I didn’t think I was a beach person. My whole life, the beach qua the beach was not interesting to me. And then, after a family outing to Watsonville or thereabouts, I realized I was a cold beach person. Miss me with the Gulf Coast or LA, give me fog and sweatshirts to go with the plastic Birks.
And as I sit on the patio looking out at the Pismo Beach pier, it occurs to me I may have been hasty. Pismo, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, the old school central-to-north California beach towns…there’s something here. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a much more pleasant vibe. I like being here for a couple of days just to hang out – like the Disney Beach Club resort in Orlando, except it’s real and that’s the Pacific right over there.
It’s too far a drive to do in one go on the ID.4, though. After panicking and choosing Soledad over Paso Robles, I have about decided that the move will be to charge sooner than later, and thus quicker, and then coast down to a minimum on arrival. It took us a little over 30% from home there, and then 40% from Soledad to Pismo, and just the act of turning on the air conditioning knocked 12% off our forecast range. But said forecast range seems fairly accurate, and increased by ten miles by the bottom of the Cuesta Grade. So if you have the juice to get up the hill, your range forecast will be correct assuming you come back down it.
And assuming you don’t route too much power to accessories. This was a “use up the free SiriusXM” trip, not an iPhone trip. But the iPhone 13 mini has settled neatly into the routine. I don’t have the battery strain I had before, and the silicone case make it not only visually but tactile-distinct from my wife’s phone, and I am so taken with the “midnight” color that I am recklessly eyeballing the new M2 MacBook Air that I absolutely do not need. And if the Great Mentioner is correct, and the iPhone 14 Not-Pro has the same processor as the 13 with just a RAM bump, then it is reasonable to expect that every new feature in iOS 16 shown off today will be available on my phone in September.
Including but not limited to four additional full OS upgrades, which isn’t nothing. All the stuff that dropped in 2017, including the much-debated iPhone X, is still in scope for iOS 16. So I should be able to replace the battery and the front glass and keep rocking my one handed phone into the summer of 2027. And I would like to, if I can. In a world where everything moves to a local authentication device instead of a password, a one-handed phone is something I will gladly squeeze five years out of before my eyesight and coordination makes a 6″ phone a tragic necessity.
They’re two purchases I am very happy with. I didn’t see them coming from this time eighteen months ago, but then, I also got sick of waiting for them for six months before collecting each one. So it’s nice to be topped up on the things I need to get by.
Next stop: figuring out how to spent more days working from Santa Cruz, or Pescadero, or Capitola. Just because.