Mike Dell's world number three eight for the 16th of November, 2021. And it's, uh, APOD Pomo 21. I think it's. Ah, there it is. And there it is. Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Whatever the case may be for you wherever you're listening. I'm Mike, and this is Mike Dell's world. Today is Tuesday, which on my schedule for national podcast posting month means it's a traverse city episode. And I guess I'm gonna answer the question I get asked, especially this time of year.
I get asked this question a lot. Why do you live in traverse city? And I, you know, I could suppose I could give the easy answer. Um, well, you know, I grew up here. A lot of my family is here, that kind of stuff. Uh, and that's true. Definitely. You know, it's cool that my folks are still here. I got a 94 year old grandmother that lives about a mile from me and she's still, uh, kicking and living on her own and, and all that good stuff.
And, uh, you know, we get together somewhat frequently, although it's kind of strange, you know, I, I don't see my parents as you know, I see 'em at least once a week, but, uh, you know, a whole lot more than that. They're about 10 miles away, but that's not a big deal. It's just the fact that, you know, I grew up here, but that's not even it, uh, you know, the job isn't keeping me here anymore. Uh, I could pretty much live anywhere.
I have an internet connection in a, uh, phone line or not even a phone line, just an internet connection and a, uh, cell phone, or maybe just an internet connection. But, uh, you know, I could live pretty much wherever I want. My wife is, uh, retired, so, you know, that's a thing. So she doesn't, she doesn't work outside the home. Uh, you know, she does some, some small things here and there, but she could do that anywhere. And, you know, so we're not bound here by that. Uh,
you know, there's certainly better weather spots. Uh, you know, although there's nothing nicer than a summer day in Michigan where even a fall day in Northern Michigan, uh, but you know, the winters can be a little rough. And I think that's some of the charm that I, you know, being that I grew up here, I'm kind of used to that. Although, you know, I've lived other places I've lived in Florida, I've lived in Idaho,
lived in Iceland. I spent a lot of time in a lot of other places. Uh, you know, the, the, weather's not really a big motivator for me, although,
you know, I, I do sort of dread the long winters. Uh, although I look forward to it this time of year, because everything seems to slow down right after the holidays and this I'm sure happens everywhere, but more so up here, you know, after the holidays, things just sort of mellow, you know, we're just waiting for the blizzard and removing snow and, uh, you know,
just staying warm and, uh, staying happy. And, and there's something to be said for, you know, that, that natural slowdown that we get every year, you know, the cavemen and the, you know, the humans before, uh, civilization really took hold, you know, they, they, they had that thing, you know, they'd spend all summer and, you know, spring summer and part of the fall, you know,
getting ready for the long winter. And, you know, there's, there's something to be said for that, uh, you know, a chance to sort of wind down now, you know, the way things work nowadays, uh, you know, we got artificial lights and, and heat and, uh, you know,
electricity and communicate worldwide communications. I mean, you, you know, who knows you, you could be sitting in Antarctica listening to me or in Iceland or, or, you know, somewhere in Africa or somewhere in Europe or somewhere in Canada and, you know, hello to the Canadians over the border. But, uh, you know, it doesn't have, you, you don't have to be right here for me to be able to communicate with you, uh, either one way like this in a podcast or two way, uh, you know, via zoom or,
you know, Facebook chat, whatever. I mean, there's a hundred ways we can stay in communications now, you know, as in Iceland, I felt pretty isolated because, you know, phone call was, you know, buck and a quarter a minute and, uh, and the time difference and, uh, and all that. So we didn't do a lot of that. Uh, I did have television stations, uh, some from Europe and some, uh, you know, they piped in like, uh, the morning shows, uh, today show. I remember we used to get that about noon.
The tonight show would come out at about seven in the morning, uh, you know, and, and a few other, you know, national shows like that.
