Post Trip & NYC
Dry Run Road Trip Wrap-up - Entry #9
Our plan had been to Geneva for a week or so of relaxation on the boat.
Ben, though, would make the time more of a “working vacation” - like so many of the others he’s taken across Europe.
By the time he was ready to leave, M/V WIN would be organized, cleaned, and three rooms worth of old, stinky carpeting removed. Hundreds of staples, used by previous owners to keep carpet pads in place, had to be pulled out by hand. The change was amazing.
While he worked we discussed the road trip - what had gone right, what had gone wrong.
By all accounts, we’d both had a lot of fun. So much so that Ben was making plans to join me on a Round 2 trip during the holidays… if he was able to return to the US, we’d try to time it so my longer road trip and his Florida visit lined up, then spend a few nights driving around the southeastern United States together.
“I don’t think this road trip would have been the same if I was alone,” I told Ben.
“I think in some ways it would have been worse, but in some ways it would have been better,” he replied.
In Ben’s opinion, I would have done better with sleeping - and claustrophobia - that first night if I’d been alone - more room to move, more room to breathe.
I definitely agreed more room in the car would be nice. In some ways, I looked forward to my first solo trip to see how much of a difference that might make.
But we both agreed that, even with a limited amount of space, we’d been able to sleep. We hadn’t been so tightly packed in that we’d enjoyed the trip less. Space was nice, but the vehicle was definitely able to be used somewhat comfortably with two people. (Probably more so if one of them isn’t my size). We’d seen a video with three college-aged women who travel together and, on colder nights, share the vehicle as a trio - that would have been uncomfortable. We did just fine.
Still, in the meantime, we discussed ways to achieve more room with one or two people in the car…
A thinner mattress, a la the Tesmat, would likely offer more room between passengers and the back ledge of the car.
Tents that are designed to attach to the rear of the car might afford more room if/when the trunk is fully open. This would increase circulation and offer some additional room.
I could stand to lose and inch or two off of my midsection.
With Tesla camping growing in popularity I expect that, eventually, more products for the Model 3 would be introduced to the market, including new tents that expand the space and the like. Tents that pop up and can be easily stowed in the vehicle might even offer a camp-outside-the-car option, although you’d lose the view out of that big, beautiful glass roof…
“You could really do a road trip with four, if two or three of them slept in a tent,” Ben had said several times.
Other products, too, might enhance the camping experience. As Ben toiled I surfed the internet, looking for items that matched what we’d agreed might have made the trip easier…
Sturdier folding beach chairs - newer ones that might fit in the car a bit better, too. They make a water bottle sized chair that holds 300 lbs… hmm.
A grill - some #TeslaCamp folks actually carry small Coleman grills in their frunks. Would this be feasible? Worthwhile?
A decent cooler or thermos to keep a fresh supply of ice cold drinking water on hand to stave off dehydration.
In terms of my CPAP, we both agreed that the product I’d ordered on Amazon had worked well, and the car had done well at charging the device without using an excessive amount of voltage. Ben would plug in the adapter and the CPAP at night, and unplug it in the morning when we’d plug my free-standing wireless phone charger back in.
What if, in the future, I also had an inverter along for the ride - a device that would charge the other devices we’d brought along for the trip - a MacBook or two, for example? It might have been easier to keep up on this website and my social media posts with a fully-charged MacBook Pro at every stop.
We had lots of ideas, and we bantered throughout Ben’s week on the boat, tossing them back and forth to each other. There’s no shortage of things that you can add that will make #TeslaCamping better… the only thing stopping us from adding them all is money.
That, and some of them haven’t been invented yet.
My car is the base model - it is a Tesla Model 3 SR+. That stands for Standard Range Plus. I’m guessing some years back the standard range had been the base model, but they’d stopped selling that and started selling this. EPA estimates called for 263 miles of range, but we were getting about 229 miles - the higher number was more reflective of city traffic with lots of braking, I’m guessing.
Ben and I had planned to do all sorts of math on our energy consumption. Neither of us are necessarily numbers guys - Ben’s sort of a dreamer, and I’m definitely a writer - but we were curious to know how charging at a Supercharger stacked up to charging at the various non-Tesla chargers we found. Some of them might even be free, we reasoned.
We were also interested in determining how much of an energy difference using the climate vs. driving with the windows down made. So we spent the majority of the trip out, along Route 5, driving with the windows down. The heat wave hadn’t arrived yet - but it was coming. There were a few times that we considered cranking the A/C but decided to tough it out. In the end, though, we sort of unofficially decided we weren’t the guys for this project - we wanted to ride in the open air when it was comfortable, and turn on the A/C when the A/C was needed.
