Day 1: Getting a set of wheels

When you set out on a roadtrip, you need the wheels, right? I'd be ok with whatever wheels as long as they'd be good enough to hit the road. We settled for a fine Nissan Altima (Texas plates) but just look at his sad, sad face that it's not a Tesla. Look how miserable he looks as he waits for the shuttle to take him to the car rentals. It breaks your heart...

Yep, dude, I'm afraid you're going ICE for the next seventeen days.

Yes, and there is no auto-pilot either. (I must say, I felt sorry for the poor thing...).

Time to leave (again)

Airport life is not my cup of tea (forget lounges and free shops, enticing as they might be, they're not really worth the discomforts of stop-overs and long-haul flights). Airports are, instead, a necessary gate to the wonderful dimension we call travel; a thorn that reminds us of the beauty that follows the hardship.

To continue our all-American coast-to-coast roadtrip we needed to start where we had left off. To Houston we went (well, flew to be more precise). How exciting to be on the verge of leaving everything else behind and just go. Go. And how liberating to know that there would be no Tesla-decisions to be made this time around (or would there?).

 Happy, as happy can be, we took off. Hoorray!!!

Our 7th

In the midst of packing for yet another stretch of our US coast-to-coast, we decided to commemorate our 7th anniversary (time flies, sheesh!) and Tesla-drive we went to a nice, little restaurant in an old palace in the village where we live.

Inevitably, conversation ended in the usual:
"Would you believe we'd be here seven years later?"
However, this year there was a twist to the also usual:
"No, I wouldn't but I'm so glad we're here."
The twist was, as it had to be on a year so obsessed by Tesla (and no this is not a Tesla Motors sponsored blog):
"No, I wouldn't and neither would I imagine we'd be making conversations about Tesla all the time..."

Cheers, mate! You know I love you even when and if you talk Tesla to me.

End of Part I

Epic! Astounding! In the summer of 2015 we came on a roadtrip to fullfil one of those bucket list wishes, in our case a US coast-to-coast which we would make in three parts, this one being the first. In the end we (he to be more accurate) made the decision that on getting back home, a Tesla Model S would be the car to have. We kept the roadtrip going as we had planned but tried to coincide stretches with finding super-chargers just for the fun (his) of it. I went along not knowing a few months later I would create this blog of Tesla-related adventures.
We started out in Miami, went all the way down to Key West and up again to the mainland, across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to get to Texas. On getting to the airport in Houston, this was the total of our trip: 4600.8 kilometres, some 2858 miles. Next year, which is this year, we'll travel the second part of our roadtrip. We'll start where we left off in Houston and will, hopefully, go all the way to crazy Las Vegas. Actually, as I write this it's 24 hours before departing from Portugal but as you read, we'll be somewhere in wildest Texas, Big Bend National Park maybe, or lost somewhere trying to find cowboy forts or whatever else we might be doing...

Houston, no problem here but...

Growing up I wanted to be a scientist. My guru was, and is, Sir David Attenborough and I was equally fascinated by the wonders of our natural world as I was with the mysteries of outer space. How vividly I remember watching the launch of spaceshuttle Columbia on TV. How excited I was the first time I touched a tiny, little piece of moon rock in the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. We, by means of of course, could not be in Houston and not visit the Johnson Space Centre. Absolutely not!

 I did touch a tiny, little piece of moon rock again. But I don't know, the mystique was somehow not there anymore. It was all far too Disneyland to me. There's something more real about the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida that I did not find here in Houston.

True, it was time well-spent but... It's the but.

San Felipe de Austin

The funny thing is that when you read this, we'll be back in Texas and it's one year later. Ah, the joys of blogland! We'll be somewhere south in the great State of Texas, deep, deep, very deep south. But when these photos were shot it was 2015 and we were in San Felipe, the legendary urban centre of the Stephen F. Austin colony.

It's a quaint little place; tourist-staged on the site of the old burgh. I don't mind the tourist-staging thing if it's elegantly done as is the case in San Felipe. The other nice thing is that we were actually the only tourists there (as we were the day before in Washington-on-the Brazos). So nice to get out the beaten track...

For a moment I could almost see Laura Ingalls running outside the little house on the prairie. Tough times, brave people who settled the West when the West was wild. In San Felipe de Austin we learned another chapter in the rich history of pioneer land.

And so we now know how and why Austin is called Austin.