For our big family vacation this year, we chose a cruise to Alaska! Tyla and I did two cruises (cruise 1 post and cruise 2 post) before Elijah was born, but we had saved an Alaskan cruise because it was so easy to do. Sometimes those easy/local things get put off for a long time!
This cruise was on Royal Caribbean’s “Quantum of the Seas” ship. We chose it because our first two cruises were with Royal Caribbean and the related Celebrity cruise line. We knew they had good family programs and Elijah was still within the age limit for their kids club.
We had four stops on this cruise:
Icy Strait Point, Alaska – This isn’t really a town. It’s a purpose-built cruise port and the small fishing village of Hoonah is nearby. We didn’t schedule an excursion here and just ended up walking along the shore about halfway to the town before returning. The popular activity here is a giant zipline. It was cool to set foot in Alaska for the first time, but the port didn’t wow us. While we were parked in the port, we spotted a few whales!
Skagway, Alaska – We were excited for this port because it was a bigger town and because we had booked a zipline excursion. (The most popular excursion is a train ride up into the Yukon.) Unfortunately, we never got to stop there! The winds were gusting over 40 knots, and they were blowing the ship around so much that it couldn’t dock safely. The captain tried twice but it didn’t work out so the rest of our itinerary was slightly modified. We were bummed to miss the port but thankful that we booked through the cruise line, so our excursion was immediately refunded.
Endicott Arm and Dawes Glacier – This wasn’t really a stop, but it was a “view from the ship” destination. We drove through the narrow fjord called Endicott Arm. It’s only about a half mile wide so getting a giant cruise ship through there is a bit of a feat. The Dawes glacier is at the end of the fjord and there are an increasing number of icebergs along the way. We were excited to spot seals on one of the icebergs as we went by. We went as far as we could before the icebergs got too thick and then the captain spun the ship around so we could all view it easily.
Juneau, Alaska – Our modified itinerary gave us a full day in Juneau instead of just the afternoon. We got off the ship in the morning and spent a couple of hours walking around the shops near the port. After lunch back on the ship, we got off again for our Jeep excursion. This was basically a 4.5 hour car rental. The Jeep came preprogrammed with waypoints and a related audio guide. The best stop was the Mendenhall Glacier. We stopped at the main visitor center area and did a 2 mile hike out to Nugget Falls. It was pretty rainy all day, but we were prepared, and the Jeep was stocked with extra umbrellas. It also had gold panning equipment, but we only discovered at the very end that the gold panning spot wasn’t in the default waypoint list. We added that to our trip and spent a few quick minutes realizing that understanding the concept of panning for gold is a lot different than remembering how the different tools work in the cold rain while you’re in a hurry to get back to the ship! After returning the Jeep, we had about half an hour before they pulled up the gangway so Tyla and Elijah were kind enough to let me stop into Alaskan Brewing and have a beer.
Victoria, British Columbia – There’s a US law that says a cruise cannot leave a US port and return to a US port without stopping in another country unless it is registered in the US. That would have huge tax implications for the cruise lines so there’s always at least a token stop in another country. In this case, we arrived in Victoria at 5pm and left at 10pm. Unless you’re eating dinner on shore and exploring in the dark, this isn’t really an ideal stop. We didn’t schedule an excursion but we did get out and walk around. We headed east out of the port along the coast and found ourselves out of the crowd and enjoying sunshine for one of the first times on the trip.
With the skipped Skagway stops and the two ports where we mostly just walked around, a lot of our time was spent on the ship. Thankfully the ship had a ton of things to keep us busy!
SeaPlex – There was an indoor area on the top decks called the SeaPlex and we spent a lot of time there. Aside from the usual staples of ping pong, foosball, cornhole, etc, they had a big sports are that would change throughout the day. Over the course of the trip we used that area for bumper cars, roller skating, laser tag, soccer, and dodgeball. It was quite impressive and they did a good job of knowing which events needed to have a pre-registration so you didn’t have to wait in line for a long time.
iFly – There is a chain of indoor skydiving places called “iFly” which is basically a cylinder on top of a giant fan that lets you practice free falling. The ship had one of these too! We pre-paid for an extended session which got us extra instruction and two 1-minute flights. One minute sounds short but it felt plenty long when we were in the tunnel. All three of us did that initial session. Later we discovered that we could also sign up for a single flight for free. I’m glad we did the paid session first because the free one included very little instruction. Tyla was nice enough to stand outside the tunnel and take pictures and video of Elijah and I flying!
Rock climbing – There was a two-story rock-climbing wall on the side of the ship with a wide variety of routes for different skill levels. The wall was closed most of the time because of wind and rain, but Elijah got to spend about an hour there our last full day on the ship.
Pools – The ship does have an outdoor pool, but it wasn’t used a lot on this cruise because of the weather. The indoor pool got a lot of use but somehow never seemed overly crowded. Elijah spent a lot of time in there and especially enjoyed it when the water was sloshing around during the rockier days at sea.
FOOD – My main challenge on a cruise is figuring out how I’m going to be hungry enough for my next meal! The two basic choices for food are the main dining room and the buffet. We chose to eat our breakfasts and lunches in the buffet and then ate dinner in the dining room around 7 or 8pm every night. We chose the “My Time Dining” option which gave us a private table and the option to move our dining times around. We were very lucky to get a window table and the same great waiters every night. They would usually end up encouraging us to order multiple appetizers, entrees, and desserts so that we could sample many different items. Aside from all that great food, there were also endless ice cream cones, pizza, and hot dogs available. There are a lot of specialty restaurants that cost money, but we were more than happy with the included offerings.
All Access Ship Tour – We paid for a 2.5-hour tour of the boat and got incredible behind the scenes access to backstage of the theater, galley, laundry, engineering, food storage, and even the bridge! They provided little speakers that hung on your ear which made it easy to hear what was going on. It’s amazing to see everything that needs to happen to keep 4000+ guests fed and entertained. There are people working extremely hard for long hours with no days off so that you can enjoy your time napping and overeating.