And of course when big football games were happening, that they show that on armed forces television, and, you know, so it was, you know, you weren't completely left out in the cold, uh, that way, no pun intended, but, you know, we used to get, uh, we had an airplane that would come in on, uh, Wednesdays, and it was, uh, it was a DC eight combi those years that are into airplanes as I am, but it was a DCA com, which meant that, uh,
the front half of the passenger cabin was cargo and the back half was people and it was a, we called it the tater or the rotator. And basically when you got stationed up there, uh, you would come in on a Wednesday and then those that were leaving would leave, you know, later that day on Wednesday, uh, it would land about seven in the morning and take off about, uh,
10 at night or something like that cuz the time difference, whatever. But, uh, and by, by the way, it was Hawaiian airlines, which was kind of ironic going to Iceland, but, uh, they had the contract at the time, but the front half of the airplane was all the mail and uh, other supplies that didn't come in, you know, normal, you know, military supplies and what they didn't buy local, but you know, we would get, uh, the mail would come in on Wednesday. So Wednesday everybody would be,
you know, crowding the post office. And as they were sorting the mail, I used to volunteer to sort mail and it was great. And we got new magazines and I mean, magazines were like a lifeline up there. It was, uh, it was amazing, you know, a magazine was, was like gold, you get done reading a magazine and you put it out in the day room and it was
gone. And there was a big box in the, uh, post office too, where all the magazines that, uh, you know, say somebody had a subscription to a magazine and, you know, they didn't forward those to, uh, APO boxes. Uh, what was it, what is APO stand for? I don't remember. But, uh, anyway, the military post office wouldn't forward magazine subscriptions, so they would just throw all the magazines in a box and, you know, come one,
you know, first come first serve. And you know, we used tear that up and uh, you know, of course we had a pretty good library and we'd spend a lot of time reading and you know, that was what you had to do up there. There was no internet at the time or at least no internet that we had anything
to do with. And, uh, like I said, couldn't really afford to do a lot of phone calling and, and, and that, but anyway, this is more about traverse city, but uh, you know, traverse city, we're kind of, you know, we're not isolated by any stretch, but you know, it is one of the few places on the planet. That's a good 35, 40 miles away from a, a freeway. Uh, you know, we don't have interstate the nearest interstate's 50 or 60 miles away.
And, you know, I always tell people when they are in traverse city, if you find yourself in traverse city, you either meant to come here or you're lost because it's not on the way to anything really. I mean, Leland county, I guess. But, uh, and, and that's, you know, I consider that the same area, cuz it's on the grand traverses bay, but uh, you know, there's, we're kind of the end of the road, uh, at least in lower Michigan.
And so, you know, it's not like a big transitory area where, you know, a lot of people are passing through like, uh, other places I've lived when I lived in, I Idaho, you know, we had interstate 84, it was the main, uh, highway between salt lake city and uh, Seattle or Portland or somewhere up there in the Northwest. And you know, there was these people passing through and, uh,
it was a whole different vibe. You know, same thing when I lived in Florida, you know, I was 10 miles off of I 10 and uh, you know, that's the main drag across the Southern United States. And plus it was, uh, near highway 98, which was, you know, the main highway along the Gulf coast. And, and you know, there, there's just a lot of people passing through and you just don't get that in traverse city very often. It's,
it's not a normal route that anyone would take to get elsewhere. It's just, you know, they tend to come here and I kinda like that about this place. You know, we get a lot of tourists and there's nothing wrong with that. A lot of visitors, a lot of snowbirds, uh, snowbirds are an interesting bunch, you know, they live here when the weather's good and then take off when it's cold. And I can certainly see the, the wisdom in that. And, uh, it may be something I do in the future. I don't know,
although I don't know where I'd want to go. Uh, not a huge fan of Florida, uh, weather wise, uh, although it's growing on me a little bit, uh, when I lived there, it was okay. And, and I've got family in south Florida and it's always good down to go down and visit, but you know, some of the touristy areas in Florida are just unreal. They're worse than, uh, than up here in the summer. Orlando. Geez.
