Dad. Urban planner. Photographer.
With all of the rain and snow California has received over the past few weeks, this year is shaping up to be the best year in a decade for Yosemite’s #Firefall.
Last year, I was stuck in gridlocked traffic for nearly two hours trying to get back to Camp Curry. This year, to help with that problem, #Yosemite will have a permitting system in February. I’ll be staying in Wawona February 19-22, so I’ve got my permits in place. Maybe I’ll see you there!
Today, I looked at my Twitter notifications for the first time in a while. I’m sure glad Elon got the whole bot problem under control over there.
@plannerdan I hadn’t realized it until you posted this, but I just hit 5 years on my own last week. It’s amazing how time flies.
Congratulations on successfully making it through your first year! It’s by far the hardest.
Happy Birthday to Zack Urban Solutions! I can hardly believe it, but it has been exactly one year since I left local government and launched my consulting business. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun!
Want to learn about the things I am working on? Check out my current projects page on my website: https://zackurban.com/currentprojects/
Hear about my first year in the private sector here: www.plannerdan.com
The one thing I miss from Twitter is the ability to quote a tweet and then add my own 2¢.
We released a report at Urban Institute today on land-use policies & housing in the Puget Sound.
Our research estimates zoning constraints, potential zoning "envelopes," & likely construction given the market. https://www.urban.org/research/publication/making-room-housing-near-transit
@davidhsu I saw it a couple of nights ago, and I’m pretty sure not making sense is the point. It seemed to be a movie about civil war, and how one side can instigate the entire thing. They can make the other side hate them to the point of wanting to kill them. In the end, all that happens is that the instigator just ends up hurting themselves for no reason.
My kids were so excited to see these petroglyphs in Petrified Forest National Park, and even more excited for the ones they discovered in Saguaro that had no interpretive signs. It’s neat seeing them be excited to learn something about the native cultures that were here before us. #nationalpark #petrifiedforest #saguaro
Taken far, far too soon. A ridiculous hoonigan of a man, who could make a car his brush and the road a canvas. The world is a more boring place tonight. (pics from Gymkhana 7 in LA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qanlirrRWs )
I had never been to #SaguaroNationalPark before this past week. It was the 21st park I’ve visited. My expectations were quite low, it didn’t have any mountains or grand vistas, it just has a bunch of cacti. But I’ve got to say, those low expectations were greatly exceeded. The saguaro cactus are huge, and more amazing was the way they created a forest all up the mountain side. #landscapephoto #landscapephotograpy #nationalparks
@tabacco @SasquatcherGeneral @will @johnlonnie now that Dark Sky is gone (thanks, Apple), we need some way to get hyper local weather reports.
It was wonderful breaking the camera out again and taking some photos during our trip to Arizona. This was only the third time in the past 18 months I had really taken any landscape pictures. I'm missing it these days, and want to get back to doing it more in 2023. #landscapephotography #painteddesert #photography
Home, sweet home!
Made this last 102 mile leg in an interminable 2 hours & 23 min at 3.2 mi/kW.
Road trips in an EV are definitely possible, but it takes more planning & a fair amount of time at chargers. We spent an hour or two a day charging. In some cases, it was nice because it allowed us to stretch our legs, but sometimes we just wanted to get to our destination.
Mostly, the infrastructure needs to get a lot better & as a driver you need to recalibrate how you think about road trips.
Last charge of the trip! Went 117 miles at 2.8 mi/kWh. The headwind took a toll on the mileage. We’re now traveling with another EV6, and our kids have been able to play at both stops today.
This charger wasn’t working when I passed through here last November, but I’m glad it was today. The car could have made it to the next charger, but our bladders couldn’t. So it was nice to take care of both things at once.
Now I just can’t wait to get home.
Unfortunately, it looks like two stops will be needed today, and the first one has been the worst stop of the trip. Only two of the four Electrify America chargers in Quartzsite are working, and there is a line of cars waiting to charge. The working 150 kW chargers are only going at about 70 kW, so it’s taking four times longer to charge than it should.
We made it 138 miles at 2.9 mi/kWh, but arrived with about 6% more battery than A Better Route Planner estimated we’d have on this leg.
Once we got charged at the outlet mall outside of Tuscon, we toured all around Saguaro National Park and made it up to Phoenix for New Years Eve dinner. It was the only charge we needed today, because we only went 160 miles and got 3.7 mi/kWh.
Thankfully, the hotel tonight had a working charger. They have three for Teslas and only one for everyone else, but it was open so I’ll be fully charged in the morning. I might be able to make it all the way home with just one stop to charge.
Elon is going to say that his entire goal for the year was to have Tesla close down 69% on the year, given his adolescent sense of humor.
The charging infrastructure in Tuscon is horrendously bad. There is only one fast charger in this entire city of over half a million people, and it’s on the far outskirts of town. There are only three other public 50 kW chargers near downtown. That’s like a city only having one gas station.
So I’m here at the outlet mall, charging away. On this last leg from Show Low, we traveled 209 miles at 3.9 mi/kWh, by far our best mileage of the trip so far. It helped that it was warmer and downhill.