One day I will take a math whiz or a science nerd along for the ride, and we’ll do all of the charts and graphs on EV energy consumption. For this trip, though, we figured that our ability to secure free charging at the beach every day made up for any energy we were consuming… we could afford to spoil ourselves a little, with the State of Pennsylvania paying for the fuel.
After nearly a week on the water it was time to climb back into the car and take Ben to his next stop: New York City. He planned to spend a few days seeing old college friends before flying to Florida for a family reunion. Then, it would be back to Europe.
Our original plan had been for Ben to take the train between Syracuse and NYC. After he spent days on days giving my floating home a ‘deep clean’, though, I decided that taking him all the way to NYC would be the right thing to do. He had two gigantic suitcases, one which would include some wine from the region heading back to Florida - I figured I could drive him in Tesla style right to the doorstep of his AirBnB, rather than leave him to choose between public transportation or Uber.
Also, he agreed to pay for my charging and tolls.
I’d never driven into the city before. The closest I’d come was being navigator on a high school swim team trip to Long Island. This would be an experience. I was a little nervous, but Ben agreed to play everything out - he’d lived there for four years. I wasn’t sure if he’d driven at all during those four years, and I didn’t want to ask.
The ride down was fairly uneventful - the GPS took us through back roads into Ithaca, and more backroads through to Binghamton, where we spent some time at the Supercharger. Then it was on to the expressway for the ride into New York. Ben played with the GPS to try to avoid tolls, but at some point even Tesla’s GPS is no match for the Bridges & Tunnels Authority, and we wound up going over a toll bridge. Or maybe Ben had changed the settings by then - I’m still not sure.
Ben had predicted that we’d arrive at his destination - Maria’s cozy little bungalow outside of LaGuardia Airport - without hitting much downtown traffic. Yet, somehow, we wound up in midtown Manhattan. Right in the middle of it all.
“I don’t know how this happened… I thought it was taking us across another bridge,” Ben told me.
“Well, since we’re here, take some pictures,” I told him. “Get a few of these buildings through the glass roof…”
Driving in New York City traffic is unlike any other driving I’ve ever done.
Even as we merged into the thick of it Ben was giving instructions. It was amazing how many turns he remembered from his time as a student here.
“You’re going to go up to 7th and turn right. Oh, they’ve turned that into outdoor dining. Let’s try 8th!”
I’m making up those street names, of course. I don't remember any of them. I was a nervous wreck, dodging guys carrying guitars on bikes and someone on an electric scooter carrying an unknown package that wouldn’t have fit in my car. People here were crazy. And that was just in the first few blocks.
“Now, Chris, listen closely,” Ben instructed. “We’re going to have to cut in. You don’t want to make eye contact when you cut in. Just cut in. Go slowly and pretend you don’t realize that the traffic you are turning into is even there…”
“I can’t do that,” I told him. “I’m not going to cut someone off - especially in New York City…”
“Awww, that’s cute,” Ben replied. “That’s the only way to do it in New York City. You’ve got to cut in. Don’t look, just do it. Trust me on this…”
“I’m not that kind of driver,” I said, a little annoyed now. “I’ll just go when there’s a break in traffic.”
We sat through three cycles of the light before I began to understand what Ben was telling me. You had to cut in. The drivers coming against you never stopped coming. They were running yellows and crawling through the intersection, still, while you had the green. If you didn’t cut them off, you’d sit there until rush hour was over. This wasn’t going to work. The horns beeping behind me seemed to agree.
Finally, I tried cutting in.
I was surprised at how easy it was. Just turn your head and go. Nobody got angry. There was no road rage. If they honked at you, you’d hardly know it - there was so much beeping going around us who could even tell where it was coming from? Short beeps. Long honks. Lonnnnnnnger honks. Who cares?!
“See?” Ben told me so.
“This is really a different world of driving,” I replied.
“Now you’re officially a New York City driver.”
Ben had already invited me to come visit him in Italy, or Amsterdam, or whatever country he was staying in at the time of any upcoming European vacation I might plan. Today he suggested that I time a trip with his return to Sicily, so I could ride with him in that city in his prized possession, Angela.
“If you think traffic is crazy here, you won’t believe the traffic in Sicily,” he told me.
We continued along, Ben pointing out landmarks he recognized to me. A restaurant he’d been on a date at. An apartment building he’d rented an apartment at. An intersection he’d watched a street musician perform at.
And then, off in the distance: his college!