You know, you know, don't dislike Orlando, but I, I certainly wouldn't want to live there year round or anything, or even part of the year, you know, I'd pick someplace out in the boonies, uh, you know, maybe in Texas, you know, same thing. I'm not a huge fan of, of Texas in general, but you know, there's some nice spots and all that. Uh, but it's just too doggone hot down there. Uh, a lot of the year, same with Florida, but we get just as warm as Florida in the summer, uh,
up here. So, you know, it's not really, like I said, I'm not really weather, uh, motivated like some, some of the snowbirds, like I said, the tourists we get up here general are, are nice enough people it's, haven't really met too many rude people. That's a, that's another thing about this area Northern Michigan in general traverse city, you know, is a little bit more metropolitan compared to, you know, say, uh, you know, gay or,
and Gaylord has a lot of pass through cuz they're on I 75. Uh, but you know, the whole Northern part of lower Michigan and pretty much the entire up of Michigan are, you know, some pretty Hardy people and they're all pretty friendly. Uh, for the most part, you know, there's grumpy, grouches everywhere. And the crime rate here in traverse city is probably a little bit less than the crime rate, you know, of a comparable size city, closer to an interstate. Um, you know, we got,
we've got our, you know, we've got our problems up here. Uh, we don't get nearly as many homeless up here because it's too darn cold. I mean, we, there is some homeless and there's some good organizations around here that, uh, are trying to take care of them. We do have, you know, one, one area that I know of that, uh, is kind of a tent city, uh, and you know, I feel bad for the folks over there, but, uh, what do you do? You know,
they don't want help. They, you know, whatever. But so, I mean, there are some quote unquote bad sections of traverse city, but I don't feel unsafe anywhere in the city or around the area really. You know, like I said, the crime rates are probably a tad lower than average for, uh, the amount of people in the area. I think we're, I think we're around a hundred thousand, 150,000 in the, in the Metro area.
Uh, you know, the five counties surrounding traverse city, but, uh, you know, traverse city itself, I think is still around 20,000 in the actual city. I'm not in the actual city here I'm oh, a hundred yards. from the city limit, something like that. But I'm officially an east bay township, which, uh, like I said, not, not really a big distinction, but you know, I do feel like I'm kind of out in the boonies a little bit.
If you go look at the picture I, I picked, uh, the airplane that took that picture or drone or whatever was pretty darn close to my house looking west. Uh, so I'd have been right below where that picture was taken, uh,
at the base of east bay. And, and this picture is the city of looking over west bay, east bay is more rural, but not really , but yeah, that's one of the other reasons, like I say, you don't find too many unfriendly people here, uh, you know, the business owners and, you know, businesses are, they're just, you know, friendly people and you know, and then of course we've got, you know, some of the big box stores, not all of them, you know,
we've got target and Wallie world and home Depot and Lowe's and Menards and you know, those kind of places, but, you know, we don't have some of the, the more, you know, we don't have like a, uh, what was that one, uh, trader Joe's. We don't have, uh, we don't have, uh, oh, what's the one that Amazon owns a grocery store, but, uh,
we don't have one of those. We have a local outfit that's like that. Uh, but, and they have two stores, you know, and we don't have big chain grocery stores now, like I said, we do have Walmart target and Meyer are the three big ones, but, uh, we have some local ones. We got, uh, we got a little place, uh, you know,
Tom's grocery stores or Tom's food markets. And there's, I don't know, probably three, four of 'em we've got Olsens, they've got two or three of 'em and we've got, uh, you know, a lot of local stuff, same thing with the radio market here. We don't have big market radio up here. We don't have Citadel. We don't have, uh, clear channel. We don't have, you know, any of these big radio groups clear channel, I guess, would be called iHeartRadio now,
but we don't have any stations owned by them or run by them. And we have, uh, local owners. So, you know, we got Midwest broadcasting covers, you know, every genre of, of station, they got well, eight or nine stations total, something like that, maybe more, but, you know, eight or nine, I think McDonald, Grave's got 4, 5, 6, uh, there's, uh, a couple other, you know, big owners that own, you know, 10, 12 stations, that's it, you know, and there's, you know,
they're local stations. We, you know, we've got our am talker in the morning, uh, is, you know, all local programming up until up until noon. And they have, uh, local news breaks. Even after that, during the day, you know, what radio station in a big market are you gonna get a lot of local? Uh, you just don't. Uh, and as several stations like that here,
uh, you know, one of the other big things about it is there's trees. You know, I, I lived in Idaho and there was some trees, you know, in the towns and, and on the base that I was stationed at and, and all that, you know, I had a tree in my yard. In fact, I was on Google earth the other day, just, uh, fiddling around, you know, seeing what everything looked like. I went to my old house and mountain home Idaho. And, uh, there was a tree in the yard when I was living there.