This cruise was quite different from our previous cruises.
It was obviously much cooler and wetter than our Caribbean trips.
In the Caribbean, we barely remember ever feeling the ship move, but the movement was impossible to ignore on this trip when you were walking around or lying in bed. It never bothered us or kept us from doing anything.
On the first cruises I remember lots of naps and downtime where we would kill an hour or two just reading or staring at the ocean. With an 11-year-old in tow, that didn’t happen as often and we had to spend a lot more time figuring out how to keep him entertained and fill time. I once heard someone say that as a parent, you don’t take vacations, you just play tour guide for your kids. So my love of cruising so I don’t have to worry about logistics didn’t play out this time, but it was still worth it.
With the missed port and the different dynamics of having three people’s wishes to coordinate, I would say that this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I booked it, but it turned out differently great. We have a lot of wonderful memories together and we’re all dreaming about doing it again!
In addition to playing disc golf fairly regularly, Elijah and I have watched a lot of the pro tournaments online. They have a subscription network for live coverage, but we generally watch an edited version of the final round for free on the JomezPro YouTube channel. Most of the tournaments are in the midwest and southeast but there were a couple Oregon tournaments on this year’s schedule, so last weekend we made a day trip to Portland for day 3 of the 2024 Portland Open.
I didn’t really know what to expect and it was going to be a long day (6 hours in the car plus ~8 hours at the tournament) so I was hoping for the best. I had so many questions starting with “What is parking going to be like?” There wasn’t a lot of info available ahead of time about parking but I was thrilled to see that we could just street park within about a 5 minute walk of the course!
The tournament schedule had the ladies teeing off first followed by the guys. Elijah’s disc golf teacher was in one of the first groups of ladies to tee off and that had happened a couple hours before we got there. After checking scores on my phone, we made a beeline back to hole 16. There was almost no one around and we weren’t even sure we were in the right area, but then we saw his teacher come through. She spotted after teeing off and came running over to give Elijah a hug! We watched her through the final holes and got to chat with her after. She made Elijah feel super special and even took him up onto the #1 tee between groups to get a great photo by one of the big PDGA sign boards. You can see it on her Instagram account.
After walking around the booths and grabbing some lunch, we watched the top ladies groups finish up on hole 18. Then we headed over to hole 1 and parked ourselves in a great spot with some shade but also great views of the green.
It ended up being a magical spot. One of the first groups we watched had Niklas Anttila in it (one of Elijah’s favorites.) As Niklas walked by, he fist bumped Elijah and blew Elijah’s mind! It was a tiny act but the unnecessary kindness of it was so wonderful.
That was more than we expected but it certainly wasn’t the end. When Andrew Presnell came through, his caddy handed Elijah a signed trading card. And then when Ricky Wysocki came through, his caddy rummaged around in his bag for quite a while and came out with a Ricky t-shirt in Elijah’s size! Elijah immediately put it on and Ricky gave him a big smile as he walked by. Just being close to all the people he watches on TV was a hit but these extra interactions sent him over the moon. In this image below, we are back against the trees just to the left of the guy’s disc in his hand in front in front of the person in the red shirt.
We watched everyone come through and then we headed further out on the course to watch a few more players come through before finally settling on hole 18 to watch everyone come through again. It was about 10 minutes between groups but Elijah never once talked about being bored or tired even though it was about 8 hours on the course in total.
If Elijah had to pick one player as his favorite, it would probably be Calvin Heimburg. Calvin was in the second to last group. We got to watch him make a stellar eagle on the last hole. You can see us in this photo below to the left of the basket. We are all standing and Elijah has an aqua colored shirt on. Or watch this video for a longer clip of the video that this screenshot was taken from. You can see Elijah jump up and cheer.
If you kept watching that video clip to see Calvin’s putt, you might have noticed that Tyla and Elijah were gone. (I was standing there recording a phone video like a dork.) Earlier in the day, Elijah had picked out a Calvin Heimburg disc as his souvenier. After the round, he waited in line to get it signed by Calvin and even got a picture with him too!
As I mentioned, it was a long day and we were wiped out by the time we got home. The morning drive wasn’t too bad but it would have been really nice to have a hotel that evening. I was really thankful for the autosteer feature on the Tesla as it took a lot of pressure off both of the drives.
If you can’t tell by now, we were very impressed with the event. Yes, disc golf is still a niche sport, but they put on an excellent show. You can tell they’re putting a ton of effort into really polishing it as much as possible. But since it’s still picking up steam, it’s very easy to attend an event like this and tickets were only $21 (plus Elijah got in free.) The only time when a crowd was minorly annoying was on the final hole of the day with the final group, but realistically it was probably only 200-300 people. I was still able to see just fine, and there was zero traffic leaving the event.
Most of these same players will be playing next week a little farther south in Oregon. We’re excited to do this again sometime, but that’s probably a little too soon. We’ll have our eyes on the schedule next year though! Most events are east of the Mississippi but it’s nice to see a couple within driving distance for us.
A huge thank you goes from our family to everyone who made our day special, but especially Corey! She made Elijah feel like a VIP!
Continuing our series of Memorial Day memories, 1993 featured cousin Tim bringing his water balloon slignshot and me learning that it’s best not to talk when you’re recording video!
As one of the three people at church who play for our services, I was asked to participate in a “six handed piano” piece. I’ve heard of duets but a trio!? It ended up being challenging in ways I never expected: it’s hard to physically fit 3 people at a piano! I suppose it depends on the specific music being used, but ours was very tight and we had to bend our wrists awkwardly, share keys, and overlap hands. We played this at the close of the Easter service, and despite it having one of the highest mistake rates of any of our practices, it was well-received. The video below was taken during one of our practices when I mounted a camera overhead. (That’s me on the left trying my best to keep up!)
