Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

In case of emergency

The problem with modern cars is that they don’t come with spare tires. My BMW M2 certainly does not have one. In its trunk space where a spare is suppose to be, there’s the 12-volt battery (because race car), and a can of tire goo. There’s no emergency jack, or a lug wrench to take off the wheels. In the event of a puncture, I would hook that can to the faulty tire’s valve stem, and the goo is suppose to fill up the tire’s innards. Doing so is suppose to buy me just enough time and mileage to get the car to a tire repair shop.

Oh by the way, the punctured tire that I just filled with goo? It’s irreplaceable. Even if the offending hole is otherwise small enough to be patched. I guess BMW really expect its owners to have the income to replace a $300 tire (if you don’t cheap out, that is) without it hurting. Don’t forget: for balance, you typically should replace the other tire on the same axle as well. That’s $600 in potential repair simply because of a tiny piece of sharp object on the road surface. It’s either that, or call a tow truck. (Presumably, being left stranded on the side of the road is not a choosable option.)

I went with a third option: making and packing my own emergency tire kit. The consensus on the best scissor jack for BMW cars is this $25 unit from Harbor Freight. The head fits into BMW jacking points perfectly. Also from Harbor Freight is this heavy duty tire repair kit. It has everything: plier to extract the foreign object, reamer to prepare the hole, insertion tool for the rubber plugs, and a blade to cut off the excess. The $22 it costs is vastly cheaper than replacing an entire tire. You hate on Made in China until you have to pay for Made in the USA prices.

Lastly, I bought this lug wrench from Amazon. It’s got the necessary 17mm socket for BMW lug bolts. With these three tools packed in the M2’s trunk, I can tackle any puncture during road trips, short of something catastrophic. (That can of goo isn’t going to do much for a hole that size, either.) Best of all, I can take these tools with me to whatever my next car would be. Because it’s very likely that will also not have a spare tire or emergency tools.

An electric road trip

Turns out, road-tripping in a Tesla electric vehicle is eminently doable. At least in California.

During my recent trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles - driving my very not electric BMW M2 (God bless the dinosaur juice!) - a friend drove down with me in his Tesla Model 3. It gave me the opportunity to see what it is like to drive hundreds of miles, in a single day, in an electric-vehicle. What is the charging infrastructure like? Do charging times dramatically affect progress towards our destination?

It’s important to keep in mind that we are talking about Tesla. Tesla famously have its own supercharging network. Your non-Tesla EV obviously may have a wholly different experience going down the length of California in a single day.

The supercharging network is fabulous. The ones we went to were situated in malls, offering a far better bathroom experience than the dank ones in gas stations. We even did some last-minute road-trip essentials shopping at the Target next to the first supercharger we stopped at. It makes sense that superchargers are in areas of higher quality than the typical highway-side rest stops. Purveyors of six-figure Tesla cars aren’t wont to slum it with the peasants.

Improved amenities aside, the best thing about the superchargers is the charging speed. My friend charged his Model 3 Long Range from 20% battery to 80% in less than 20 minutes. Just enough time for a bathroom break and stretch of the legs. For sure that charging time is considerably longer than a simple gas fill-up, but if you coincide the charging with the need for humans to take a break as well, then 20 minutes did not feel burdensome at all.

One of the major concerns folks have with electric vehicles is taking them on long trips. I can affirm that if you have a Tesla and you’re in California, that concern is nonexistent. You can comfortably traverse the State and be confident that a supercharger station is always within reach. And once at a supercharger, the refilling experience is quick and seamless. Tesla have done a fantastic job building out the infrastructure, one that I’m sure is a huge competitive advantage.

Road trip? Nah...

I spent much of Sunday evening watching two road trip videos. One from the boys at Gears and Gasoline, the other from duo at Everyday Driver. Both teams drove thousands of miles across America to reach their destination. During this period of insane gas prices! Worse, the cars driven here are sports cars that return miles-per-gallon in the high teens. Gears and Gasoline spent some $6,000 on petrol to get from Florida to Alaska. I don't think I’ve spent that much total on any one trip.

I’ve got a whole week off coming up the week after this, and I’ve been thinking about taking a road trip. Watching the two videos was suppose to inspire me to go. However, after seeing how much was spent on gas, I am not so sure. Prices have come down recently (thanks, Biden!) but around San Francisco, 91 premium remains in the high five dollar range. That only seem cheap coming down from the high six dollars just a few weeks back. The $5.99 per gallon I paid this past weekend is still insanely high.

So yeah, I am not going anywhere. I’ll take a few drives in the local mountains during the week off, and that will be it. Now is not the time to drop a few hundred (or more) on gas simply for the sake of driving wanderlust. Because there's also lodging to think about. Having recently booked accommodations in Austin for end of October, hotels are absolutely not cheap during these times. Everybody is trying to escape and go somewhere.

I’m going to hunker down and wait out this initial travel rush. Save some money in reserve while doing so, and hopefully wait out this current high gas price phase as well. More work to do yet, President Biden!

