ALGODONES DUNES, east of El Centro
My friend Barry and I planned to have a nice little outing here by the sand dunes, which I’d never been to before. We were going to take some pictures, head to El Centro to charge his Tesla, so we could make it all the way home, but fate had another plan.
We had a flat tire warning as soon as we set off, and the saga began. Teslas don’t come with a spare tire, so we called Tesla, and they could tow us to Cathedral City (in the opposite direction we needed to go), and that was going to cost $500.
Next we tried his AAA card, which only covered him for 7 miles - El Centro was 30 miles away. Luckily I’d brought my AAA card, just in case, and mine covered us for 100 miles.
Many phone calls to AAA and about 4 hours later, our tow truck driver, Jose, finally arrived, and towed us to a hotel in El Centro - all the places that could fix/replace the tire were closed by this time, so a hotel was necessary. Barry was kind enough to pick up the tab for that, which came to $285/room - OUCH!
This still didn’t solve the tire issue, and we had to call AAA again in the morning to put some air in that tire, so we could drive to Discount tire. They fixed it for FREE!
Now, we still had to stop at a super station to charge the battery in the Tesla (so we could make it all the way home again), which took only 25 minutes!
We arrived back at Barry’s house EXACTLY 24 hours after we’d left the day before.
WHAT A TRIP!
