It was at Kettleman City, southbound, that I began to suspect I had joined a cult.

No, not that cult, but…okay, let’s just get this out of the way: I bought a Tesla. Yes, I know, I know. But I did my research and bided my time waiting for alternatives, and it was the right car for the job I need done. Plus, I bought it used, so didn’t have to shovel money to VoldeMusk. Okay, not much money, because, as I said, cult.

The Tesla in question was a 2022 all-wheel-drive Model Y sitting on the Hertz Sales lot in Stockton, and the first question after, Yes, please, was how to get the shiny little thing back to the farm from central California. No, of course that wasn’t a question, but the answer, as was the original title of this little blog that I started 18(!) years ago, was obvious: roaaaaad trip!

Now, the farm lies about 831 miles north by northwest of downtown Stockton, but as I was hunting for vehicles, it looked at first like The Right Car was in Los Angeles, not far from where my mother lives. And once you’ve told your mother that you’re coming to town to visit (oh, and maybe buy a car while you’re there), you don’t call back to say, nah, I found a better car in Stockton. No you don’t.

Also, I hadn’t seen her in ages, nor other friends in the neighborhood I’d been promising to visit ever since we started crawling out from under the pandemic. So the first orders of business lay to the south.

I should have begun to suspect that I was buying into a cult when I discovered that I couldn’t do certain things with the car until I’d connected it to the phone app, which required me to set up a Tesla account. And which I couldn’t do until the mysterious phone wizards at Tesla technical support switched the car’s “affiliation” to match my email address (six calls over a period of two days).

But once the car recognized me as its master, er, owner, it helpfully plotted out the course for everywhere I wanted to go, telling me where I should stop to charge, when, and for how long. And if I obeyed its mysterious oracles and simply followed the line it traced, all would be well, and I would arrive uneventfully in plush comfort with at least 15% charge in my battery. Do I need to remind you, that yes, I’m the one in charge? As long as I do what the car tells me to.

Sure, there are so many other chargers out there, but I found myself just going the route of least friction: I’d be toodling down the road in the middle of nowhere and the car would tell me to get off at the next exit, where there was clearly nothing but sagebrush for a hundred miles. And lo, just past the arroyo, hidden from the highway, would emerge the comforting red glow of a bank of Tesla superchargers, some open, some quietly suckling other steel and glass supplicants. You pull up and plug in – no need to pull out cards or payment apps, the car somehow talks to the charging station and says, yes, you know me – and either sit in your car catching up on email, or chat with any other cult members who’ve left their mobile cocoons to mill about in and remark on how lovely it is when you just give in to The Easy Way of doing things. (Note: this seems to be the out-on-the-highway protocol. Charging at an in-city site seems to follow the same protocol as the urinals in a men’s restroom: you don’t speak, you don’t make eye contact. You pretend to be so deeply focused on the business at hand that you don’t even notice the person going through the same motions, standing a shoulder’s breadth away from you.)

Southbound on I-5, there was no question that Kettleman City would have chargers. The car had wanted me to continue to the chargers at Lost Hills, where it assured me I’d arrive with 15% left on my battery. But when I’d set out a couple of hours earlier, it had assured me I’d arrive at Lost Hills with 20% left, and the sharp downward revision did nothing to soothe my first encounter with the bane of every electric car driver: range anxiety. The vision of rolling to a stop roadside in the deserted wasteland of Kern County, stranded on my very first outing, was not appealing. (And how do you even deal with running out of charge? It’s not like AAA can show up and pour a gallon of electricity into your tank to get you on your way.)

So Kettleman City. Tap the little lightning bolt icon on the map, and the infallible blue line tells you where to go, and how many chargers will be available for your pleasure when you arrive. So when I pulled up off the highway, through a couple of left turns, up the hill and behind the Denny’s, I was not surprised to find the comforting glow of a bank of Tesla Superchargers(tm) awaiting me. But I wasn’t ready for the Tesla Lounge. Use your Tesla phone app to get the access code, of course, and within find a quiet air conditioned space with comfy seats, bathrooms, wifi, food, and two lovely young ladies happy to sell you Tesla-branded swag and charging accessories along with your decaf cappuccino. “And how are you liking your Model Y so far?”

Come to the dark side. We have wifi and cappuccino.