The Tesla Cybertruck was released last week. It was announced all the way back in 2019 and now customers are finally taking deliveries. Let’s start with the positives…
The truck is an incredible feat of engineering. The AWD version does 0-60mph in 4.1 seconds and the “Cyberbeast” model does it in just 2.6 seconds. It does all that while having almost as much payload and towing capacity as my maxed-out internal combustion F150. As a visual to help explain how wild it is to cover both ends of the speed/towing spectrum, Tesla released this video of a Porsche losing a drag race to a Cybertruck… while the Cybertruck is also towing the same Porsche model.
There’s a video showing it in winning handily in a pulling competition against other EV trucks and a diesel F350. There’s also a video of the truck being “bulletproof” or at least bullet resistant. During development it was claimed that the truck would also be able to cross open water though I haven’t seen that independently tested yet.
So yes, it’s a technological marvel, but (and this is a big but)… yuck. It looks like a Pontiac Aztec had a baby with a kindergartener’s drawing of a truck. Teslas have extremely low coeffecients of drag and I’m sure that factored into the design, but still, I know that design is subjective, but I have zero interest in driving this eyesore.
When it was announced four years ago, I disliked it so much that I worried it would sink the whole company. Now we’re in a world where Tesla is probably going to claim the title of best selling vehicle on the planet of 2024. They will probably be ok even if the Cybertruck is a flop.
But will it be a flop? I doubt it. It might level out to be the lowest selling of their models after the initial hype, but I think they’ll sell enough of them to cover their development costs. Tesla incite a fan reaction only seen in companies like Apple. They can make anything they want and people will line up to buy it and rave about how great it is.
If I was replacing my internal combustion F150 today, I’d probably end up buying another gas truck. Rivian is good but their trucks are small for what I want. The electric F150 is intersting but I don’t trust the traditional manufacturers to make a good EV or back it up with a good ownership experience. We’ll get to a point where big trucks make sense as EVs, but I think today the best we can do is smaller trucks like the Rivian R1T.
Ever since we moved here about 12 years ago, there has been a big open field behind our neighborhood. It provided a nice buffer as we looked out our back windows. As expected, the person who owned that eventually passed away and it was sold to a land developer. Over the course of about a year and a half, they tore out everything on the property, dug an enormous hole for a water retention box, and then put six house on top. The houses are selling for $1.8-2 million. Real estate around here is nuts.
I had gotten my drone earlier that year so I started capturing some photos and videos of the project. Then it occurred to me that if I could somehow fly the same pattern repeatedly, I could build a video drone timelapse! Thankfully there are plenty of apps like this already available and with very little effort, I had Dronelink up and running. I was a bit limited in the paths that I could run smoothly due to the speed of my old phone, but I got a basic one programmed in and started flying it every weekend. Over the course of the project, I added a couple more routes into the mix.
After 18 months of flying most weekends and then many hours of editing trying to align all the images and video, here’s the result:
Once you start a project like this, there really aren’t a lot of adjustments that can be made. You need to keep doing the same thing to get the timelapse and a lot of the learnings aren’t visible until you do all the editing at the end. If I had it to do over again, here are some things I’d do differently:
Always fly in exactly the same lighting conditions. The cloudy days were the easiest to edit. Direct sunshine make it really difficult, but theoretically if ALL the shots were direct sunshine around the same time of day then it might be ok.
Take the time to calibrate the gimbal and wait for extensive GPS lock before starting. Some of the shots were way out of the norm and it took a lot of time to try and twist the results into something that matched the shots around it.
When editing, pick a clip in the middle and then work out toward both ends to align all the photos. Otherwise the error increases over the whole span of the video and by the end you have a huge area of black. I had to redo a couple sections because of this mistake and because I didn’t learn my lesson the first time.
Pick paths that are far away from the action. Ideally they would have the full project in view for the whole flight. I wish I had just done a big circle around the project or something like that.
As cool as the video idea is, I think the photo part of the timelapse worked the best. Doing a mix of the two is probably good because I still think the video could be done well, but it’s a higher degree of difficulty.
Hopefully I’ll never be in a situation where I’m think close to a major building project again so I’m glad I took advantage of the opportunity. That being said, I’m glad it’s over because it did get a bit boring as time went on.
If you’re interested in an electric vehicle, you might be wondering why Teslas are so popular despite their higher price. The price has gone up quite a bit from when we ordered ours, but we were asking the same question back then too. My one-word response is: experience. Other companies are making lots of announcements about EV models, but it’s not as easy as writing an idea on paper. The supply chain, manufacturing process, and support models are all quite different for EVs. Tesla has a ~10-year head start on other companies.
For example, battery efficiency is a mix of not just the physical design of the car but also the software that manages the battery. Take a look at this report which shows the energy used per mile. Our Model Y Long Range with 19″ wheels is one of the most efficient vehicles you can buy despite the largish size. Even the Model S Plaid (one of the fastest vehicles on the planet) has better efficiency than a Nissan LEAF.
As I was thinking about this post, a good video was posted to YouTube about this exact topic.
I don’t really understand the title image and the title itself is click-baity, but the video gives 10 good reasons why you might want to choose a Tesla over another EV.
Direct sales – no surprise markups, no dealer haggling
Safety – Model Y is both the safest car and the best at preventing accidents as tested by multiple agencies
Charging – Road tripping in anything besides a Tesla is painful
Depreciation – EVs hold value better than ICE because they run much longer and Tesla’s hold value much better than any other car
Built in the USA. Teslas are the most American made vehicles.
Technology – Over the air software updates every month
Dash Cam and Sentry Mode – Alerts to your phone and recorded footage from all exterior cameras
Autopilot – Keep centered in the lane on almost any road, enormous investment in AI so it gets better with every update
Experience – There’s a lot to learn when a company starts doing EVs and Tesla is very far ahead of anyone else.