Ben had attended college at King’s, a private institution that was actually housed on several floors of a high-rise in Manhattan. I’d gone to school at Niagara University - a sprawling campus next to the Niagara River overlooking the border of Canada. Later I’d graduated from LeMoyne College, a less-sprawling campus but still housed over many acres in the city of Syracuse. I’d rented an apartment in a high-rise building in Syracuse when I was a student there. I couldn't imagine my entire college life taking place in one…
Ben shared stories of his school days with me as we drove. There was time for multiple stories not because it was so far away, but because we were driving so slowly. We were inching along in rush hour traffic, and watching lights cycle through from yellow to red to green multiple times before we even got to them. Then, when we did, I’d have to push through, cutting people off who’d made it past the stopping point for their lane, perpendicular to us, but who hadn’t made it far enough into our lane to block me yet. It felt surreal, Ben nonchalantly telling a story of some dormitory hijinks as I pretended to be so engrossed that I didn’t even notice that I’d pushed my way into the path of a delivery truck. HONK.
Suddenly, I became suspicious.
“Did you do something to make sure we got routed right into Manhattan?” I asked him.
“No! I swear! This is just the route the GPS took us, Chris!”
I wasn’t so sure. I’d made Ben spend some time in the parking lot of my dormitory at Niagara, taking pictures and listening to stories.
Then we’d tried to plug in to the non-working car charger. I’d shared more stories there, as well.
One of them went on quite a while. Probably part of the reason we hadn’t arrived at Presque Isle until late afternoon.
Now we were slowly approaching Ben’s first dorm, and it was his turn to share stories with me.
Coincidence? Hmm…
I had to admit, though, the experience of driving through Manhattan during rush hour… that was pretty cool.
At one point, as we rounded a slight turn, a woman walked up to the front of my car, stood in our path, and took a picture.
Then she walked away.
“That was odd,” I told Ben. “I’m used to people taking pictures back home. There aren’t too many Teslas there. But in New York City?”
“Definitely strange,” Ben agreed. “Maybe she was taking a picture of the license plate?” he suggested.
STAGE IV did attract quite a bit of attention. People regularly asked about it. On our road trip a girl had driven up to us, beeped her horn, and tossed some hand signals that seemed to suggest a ‘ROCK ON!’ message - Ben had surmised that the plate might have sparked that. But I’d figured New Yorkers had seen everything. Were we going to be part of someone’s NYC trip photography exhibit? That was cool…
A few minutes later someone else stepped into our path and snapped a photo. I wanted to roll Ben’s window down and ask them why they were doing it, but they disappeared back into the crowded sidewalk before I could ask Ben if he minded. So we continued to drive on, in stop-and-go traffic, just shaking our heads.
Finally a gentleman came up to the car and motioned us to roll our window down.
“Panhandler?” I asked Ben? “Should we?”
“Sure,” he replied. He was already rolling his window down, and the gentleman leaned into the car.
“You’ve got a plastic bag on the front of your car,” he told us in the thickest New York accent I think I've ever heard.
“A what?” Ben asked with a laugh. The other gentleman was laughing, too.
“A bag. A plastic bag, It’s being sucked into your radiator.”
First, I didn’t realize that the car even had a vent in the front. There’s no engine. There’s only a frunk. And the trunk is so air-tight that Tesla owners often talk of putting stinky take-out up there, because it does such a good job of keeping the odor out of the car.
I guess I should have figured that the air for the A/C had to come from somewhere.
As the gentleman spoke I realized that the car’s motor had seemed to be working a little harder. I’d just chalked it up to my first-ever heavy traffic driving of the car. We were sitting in traffic, moving forward only a few feet at a time. Of course it would be working harder, right?
“Can I take it off for ya?” the man asked. Ben was already stepping out of the car to retrieve it. He walked up to the front and pulled off a large shopping bag. We must have driven over it, and it got sucked up into the vents. The car immediately sounded quieter.
“Thanks anyway,” Ben told him. “But really… thank you for letting us know it was there…”
(The other people had just taken pictures of it. What did they think, we were some sort of in-motion performing arts piece? What the fuck…)
“Can I throw it away for you, at least?” Ben was holding this large bag in his hands, trying to decide where to put it. Back seat? Trunk? He turned to the man and handed it to him.
“Thanks again!” I called out. Ben thanked him as well. And then he turned and disappeared into the crowd.
“See? That’s what real New Yorkers are like,” Ben told me happily. “That’s why I loved living in this city…”
We continued on for a few more blocks and then somehow hit a bridge - see pics above - and then, praise Britney, an interstate. It felt good to be moving faster than a few miles an hour again. Before I knew it we were driving under the approach path to LaGuardia.
Ben had chosen his AirBnB based on the bad reviews. “Maria”, it seemed, like to have relatives over at all hours of the night. It was a non-stop party. Perhaps she should have thought of that before she listed a bedroom in her home on a rental website, one reviewer said.
