Right after a week in Dallas, Texas for this year’s Podcast Movement, I flew home and settled into the normal routine before I was scheduled to spend two weeks in South Korea working with clients. I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Founders hosted by David Serna. It is a show about some of the most influential business minds in history. The present episode was about Elon Musk.
I have always been a fan of Space X, the quest for Mars, and have a Starlink mini that we use on our travels with the Sled Dog Jeep. I have been on Twitter/X since the early days and was an early adopter of Paypal. I have always liked the idea of Tesla.
As a professional podcaster I always have been willing, if able, to support my collegues in the space, whether its signing up for Stamps.com or trying out a Meal Delivery plan but the Founders episode literally changed my life.
Later that night at home I was lying awake in bed at about 1:30am and my thoughts drifted back to the episode. “Maybe I should look at the Tesla’s online.”
What would it hurt right? Well, by 1:40am I had picked out a car, placed an order with $250 down on my Apple Card and applied for a loan. Within that ten minutes, I was appoved in the middle of the night, no less, and given an approximate date of delivery in 9 to 10 weeks.
Just a quick aside…I have been known to, at least in my early years, to buy a mean set of Ginsu knives or a fancy space aged mop thingy on a random night by calling an 800-number after listening to some over-hyped pitchman.
At least I never fell for the 900-number hot chicks or the psychics pimped by Dionne Warwick.
I literally spent $60,000 in five minutes lying in the dark in my flannel P.J.s!
Of course, I didn’t say anything to Michele until the next morning. In normal fashion I took a screenshot, said I did a thing, and told her I needed her to upload her ID into the app.
No crap, by 10:00am, I had scheduled a self-test drive, I’ll get to that in a minute, and bought a charger plug to install at home. Michele called our electrician and we were literally off to the races.
Later that day I followed the instructions on the Tesla app; you do EVERYTHING on the app, and headed to Eagle River to test drive a car that I didn’t know anything about.
I walked up, my phone unlocked the car and started it up and the next couple of hours it was mine.
I drove around Eagle River, tried the self-drive feature and pulled into the Walmart parking lot, of all places, to learn all about the features.
While siting there I got a call on my iPhone from a lady in California, the first time I had spoken to a living human in this procress. She said, “I see you are in the Walmart parking lot, how are you enjoying the Tesla?”
Great, I said.
I knew my mushing buddy Scott had recently bought a used Model 3 in Anchorage and I told him the news. He immediately said, “did you know that you can no longer ship them up on the barges because of a huge fire with a load of EVs somewhere in the middle of the Pacific?”
I briefly remembered it but said, not really.
He said, let me make a call.
Still sitting in the parking lot we found out there was really no way to get the car shipped up unless we drove or paid someone to do it.
I had already pulled the trigger so I had to act fast.
I took the car back, walked away with it still running and drove home.
I only had a few days before I flew to Korea but I felt safe in that the app said it would be late October before ours was available.
Just a couple of days before my Korea trip I got a power of attorney, at the Tesla’s app advice so Michele could go down and pick it up without me and I headed across the ocean.
Within a couple of days abroad we got an update that our car would now be ready between the 4th and 19th of September and I just hoped and prayed it wasn’t ready until I returned.
Sure enough on the 14th, the app updated again and said it was time to schedule our pick up in Fife, WA, about 45 minutes south of Seattle. We scrambled to get my flights changed and to get Michele down to Washington.
We met each other on the 18th and we took an Uber down on the afternoon of the 19th.
When we arrived, we were greeted by Jacob at the Tesla office and he said look your new car over and come back in. We signed two pieces of paper and we drove off.
Let’s put this into perspective. I spent 60-grr in the middle of the night. I was approved for a loan in less than five minutes on the app and talked to a live person during this whole process less than ten minutes.
This truly is the future!
First Drive
It took Michele and I a few minutes to get our heads on straight and headed over to the mall parking lot to figure things out. We set up our profiles, set up the Fulltime Supervised Drive (which is an $8,000 upgrade) and had the car drive itself around the parking lot.
The Future of Cars
This is a 2026 Model Y, they call them the Juniper model, in stealth gray, with black interior, 19 inch wheels, All-wheel drive, and dual motor. Really it’s just a super-fast go-cart.
I played a lot of Mario Cart on my trip overseas and this is just like that.
We headed into the city to grab dinner.
What an amazing experience. We are still a bit freaked out about the self-driving. We had it drive us all the way from downtown to the front door of our hotel by the airport, approximately 20 miles. This is one of the coolest things we have ever experienced.
The Story Till Now
Just a day later, Michele is flying home and I am headed all the way to Utah to drop off the car. Remember I said that cars can’t be shipped up on the barges?
My buddy Cooper that works at Trail Toyz suggested that we speak to Chase, the owner of a trailer fabrication company called Big Bubba’s in Wasilla and they might be able to bring it up for us. You see, they load up trailers that people buy in Alaska with cars and other gear and deliver them for a couple thousand bucks.
That is why I am headed down to Utah. It will be almost six weeks or so before the Tesla finally arrives in Alaska but at least it will get there.
That is the rest of this part of the story.
Tell me what you would like to learn about the Tesla buying exprience, the self-driving mode, and even dog mode, how cool is that? There will be a lot of posts upcoming and I will try my best to update them with all of the links in each article.
Maybe I should have just bought a Casper Mattress.
Stay tuned.