Tesla App – Precondition, scheduling, valet mode, charging stats, avoiding peak rates, sentry mode live stream, scheduling service
I tried to pick my top 3 from that list but it’s too hard. We loved the direct sales model. It’s awesome to know that my family is driving around in the safest car on the planet. Charging doesn’t worry us on road trips. Our car gets better every month with new software updates. Autopilot is fantastic and makes driving so much more enjoyable. And as I already said, it’s comforting to buy with the company that is effectively operating 5-10 years ahead of other companies. Ford and Volkswagen are doing better than most, but then you have behemoths like GM that are struggling mightily.
That being said, I’m happy whenever someone buys a non-Tesla EV. Competition is healthy for the market and there’s so much demand for EVs that even Tesla can’t provide enough vehicles to satisfy it.
Tyla and I are now the proud owners of a Tesla… order. Yep, we’re jumping into the battery powered vehicle game, but there are so many other orders in right now that the currently estimated delivery date is May.
It’s Electric Boogie Woogie Woogie!
Our Escape has around 95,000 miles on it. It should have more life in it, but we haven’t had the best relationship with it and it’s giving us more and more reasons to worry about it’s longevity. So we went car shopping and landed on a Tesla Model Y. Specifically, here’s what we ordered:
Model Y Long Range Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive
Deep Blue Metallic Paint
All Black Premium Interior
Five Seat Interior
Autopilot
There was a lot of research between “Hey, let’s buy a car” and “Hey, let’s get a Tesla.” So this post will get long, but I’ll go through a bunch of my questions, and if you have others, feel free to shoot them my way. Even though I will cite many references along the way, I’m not going to take the time to cite everything. I’m not here to convince you that you should do this too. This was a way to help me go through all the questions I had and organize my thought process. But if you’re EV curious, I think some of this will be helpful to you too.
How far does it go on a charge?
For me, electric vehicles were synonymous with “range anxiety”. But battery tech has improved rapidly and the Model Y that we ordered has an estimated range of 326mph. We rarely go more than 100 miles in a day (average is 80 on school days) so even if we keep our battery charge between 20% and 80% for maximum battery lifespan, we still have double what we need.
Are there chargers near me?
The short answer is yes, but we’ll rarely need them. We’ll only use chargers on a road trip, and when we’re on a road trip, the Tesla charging network is pretty hard to beat. The Tesla website shows all of their super charging stations. On top of that, Teslas can be charged at regular EV charging stations too.
This video shows an example of taking a Tesla, a Mustang Mach-E, and a gas car on a 1000 mile road trip. I’m sure not every trip with a non-Tesla EV would be that frustrating, but it certainly gives one example of how Tesla’s vertical integration is a bonus for owners.
How long does it take to charge?
If you stop at a super charger, you can get 30% battery life added in 9 minutes. 80% takes around 30 minutes. At home, it will be slower and it depends on the circuit that you’re charging from. The Tesla site has a handy chart that gives an estimate of the mileage gained per hour of charging. We’ll have a NEMA 6-20 adapter which means that our Model Y will recover our ~80 miles per day in 6 hours. Thankfully I had a a 220v 20amp circuit put in for the table saw and since I use that very infrequently, I’ll share the circuit for now, being careful to unplug the Tesla when I’m woodworking. We might add a dedicated higher-amp circuit in the future but that will likely require a subpanel so I’m not eager to jump on that project.
From my research, it seems like non-EV owners think about how long it takes to charge the battery and EV owners remember how long it used to take to fill up with gas including the drive to the gas station. EV owners comment on how every time they walk out to their car, it’s full. It’s like having someone stop by your house every night and fill up your cars with gas. There’s no waiting for the battery to charge because it usually happens when the car is in the garage and you’re doing other things. Assuming that a night of charging will refill what you used during the day, the only time you care about charge speed is when you’re on a road trip.
How much does it cost to charge?
The Model Y comes with a 75kWh battery. We pay $0.10/kWh so even if we charged it from 0-100% that is $7.50 (plus some lost electricity to heat, etc). Or if you’re trying to compare with gas prices, our Escape averages around 23mpg. It would cost $0.53 in electricity to power the Tesla for the same distance as a gallon of gas in the Escape.
What kind of maintenance is needed?
This is one of my favorite parts. There’s so little maintenance to be done. We’ll still need to buy new tires and maybe a bit more frequently since the car is heavier than a gas car, but other than the scheduled maintenance list is pretty bare. I thought electric cars went through lots of brakes, but the opposite seems to be true. When you lift off on the gas in a Tesla, the motors reclaim the energy meaning that you generally only use your brakes to stop the final few mph or in a panic situation. So we’ll need to replace our cabin air filter, rotate the tires, and that’s about it. It sounds like tires might need to be replaced more often but it’s hard to tell if that’s because the car is a bit heavier or because people like to experience the acceleration.
Which kinds of cars are better for the environment?
I almost didn’t include this in the list because my motivation is mostly monetary. But I did look into some of the claims that electric cars are worse for the environment than gas cars. It doesn’t take much looking to realize that electric wins out pretty easily. Even if the battery pack needs to be swapped out, the old one is mostly recycled. I’ll leave the rest of this to a short video and you can do your own research if this is a big point for you.
How would we take road trips?
I don’t know if I could make the EV leap if I didn’t have a second car, but we’ll still have the truck. I’m hoping to keep that around until it’s dead. Even with the extra gas price, we do love the extra room and easy packing for road trips. So if we ever need to take a trip and don’t want to mess with charging, the truck is our go-to vehicle anyway.
While driving, Tesla keeps an eye on your battery levels and where you’re planning to go so it can suggest charging stops. Their website has a similar trip planner. A long cross country trip adds up to a lot of stops, but when’s the last time I was more than 300 miles from home? So in almost all cases, a road trip would mean a stop for 20-30 minutes (or a couple 10 minute stops) to get us comfortably back home.
