Austin, TX

Grass is greener in Texas. Rocks and mountains gave way to prairie and farmland shortly after we crossed the state line. It is as flat as Kansas too. There was no hill in sight over the horizon. And it must've been raining in the breadbasket farmland. By the time we got to Childress, the humidity was palpable.

We left Albuquerque Extended Stay at 7AM. We got to Extended Stay Metro in Austin in 3AM local time. A total of 19 hours on the road. The Tesla navigation routed us through Childress and Cisco and it was 200 miles between those two through country roads meandering through millions of small Texas towns. I had to keep it at 55mph most of the time, despite the speed limit of 75 between towns, to make it with 10 miles left in the tank.

We drove and drove through the humid Texas night with bugs pelting the windshield and the high beam rhythmically flickering on and off as cars came and went from the opposite direction. A gas station was open at midnight in Stamford and I pulled in to clean the windshield. A few local young people came and went. It was as if I was transported back to North Carolina. We used to ride in the back country road in the middle of the night on weekends, with a six pack in the backseat. Only with self-driving electric car this time around instead of 68 Rambler or 76 Mustang.  And a wife in the passenger seat instead of looking for girls.

It would've been faster to stay on the interstates and go through Oklahoma city. It's 45 minutes longer on Google maps, but you can drive at full speed of 80 mph. And Tesla would've driven by itself. Not only the country back roads slower, Tesla had to slow down to make the distance between sparse superchargers. But this was yet another blessing in disguise: I got to see the Texas country side. This trip is about rediscovering America, and you can miss a lot by hopping city to city, from tourist site to another, on the interstate highways. And I got to time-travel for a bonus.

 Here is a rough route I took:

19 hours on the road is certainly a record for me, with or without CFS. I remember feeling semi-delirious driving 60 miles from SF to SJ in 2008. I could barely hold up my arm to hold the steering wheel back then. I felt similar while driving down to LA last Thanksgiving after stressing planning for the trip. But I recovered on the way down after a few hours.  This time I was dead tired from the ordeal, but no such malaise. So there is no doubt that I've made progress. I could declare victory right now if it weren't for the limit imposed by the post-exertional sickness. I'm still risking getting sick if I walk faster than 94 steps per minute. I'll challenge again and see if I made progress on that front as well, but not while I'm travelling. Maybe I'll try when I get to NYC, but not now. I can't risk getting sick while travelling.