Ben, though, was there for it. A party? That sounded fun. That’s how we found ourselves driving through traffic on several different parts of the city, headed for this one very specific address. As we pulled into the neighborhood I realized that Ben would have had a very difficult time lugging his bags through this neighborhood. It was cute, but it was definitely an older neighborhood - probably 1950s or 1960s, at least - and its walkability score was likely on the lower end of the scale.
In fact, when Tesla’s GPS sent us forward a whole block, on a one-way street, Ben had to run back to check in with Maria. He called me from her front porch and suggested three options: I could back up a block… I could drive around… or he would just walk down to the car and retrieve his luggage.
“I think that would be easiest, actually,” he told me. “Just wait there, I’ll be there in a few.”
“I’m already driving around,” I told him. There was no way he’d be able to roll luggage on these sidewalks - they looked like they’d started off along one level, but roots from the tree-lined streets had created a barrier here and there along the way. “I’ll be right there. Just wait.”
A few minutes later I was back around again, this time in front of the right house. Ben pulled his luggage out, and I stepped out to give him a hug.
“I’m going to be sitting by my phone, ready to answer questions you have on your way out,” Ben told me. The car was down to under 50 miles, and I was worried that, with all of that stop-and-go traffic, and what I expected would be a full-scale traffic jam, I’d be cutting it close to the nearest Supercharger on my route home in Pyramus, NJ.
In fact, I wondered if that even was the nearest. I suspected that, based on my car car’s need to charge soon, the GPS had routed us out of the way to this Supercharger. We hadn’t hit NJ on our way in to New York. But I needed a charge. I just hoped I’d make it.
Driving out of the city was just as busy, although I somehow routed on a bridge over or around Manhattan instead of going through it.
Now I had to cut in without encouragement from Ben. I was surprised at how easy it was. I’d only been driving in NYC for an hour or two, and I’d already cast my humanity to the winds. I was driving like a New York City driver now! As long as you don’t make eye contact and go ever-so-slowly, you’re golden!
That was proven when a fender-bender ahead of me resulted in a fire call. I had asked Ben on our journey into the city what people do when they have accidents - there is absolutely no place to pull over. How do you exchange insurance information? Where do you wait for the police?
“If it’s small enough, you just keep going,” Ben had replied matter-of-factly. “I mean, if you stopped for every single accident, New York City traffic would never move.”
“So you just get hit and keep going?”
“Yep,” Ben replied. “It goes on your insurance. That’s why you see so many of the cars here with Bumper Busters.”
I looked around. Sure enough, every few cars had a device hanging down over the bumper to protect it.
“Not sure why you didn’t mention that before the trip,” I’d told Ben.
“Most of the accidents are small enough that those protect them. But if they don’t, you just put it on your insurance. If the other driver insists you stop, you stop and just hold of traffic. Most of the time the police just tell you to put it on your insurance and keep going…”
Sure enough, on my way out I saw two cars touch. The owners got out, looked at the damage, and mutually agreed to keep going.
Meanwhile, I had to let a dozen or so drivers, all who pretended not to see me, cut in. Karma?
Moments later it was my turn to do the same back to them. It worked just as flawlessly in reverse.
There were several fender-benders, and none of them remained long enough to trade information.
It occurred to me that people in NYC must just accept dents and scratches on their cars as a part of living in NYC.
I worked so, so, so hard to avoid that happening to me.
At one point an actual accident resulted in a car being pushed into the guardrail. It didn’t seem like a lot of damage to me, but the drivers had stopped and someone had called 911. I watched as fire trucks came blasting down a street running parallel to us and then - just as I arrived upon the accident scene - cut across all three lanes of traffic.
All without a single one of them making eye contact with any of us.
Even the firemen here had been trained in how to drive in New York City…
They had room to pull up behind the cars, and there was lots of room for them to pull up in front of the accident, but instead they blocked all three lanes of rush hour traffic, forcing cars from every lane onto the left shoulder.
More cutting in. No eye contact. HONK! Oh, shit, this lane ends just ahead… HONK HONK!
By the time I had cut in two lanes to the left, driven around the fire trucks, and cut back in to get into a continuing lane, I was feeling pretty good about my driving skills. I didn’t think I’d be able to handle this as my daily commute - at least not in this car - but I’d definitely not mind doing it again.
TO BE CONTINUED…
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READ ALL ABOUT THE ‘DRY RUN’ ROAD TRIP!
[Dry Run Road Trip] [Outfitting The Tesla] [Day 1: Niagara Falls] [Day 2: Route 5] [Day 2: Presque Isle] [Day 3: A Screeching Halt in Erie, PA] [Day 3: Just Another Day in Presque Paradise!] [Day 4: Time to Go…] [NYC & Post-Trip Wrap-Up]