Let’s use Cannon Beach, OR as an example since that’s one of the longer trips we’d make. The trip planner says we would stop in Kelso, WA for 25 minutes on the way there and 35 minutes on the way back. But given how often my family needs to stop at the bathroom, I could easily see turning that into a few 10 minute stops along the way. But again, if we’re going to Cannon Beach, we’re probably taking the truck anyway.
How long does the battery last?
I thought battery packs would degrade pretty quickly, but Tesla warranties them for 8 years or 120,000 miles, whichever comes first with minimum 70% battery retention. That 70% number looks scary, but remember that’s the warranty line. If you look at actual data, Model 3’s and Model Y’s (similar battery packs) are going 400,000 before they hit 20% battery degradation. So even if the number is somewhere in between, it’s far enough out that by that point I’ll want newer battery technology anyway.
Does it drive itself?
Sort of. Let me break it down.
Drive it yourself like a normal car.
Engage cruise control. It is a “Traffic Aware Cruise Control” so the car will automatically slow down if someone pulls out in front of you, etc. You can adjust how closely you want to follow other cars on the highway if the car in front is going below your set speed.
Engage Auto Pilot. At this point, the car will steer for you too. Think of it like cruise control that includes both speed and steering. It will stay in the lane and adjust speed as necessary but you still need to change lanes, stop for stoplights, etc. Some people have described it as driving with a new teenage driver. You need to pay attention and it doesn’t always anticipate things until after the point where you get a little nervous. You still have to pay attention and the system will warn you and disengage if you’re not attentive, but it takes a lot of pressure off once you’re comfortable with it. This comes free with every Tesla, and it works on almost all streets, not just on “mapped roads” like most other car makers.
Full Self Driving. This option costs $10,000, not because it adds any hardware to the car, but because of the feature that it unlocks. With this option, you can tell the Tesla where you want to go and get end to end automated driving. It will stop at stoplights, change lanes on the highway, navigate to your parking spot, etc. This is also the feature that enables things like “summon” where your car will come to you in a parking lot. I love this tech and the incredible effort that’s going into it behind the scenes, but it’s too much money for me right now. Plus, we will have the option to subscribe on a monthly basis for $200, so maybe we’ll try it out at some point. The feature was very recently released in beta to a wider group of people, but it’s not something you can just jump in and use immediately. You still have to get selected for the beta based on your driving safety.
What’s the cost comparison between an electric car and a internal combustion car?
This is the big one. Aren’t Teslas for rich people? Is an EV really cheaper than a gas powered car? For me, it’s close enough to a gas car that it’s hard to say for sure. If I take a serious look at gas cars, I think we’d probably end up with a nice version of a Ford Escape. Pricing that out, the Model Y is about $20,000 more expensive. Let’s compare the two cars for a lifetime of 8 years because that is how long we’ve had our current Escape. The mileage numbers now are significantly different because Elijah goes to school 20 miles away (80 miles per day.)
At 18,000 miles/year and an average gas price of $3.50, the Escape would use about $22,000 in gas. (That gas price feels conservative to me if we’re talking about eight years but let’s go with it.) The Tesla would use $3,300 to go the same distance. We’re already in the same ballpark.
In the last 8 years, our Escape has cost us $4059 in service. The web gives numbers of $800-$1000/year for service on a gas vehicle but that is probably more true for cars when they are out of warranty. Estimates for Tesla service/year is in the $300-500 range. The exact numbers are difficult to pin down here, but the Tesla likely is coming out at least a couple thousand ahead here.
Now for a really difficult one: resale. How much is that car worth after 8 years? Fast forward 8 years into the future and my opinion is that it’s going to be a lot more expensive to drive a gas vehicle as the switch to electric has really intensified. The market for gas vehicles will be dropping, but even ignoring all that, the resale values for Teslas is stronger than for Escapes.
Even if I take somewhat skeptical estimates in favor of gas vehicles, I at least end up with a comparison that is pretty even and the longer I drive that electric vehicle, the more the scales tip in its favor. The up front price tag looks huge and I have a hard time paying it, but if my experience is like most other people, it will pay off… and I’ll be having a lot of fun driving the electric vehicle while it’s paying off.
How do updates happen?
The car downloads updates frequently. Updates can include anything from new functionality in the infotainment center to better range through improved battery management or even adjustments to airbag deployment algorithms to make the car safer. It’s not like the cars we are used to buying that rarely, if ever, receive a software update.
And the exciting thing about Tesla building an EV from the ground up is that seemingly everything is connected to the computer so when someone has a good idea bout a new feature to add to the car, it’s just a software update. For example, the Tesla has folding mirrors. And the Tesla has GPS. That’s not unusual… but you can program your Tesla to automatically fold in the mirrors when you get close to your garage and unfold them after you leave. Or how about that reverse warning speaker that’s on the bottom of the car? They released an update so you can play Spotify from it while you’re washing your car or at a tailgate. The possibilities are endless.
Can I watch video on the big screen in the car?
Yes. You can watch Netflix, YouTube, and other providers while the car is parked. And remember that this is all battery power. So if you’re waiting to pick your kid up somewhere, you can be sitting there with the heat or AC on, watching a video. It’s not like the old days where you’d be freezing or sweating because it wasn’t worth running the engine just for climate control and entertainment.
The infotainment unit also includes built in Spotify (though you need to connect to your account). You could still pair your phone via Bluetooth if you want, but you can also just have the car use it’s own cellular connection.
The cellular connection for the car costs $10/month and enables traffic display on the screen along with video and music streaming. Alternatively, you can tether your phone via WiFi and let your car use your phone’s internet connection without paying the $10/month to Tesla. I wasn’t thrilled about this fee, but we already pay for Sirius so we’ll drop that and add this for a few bucks more. Or maybe we’ll get to the point where we always pay for unlimited data on our phones and then we can drop the Tesla subscription and use tethering instead.
