Sunday, Feb 24th.  One problem with needing 12 1/2 hours to charge your car from empty to full- if you finish late at night your can’t get back on the road until at least 12 hours later.  We went to bed at around 3:30AM upon reaching Ukiah.  Fortunately our projected drive to Berkeley was a short distance, otherwise we would have needed to wait until 4PM to have a fully charged battery.   The Super 8 motel in Ukiah is a mecca for Teslas.  The hotel owner was the first in the entire chain to install an EV charger.  Rumor has it Elon Musk visited the hotel and stayed overnight.   On any given day you’re likely to see a Tesla charging in front of this Super 8 motel.

We got on the road around 11am with a partial charge and planned to stop in Santa Cruz for lunch.  Arriving to Santa Rosa we located an EV charger on the top floor of the mall parking lot in the center of town and strolled around downtown.  After lunch it was on to Berkeley.  Today with only a short distance to cover, we drove the car at a healthy speed.  Owners driving EV’s are often warned about range anxiety.  If a trip is well planned this should not be an issue.  You know where you should be charging your car before you run out of electricity.   If I worry about anything with this car, it’s charger anxiety.  Arriving to a destination to find out the EV charger you are planning to use is either broken or occupied.  This is my main concern.

Arriving to Berkeley we checked into the Claremont Hotel.  Thanks to Priceline, we have snagged this hotel for only $87 a night.  For another $25 we get Spa & Club access along with free parking.  Unfortunately, for a hotel of this caliber we are expecting to find a nice source for electricity, but the best valet has to offer is a 120V outlet which for some reason does not work at all for our Tesla.   Our Tesla cable read a red flashing connection error and the reset button on the cable doesn’t resolve the issue.  Luckily, we locate a free EV charger in a University parking lot less than 2 miles away from the hotel.  We leave the car overnight at this charger and jog back to the hotel.   Come morning Juan walks over to retrieve the car, and discovers three tennis courts on the roof top of the parking lot.   We return back to the lot to play a few sets of tennis, but upon our arrival, a dark blue Tesla is occupying the charger space.   So, no luck for the free parking, we park and pay for  street  parking.  After two hours of tennis we return back to our car and we were greeted by Kris,  owner of the dark blue Tesla who just happened to be passing by our car as we arrive.   He’s a professor of engineering at the University, a long-time Tesla fan and we share a few stories about the Tesla Model S.   Nice he has a charger to hook up to at work, each morning.

Monday, Feb. 25th.  Today, we take it easy catch up on this blog and arrange for our visit to the Tesla factory Tuesday morning.  It’s also time to select and announce the first 25 winners of the free Panasonic battery give-a-way, since we have already driven 1,500 miles.  We take the day off from traveling, catch up on work, have lunch with a friend in Berkeley and get some exercise in.   The Claremont has a great Spa, with two very, large heated swimming pools.   I manage to get laps in two days in a row.