LavaCon 2025

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I spoke at the LavaCon this week. My presentation was very well received. There were well over 100 folks who chose to attend my presentation. Afterwards we had a supplier meeting in Cartersville and a hike up Pine Mountain. https://www.lavacon.org/ It was good to enjoy some brief moments with a llama as part of the conference. And it was good to meet up with lots of folks I have got to know over the years.
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Mississippi and Buc-ee's

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We went on an overnight to a cool spot on the Tenn-Tom waterway in Mississippi.

They don't see Teslas out that way, and I had to answer a number of questions and got some comments on how cool the car is. Camping with the Model Y is surprisingly quite nice. We have a custom memory foam/self-inflating mattress. The camping mode provides air conditioning all night with lots of fresh air and no bugs. Quite pleasant actually. The glass roof on the Tesla helps too. You still get a feeling of being outdoors. Staying in a campground is also very practical since we get AC (it was over 100F and we were at 68F in the car), but we also add about 150 miles to the battery overnight via a 50 amp 220 connection. I don't push the battery hard, never deep-drain and never charge to max capacity.

Myself being from the deep-North, trips inside and across the US are interesting and filled with new visuals. Mississppi is at the bottom of most lists as far as US states, but it definately reminds me of Upstate NY. Upstate NY seems to continue its decline. Mississippi is likley on the way up.

We also had our first experience with Buc-ee's. We charged the car and lived the Buc-ee's dream. The store is a hypersized mini-market. 100 gas pumps, lots of flavors of electricity for the car (NACS, J1772, CCS/SAE and Chademo) and crazy amounts of mini-market food. It was good to expereince. We probably won't be back.

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