Does Tesla accept trade-ins or offer financing?
Yes! Tesla does offer financing, and for trade-ins, you get a quote right from their website. So just like any other car dealer (at least in our state), that means you pay less sales tax on the new car. The quote isn’t good forever so you need to keep updating it while you wait for your car to arrive. On delivery date, you drive in your old car and drive out your new car. Or you can sell the car to Carvana, CarMax, or a local dealer. So far, all the online sales sites have given me similar estimates. I’ll check with my local dealer when the actual delivery date gets closer. They’ll have to be significantly more than what Tesla offers since I’ll be saving on sales tax if I trade it to Tesla too. And if you’re wondering, Tesla immediately resells the cars unless you’re trading in another Tesla.
How long does it take to get a Tesla?
Tesla offers shorter waiting time for higher margin vehicles, but if we order today (October 2021), the default Model Y has an estimated delivery of August 2022. If you pick any upgrades on the Model Y, then the estimated delivery date is May 2022. These dates are due to some combination of extreme numbers of incoming orders and supply shortages.
On a side note, this article from Fortune is an interesting read about why Tesla isn’t as impacted by the chip shortage as other car manufacturers.
Why Tesla?
I said “Tesla” a lot in the answers above, but why not another EV provider? Ford is coming out with the Mach-E and the Lightning. Nissan has had the Leaf for years. Chevy has the Bolt. Volkswagen seems like they’re a pretty strong contender in the EV market, so why not one of those?
Longest history
Tesla has been building electric vehicles for a very long time. The first Tesla roadsters were sold in 2008, and they aren’t moving at a slow pace. Some of the big automakers scoff at them and say building a electric car is a lot harder than making some batteries and motors. That’s true and Tesla has had their struggles, but build an electric car is also a lot harder than building a chassis and suspension. The big automaker have a long way to go to catch up in battery technology and production, and even though they have a lot of factories built already, EVs require a lot of new materials to source, particularly for batteries. Will they be able to find enough materials to make use of their big factories?
And of course it’s not like the big car companies are immune from quality problems either. Ford mocked Tesla for the recall for the glass roofs that could come off in some circumstances and then had to eat crow when the Mach-E had the same issue.
Car and Driver did a 1000 mile comparison of EVs from all the companies and Tesla didn’t just take the top spot, they took the top THREE spots.
Safest
When you look at a gas powered car, they have a giant engine block under the hood which isn’t very good at absorbing impact. EVs have huge amounts of crumple zones in the front and back. On top of that, Tesla has tons of data about every accident every one of its cars has been in. They use that data to continuously refine their models and they can even improve the safety of the car through over-the-air updates. The Model 3 was the safest car ever tested by the NHTSA and if you watch the video linked in the previous sentence, you’ll hear them say that the NHTSA requirements are just a drop in the bucket compared to the real world situations that they are testing.
Most popular
The Model was the first EV to sell 1 million units and the Model Y looks to be on pace to hit get there even faster. Europe is much farther down the EV conversion road than the US, but over there, there are more Teslas sold (15.3%) than diesels (13.8%). Yes, you read that right. 15% of all cars sold in Europe in September were Teslas. The Model 3 was the most popular car (not just EVs) sold in Europe in September. In Norway, 80% of vehicles sold are electric and over half of those are Teslas. Globally more Model 3’s are sold than other cars in its class like BMW 3’s, Mercedes C-Class, and Audi A4.
Anecdotally, driving around this area, we average seeing about one Tesla per minute on the roads and there are more and more sold every day. It took us a month and a half just to get a test drive! Demand is through the roof in our area. (In fairness, our first test drive was scheduled right at the end of Q3 and Tesla made a huge push to deliver EVERYTHING to help their numbers so we had to reschedule.)
Highest market cap
There’s generally something to the wisdom of the crowds and the stock market has given Tesla a higher market cap than all the other car makers combined and they are currently one of the few companies in the world to be valued at over a billion dollars. Hertz recently put in a $4.3 billion order to make 20% of their fleet be Teslas. All this investment doesn’t mean that Tesla is definitely going to win, but it’s a positive sign.
Car buying experience
We walked into a dealership twice and walked out on our own time without anyone making us feel awkward or pushing a sale on us. When we finally decided to order the car, my biggest decision was whether to place the order from my phone or my computer. The car buying experience is magnificent compared to the hassle of haggling with a dealer on price, trade-in, warranties, and financing. The experience inside a Tesla store isn’t an accident. It’s a careful ballet to make sure they don’t cross into illegal territory by talking about sales. This video does a good job explaining the laws around dealerships and why they continue to exist for other car manufacturers.
American made
Everyone likes to say they are American made but the reality is that today’s cars are global creations and some percentage is done in the US. Tesla takes two of the top three spots for being most American made.
Why the Model Y?
The price of the Model 3 is what sucked me in. Back then it was under $40k. The comparison to a gas power car gets REALLY easy at that price point. But then I started thinking that I would like to have all wheel drive which bumped up the price. Then I started looking at the size difference with the Y and thought about how much we’ve enjoyed the space in the Escape. So we bumped up to a Y (which is currently only sold with all wheel drive so that works out.) The Model 3 and the Model Y are very similar in construction so most of the benefits I had found of the 3 generally apply to the Y as well. It was hard to swallow a sticker price that high but I kept reminding myself that I was optimizing for the total cost of the vehicle over its lifetime… and I was getting really excited about owning a Tesla after doing all the research!
Why choose those options?
There aren’t a lot of choices to make when ordering a Tesla, but we decided to pay extra for the blue paint instead of the default free white color. There are so many Teslas around here that it’s nice to not have the default color and we both really liked the blue. I’ve always wished we had paid for a nicer color on the Escape so this time we’re just going for it.
