tesla-free places we were going this year.
It was all going smooth (for me). Too smooth...