Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

I heard some popular traveller YouTube guy bragging about how they had driven a car in over 20 countries. Hmmm. I had to count my overseas driving expereinces. It looks like I have driven a car in over 40 different countries. And that doesn't include Antarctica and a few other places that are overseas territories, not countries (like Gibralter, US Virgin Islands, etc). The most stressful driving expereinces I have had were in Brussels Belgium (the pic is from Brussels), and Upstate NY in a blizzard.

We made another trip to the farm. This time we drove the Tesla. We stayed in a campground halfway and charged the car there. Other than that, 4 stops at superchargers does it. Its a long drive. It is 15 hours or so. I have learned to break the trip up. The supercharger stops are surprisingly fast. The car soaks up a huge amount of electrons ins a very short amouunt of time. Stopping every three hours is normal. Food, Pee and stretching and the far is filed back up ready to go. Amazing. With the Full self drive I have to admit it is fun. The Tesla is my first luxury car.

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...

I had a special and unexpected expereince at work this past week at about 7:30 AM. I glanced out my office window and saw what I thought was a medium size dog. With a closer look it turned out to be a bobcat. Yes, I work in the heavy equipment business, but this was a animal type bobcat not the earthmoving bobcat. I feel privileged to get such a close view of the animal as it walked around and generally checked things out. It was clearly not sick. No rabies, just curious. It also says something nice about the wilderness around my office.

I was on the farm for a couple days. It has been a while for sure. I love the nature. It is perfect without any of my effort. The hayfields look great. The bass pond is great. The woods are great. The new beaver pond appears to be as big as it is going to get. I will be back there in July. I am making plans and funding them.

The Humvee had its first mission in my ownership. It is running well enough to drive it considerable distances with confidence. I wouldn't trust it for a parade yet, but a static display at church on Sunday and Monday was well received. There was also a rare opportunity to capture the entire fleet in one picture (one vehicle is being baby sat as the owner is out of the county).

I stayed on a huge house boat overnight this past week on Lake Alatoona. It was different and fun.