We were very close to paying for the 20″ black rims and the tow hitch too but decided against it in the end. The black rims look fantastic but tires are more expensive for it and it’s a lot of extra money for something we could change later if we wanted to.
The tow hitch was a similar cost decision. Tesla will add the same thing for us later for just a little bit more money or I can install an aftermarket hit myself for ~$600 cheaper. I don’t see us ever towing anything with it, but it’s a great place to add a bike rack. I’ve already thought about adding a tow hitch bike rack to the truck to make packing for trips easier, and the receiver is the same size on the Tesla so one bike rack would work on both vehicles.
What could go wrong with this plan?
The biggest concern I have is that my math is wrong. Predicting the future of gas prices, how long a car will last, and how much service it will need is pretty flaky. I spent a lot of time debating whether we should try to push the Escape into the 160k-180k range or take advantage of the high resale rates now and dump it. In my research, there appears to be a big drop off in the longevity of the Escape in 2013 (our year) when they switched to the new Ecoboost engine. They made some goofy design decisions in the first years after the switch that are giving people fits. I’m not a mechanic and maybe it would still be cheaper to keep it even if we had to replace the transmission or the engine. I will probably always wonder.
From the political angle, there is lots of news about Tesla’s self-driving features, especially with the recent appointment of a very anti-Tesla NHTSA senior safety advisor. Tesla is taking a different approach to a lot of things so it’s not impossible that some laws could come down that crack down on the features that we already paid for (like Autopilot.)
I’m also assuming that by the time we are ready to sell this car sometime in the 2030’s major car manufacturers will either have stopped producing gas vehicles or the end is near (for most common consumer situations.) I’m expecting tax penalties for gas vehicles and Washington state has already said they want to be one of the first to implement those. So if we were to buy another gas car today, I would buy it with the knowledge that I probably won’t get much for it when I try to resell it. Or maybe they’ll be hot commodities if it’s hard/expensive to buy new ones. If any of that doesn’t pan out and this EV thing dies like it did last time then I made a bad choice.
When I was in high school, I read a book with survey results from a bunch of people who were self-made millionaires. (I think Chris Hogan’s Everyday Millionaires book is a similar, but updated, book to whatever I actually read.) That book from the 90s said that a huge percentage of self-made millionaires had never bought a car for more than $30,000. Obviously that needs to be adjusted for inflation now, but that sentiment has always stuck with me. Cars are generally a terrible thing to spend money on. Investing the same amount of money as a car would have a huge positive impact on retirement. So buying any new car is a huge decision for me and even more so when I’m paying more up front and hoping to recoup it over time.
Another big issue is that Tesla could fail. If they go down the tubes, I don’t expect the government to come bail them out. They clearly have no problem with demand for their product, but if they can’t ramp up their supply side, the whole thing could come crashing down. They have two giant new factories coming online in Berlin and Austin but there will have to be more in the works too since the lead time on a new factory is so long.
Yet another risk is that our current car could die before we get the new one. What do we do if we have to put another grand or two into the Escape before our Model Y is ready for pickup? If we really get into a bind, we can cancel our Tesla order and choose another route. The lead time on the Tesla is one thing that makes this a challenging decision.
I have spreadsheets and lot of tossing and turning behind me. From this long post you can see where we landed on the decision. If you remember my F150 purchase post, you know that I heavily analyze all this stuff. This Tesla decision is definitely skewed toward the fun/luxury side but I also don’t think it’s a gratuitous or ostentatious purchase. Maybe it’s a couple years early to make the jump to EV, but in 3-5 years, I think this decision will be much less surprising or difficult. I’m willing to lean towards the future even if I can’t say with 100% certainty that this is a cost effective decision today.
Note: Amazon links are referral links which give me a small kickback at no extra cost to you.
At a risk of doing too many hikes in a row and burning out Elijah, I decided that Labor Day would be a good day to tackle Red Top Lookout.
We left the house around 7:30 and got to the trailhead around 9:30. Once turning off of Highway 97, the dirt road isn’t too bad, but about halfway, the route turns onto a second dirt road that was rough. I was happy to have four wheel drive and a lot of ground clearance. It took us about 25 minutes to go the six miles on that road, and I posted a video from the dash cam because when I’ve done that in the past, random people have seemed very appreciative as they stumble across it.
The hike was short. Really short. I knew it was short, but it seriously only took us 20 minutes to get from the parking lot to the top. So 2 hours in the car for a 20 minute hike, but still, the view was uh-mazing. The lookout was locked so we couldn’t go up but we still had an incredible 360 degree view, and best of all, there were zero other people on the trail for the entire trip. We had the place to ourselves! There were a few other cars in the parking lot but they were all taking a slightly different trail to look for agates.
Photos don’t do a scene like that justice, but I’ll post some below. This Google Street View photo (I didn’t make it) does a better job of recreating the view, but it still doesn’t capture the pucker you feel standing up there with cliffs all around!
The hike down was easy, the drive down was slow and bumpy, and then we hit some Labor Day traffic in Cle Elum, but we made it home around 2pm. It was too much driving for the short hike, but I think we were all happy to have the memory of that view. The weather was just too perfect to pass up! I will need to make sure I pick a closer hike next time to keep Elijah interested though.
I was really bummed when I got home because I realized that it would have been perfectly legal to fly my drone up around that lookout. It would have been amazing! It will be hard to justify going back just for that, but maybe if we’re already in that part of the state doing something else, we can head back. I need to start thinking about taking my drone on more hikes, but it’s just so unlikely that I’ll be in a place that allows it AND there won’t be many people around so I won’t feel annoying.
We made it! Today marks the end of our family lockdown! As I mentioned last week, we kept our socializing minimized even past our completed vaccine date to help Elijah finish out the year without having to stay home for any symptoms. But today is his last day of school, we’re fully vaccinated, and summer awaits! We still have to figure out how to handle the summer since Elijah is unvaccinated but the risk levels look a lot different than they did last summer.