PTO request

I guess the pandemic is truly over:I finally requested vacation time at work! The last two weeks of June will be the first time since the beginning of this COVID-19 mess that I’ll be taking time off. It coincides quite nicely with California’s plan to fully reopen on the June 15th. The possibilities are endless, even though there are no concrete plans as of this writing.

Given I still can’t yet visit Asian countries without a fortnight’s worth of quarantine, I really didn’t plan to take vacation this summer. Staying at home for two weeks just doesn’t have that much appeal to me. However, our manager is encouraging people to take time off. A friend of mine wants to go either up to the Pacific Northwest, or down south towards Los Angeles. So I figured why the heck not. Let’s see what those two weeks will develop into.

Difficult to say whether I will go back to traveling multiple times a year once everything truly goes back to normal. I rent a place now, so my disposable income isn’t what it used to be. Then again, I also don’t have a Porsche 911 GT3 to pay for and upkeep, so I reckon it all balances out. What will be weird is the first time I get back on an airplane. I wonder when I do fly again, if masks mandates will till a thing onboard. I’ll be wearing one for sure.

What I should do is take the BMW M2 on a road-trip. But have you seen the gas prices lately? The car does get around 25 miles to the gallon on the highway, so it shouldn’t be too bad taking it far away. The M2 could really use the miles. These days the only time I drive it is when I do my weekly grocery shopping, and visiting my parents across town. I am paying too much money for it to simply sit.

I think I’ll drive it somewhere far during some of the two weeks I have off in late June.

To Fresno

This past weekend, I finally left the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time since the pandemic started. One of my good friends is a Chinatown enthusiasts, and he’s on a quest to visit all the major Chinatowns in this country and beyond. Now that I’m fully vaccinated - and so is my friend - I’ve decided to join him on one of these adventures. This time, it happened to be the central California city of Fresno.

The result: I’m pretty sure I got enough vitamin D to last the rest of May. It was a dry and sunny 90 degrees in the Central Valley, a complete weather opposite to the foggy mid 50s that I am used to in San Francisco. After more than a year in pseudo hibernation, perhaps it was a bit overboard to go from zero to that much sun exposure at once. I was certainly feeling the effects by the time we finished lunch (surprisingly good Chinese food in nearby town of Hanford): a mild headache and decently dehydrated.

Turns out, it was an exceptionally dry weekend in the San Joaquin valley, with a few wildfires igniting in the Merced area. We damn picked a good time to go and torture ourselves! It didn’t help that I was breaking in a new pair of Allbirds wool shoes, in what turns out of be a one size too small. My feet sure was feeling it being stuff in those things for 10 hours in the heat. I’m in the process of returning them for a pair one size larger.

Overall it’s nice to finally get out of the house for an extended period. I really miss going on road trips, and the three hour trek to Fresno is a good appetizer for things to come. My BMW M2 has yet to go on a long trip of any sorts, so that is something at the top of the list as California nears its fully reopen date. I’m sure my friend has other Chinatowns to explore in Southern California, and up the coast into Oregon and Washington.

I’m still recovering from being sun-drunk two days later, but this is good for my body. I’ve gotten too used to nature’s air conditioning, living in the west side of San Francisco. A little bit of heat now and then is beneficial.

I need a road trip

I just want to drive.

That’s it. I just want to get in the car and drive for an indeterminate amount of time. That’s the feeling I get these days when I take the GT3 out on weekends. Of course, it definitely helps, nay, mandatory, that the car is interesting and thrilling to drive; a Toyota Corolla simply doesn’t carry the same flavor and passion.

It isn’t even about expertly carving up some curvy mountain roads (though that’s fun, too): this past weekend, instead of driving up highway 35 in the mountains, I decided to stay on the freeway and instead did a loop of the South Bay, going from Interstate 280 to 92, down 880 south, switch back westward on State Route 237, then complete the loop on U.S. Route 101. Because some days I prefer to cruise at a steady pace and listen to music for a few hours, with the steady hum of the GT3’s engine at the back of my ears. It’s equally as enjoyable as attacking the bendy stuff, hitting a corner apex and manipulating the chassis.

I think there’s some latent want of hitting the open road, because I’ve yet to take the GT3 on an appropriately long road trip, and I’ve been used to doing at least one of those per year with my personal cars. Indeed, the 911 isn’t the most economical car to take on a trip: it can barely get 20 miles to the gallon, and so far this year there’s been thing after thing that’s occupied my free cashflow. The car’s expensive enough as is to own, and honestly there are scant moments I wished I bought a lesser sports car so I have extra money left over to actually do big events with it.

But every time I take the GT3’s engine up to its glorious 9,000 RPM redline, all is forgotten. This is exactly the car for me, and god willing I plan to keep it until the environmentalists manage to get internal-combustion cars banned forever.

Once I get back to a steady equilibrium and get my money house in order after the expense of traveling to Japan, I shall take the Porsche out on a trip. It’ll likely be a journey down to Porsche Experience Center down on Los Angeles; I’ve been wanting to take a driving course there so I can finally learn the chassis dynamics of a GT3. I’m far too chicken to exploit my own car on public roads - probably better off safety-wise, too.

I’ve only got free Porsche roadside assistance for two more years so I really need to take advantage and drive the GT3 outside of the Bay Area more often.