Virus activity in our area had another big burst while the rest of the country declined but it’s coming down now and the hospitalization rates are coming down too. I’m eagerly awaiting our first days without any deaths, but everything points to the vaccine being effective. I’m also eager to see the rest of the world get flooded with vaccines too so the global numbers can drop too.
https://xkcd.com/2457/
My hope and prayer is that this is the last of my COVID-19 posts. To wrap up the series, I thought I’d list out positive changes that this ordeal has had in our personal lives.
The comic already says this one, but I hope that we can all continue wearing masks if we aren’t feeling well. I went into Home Depot the other day and noticed that there was no sign requiring masks anymore. I counted 70-80 people in the store (it was late in the evening) and only three people were not wearing a mask.
Curbside pickup is awesome! I love ordering online, tapping a button in an app when I arrive, and then having my order brought out to me.
Online meetings are very convenient. For example, our church council meetings typically happen at 6pm in the evenings. So I used to stick around at work for a few extra minutes, drive over to church, have the meeting, and then get home after Elijah is asleep or at the end of this bedtime routine. Now I just hop online for a bit, have the meeting, and I don’t give up the entire evening with my family. Keeping with the church theme, I’m excited for online small groups and Bible studies so we can skip rush hour traffic and make it easier to invite friends to join.
Why do I ever need to go into the office again? I have a better setup at home than I do at the office, and my team is hiring vigorously in Atlanta. By the time we are welcomed back to the office (currently set for September), I will have more people on my team outside of Redmond than local. So even if I go in, I still need to do everything remote. I’m not sure how we can say “being in the office is important” at the same time we say “creating an inclusive environment is important.” I’ll at least be taking advantage of the 50% work from home option, but the option of living farther away is very tempting.
At some point I started trying to intentionally plan a family adventure at least once a month. That meant going somewhere new, driving a little farther than we normally would, or doing something a little bigger than a normal Saturday trip.
As soon as the pandemic hit, I got more serious about setting a specific schedule for grocery shopping. We make a list throughout the week, and then I go Friday mornings at around 6:30am when the store is empty. It made me realize how much time I wasted with “oh I’ll just stop on the way home and grab something if we don’t have enough meals planned”.
My search for news that isn’t leading me towards an opinion has helped me easily identify any name-calling, bias, or rhetoric, even if it’s supporting my viewpoint. It has taught me a lot about my own writing and learning to speak without inflammatory language or virtue signaling. I have a long way to go on that journey but I want to consciously keep working on that.
I learned how to cut Elijah’s hair! The first few times were a little rough, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. It’s not flawless, but he loves me cutting his hair and I’m up for continuing to save $20/month.
https://xkcd.com/2474/
The “life lessons” below overlap a bit with the list above but seemed like they deserved their own section:
It’s easier to keep your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold to them 98 percent of the time.
When two people are screaming at each other, the truth is probably in the middle… but that’s not always the case. If you’ve got a racist person screaming at someone else, the truth isn’t in the middle. The racist person is just wrong.
On the surface, some of the commandments seem pretty easy. For example, “You shall not murder.” Sure, I got that one. But the fifth command isn’t just telling us not to shiv someone, it’s telling us that we shouldn’t hurt or harm our neighbor. How do you do apply that when your mere presence might give them a fatal disease? In the fourth commandment we’re told to honor our government and others in authority. What’s the best way to honor them in complicated situations or when they disagree? And how do you make these decisions as the leader of an organization? I’m thankful that my salvation doesn’t depend on how well I keep the commandments, because there are a lot of times when I don’t even know which choice is better.
You know that one camping trip you had when it was cold and there was torrential rain the whole time? Now when you go camping and there is bad weather you laugh and say “Well at least it’s not as bad as that one time…” We may deal with worse things in life than this pandemic, but I have a feeling that COVID will be our “rainy camping trip” in a lot of situations.
Pastor used a song in his service a few weeks back that I’ve probably played 100 times since then. It talks about how we can feel like everything is crumbling around us, but Jesus isn’t just a happy thought that we use to ignore our troubles. He’s here. He’s powerful. He is worthy to stand before the Father and declare us righteous. The Father loves us. The Spirit is moving among us. The God of all creation is caring for us. We need to continually remind ourselves of this. So to end my last COVID post, here is Andrew Peterson singing “Is He Worthy”.
COVID-19: Day 455
We made it! Today marks the end of our family lockdown! As I mentioned last week, we kept our socializing minimized even past our completed vaccine date to help Elijah finish out the year without having to stay home for any symptoms. But today is his last day of school, we’re fully vaccinated, and summer awaits! We still have to figure out how to handle the summer since Elijah is unvaccinated but the risk levels look a lot different than they did last summer.
Virus activity in our area had another big burst while the rest of the country declined but it’s coming down now and the hospitalization rates are coming down too. I’m eagerly awaiting our first days without any deaths, but everything points to the vaccine being effective. I’m also eager to see the rest of the world get flooded with vaccines too so the global numbers can drop too.
My hope and prayer is that this is the last of my COVID-19 posts. To wrap up the series, I thought I’d list out positive changes that this ordeal has had in our personal lives.
The “life lessons” below overlap a bit with the list above but seemed like they deserved their own section:
Pastor used a song in his service a few weeks back that I’ve probably played 100 times since then. It talks about how we can feel like everything is crumbling around us, but Jesus isn’t just a happy thought that we use to ignore our troubles. He’s here. He’s powerful. He is worthy to stand before the Father and declare us righteous. The Father loves us. The Spirit is moving among us. The God of all creation is caring for us. We need to continually remind ourselves of this. So to end my last COVID post, here is Andrew Peterson singing “Is He Worthy”.