That was probably three inches around. And, and now, uh, 30 something years later, it's, uh, you know, quite a bit bigger and, uh, quite a bit taller, but, you know, it's desert Iceland, you know, the tallest tree I saw in Iceland, maybe 20 feet, uh, the big joke up there was how do you, uh, find your way out of the Iceland national forest, if you get lost?
And the answer was stand up cause, you know, being that close to the Arctic circle and even over the Arctic circle, a lot of, a lot of trees that grow very high, you know, so, you know, it makes me appreciate all the more, you know, what we have here and, you know, a lot of people ask me about the snow. Eh, you know, it's really not as bad as it sounds, uh, even on a bad year. Uh, it's just snow and yeah, it might slow you down.
Uh, you might have to make arrangements to get your driveway and sidewalk's cleared off if you're not able to do it yourself, but it's also a good way to get exercise. You know, I have a, I have a tractor with a plow and a snowblower and I gotta walk behind snowblower. And of course it got shovels and, and you know,
the walk behind snowblower and the, I mean, all of it's work. I mean, especially if it's five degrees outside, you know, you bundle up like the Michelin man and, uh, you know, it still gets pretty cold and just, just staying warm, takes some energy,
but you know, that walk behind snowblower. It takes a lot of energy, you know, for an hour walking around outside when it's cold, even if you are bundled up, you always tell people, you know, I'd rather be in the cold and the hot, you can always put more clothes on, but there's generally a limit to how much you can take off. And even if you take it all off, it might still not help . So, you know,
it's, uh, you know, I love it up here. I, I just do, uh, you know, it can be a pain, you know, for like traveling and, and I'm lucky that our airport here has, uh, four airlines and it's more or less within walking distance of my house. So it's not like it's too hard to get to the airport if I need to go somewhere, uh, that way driving, yeah, you gotta drive 35, 40 miles or 50 miles to get to a freeway if, uh, you spend on which way you're going. Uh, but you know, it's a nice ride.
It's two, you know, nice two lane highways, uh, 65 speed limits. Uh, generally you gotta watch out for deer and, and other idiots on the road. That's one thing up here. We have our share of idiots on the road, but you know, it doesn't everywhere, but, uh, yeah, that's, you know, generally why I like it up here. It's just, uh, you know, we, we don't have hurricanes, we don't have earthquakes, we generally don't have forest fires and wildfires,
and I've been places that had all of that stuff. And, uh, , you know, it's, it's really something, you know, in Florida there, hurricane Andrew came across south Florida and looked like it was headed towards us. Uh, we evacuated all our airplanes out to Texas and then Andrew ended up hitting Texas instead, or new Orleans or whatever that whole area west of us. So our airplanes were actually closer to the action than, uh, than they were if we would've left them where they, you know,
where they were at, uh, in EG at Egland. But, uh, you know, been, been in places at our earthquakes, not big earthquakes. I mean, Idaho would rumble a little bit and, and, uh, you know, Las Vegas, I remember feeling one there one time and, you know, so, but in wildfires out west in Idaho, we used to get wildfires now, you know, luckily they stayed in the desert for the most part or up in the mountains. Um, where I was at in the little town was, you know, pretty safe.
We weren't that close to, uh, to the edge of the desert. And I'm sure as it's built up more to, you know, the, the towns are probably even a little more safe, but I, I do remember, you know, driving across the desert on the freeway and on the horizon, you know, for as long as you could see on the horizon,
it was just a orange glow from the big wildfires out there. And the, you know, the Sage brush burning, you smoke and all that, you know, something, something we don't deal with here that often we get forest fires down. And again, usually up further north, uh, they've had forest fires, uh, but it's pretty rare around here. Uh, and we get enough rainfall and, and, and all that, but, uh, you know, every once in a while, nature throws a thing at it, but, uh, you no,
and very few tornadoes. I mean, every once in a while, we'll get a tornado or a severe thunderstorm, whatever, but that's not an every year thing. Uh, maybe every 10 years, one hits, you know, some somewhere around here populated, um, you know, yeah, we get blizzards, but again, it's a blizzard hurt really. I mean, you know, snowfall.
Yeah. I mean, if it gets too ridiculous, it, it definitely impedes travel, which, uh, you know, people that, uh, need to get to the hospital or whatever may, may have more of a problem because of snow and lizards and bad driving conditions and, and whatnot. But for the most part, if you're not, uh, urgently needing to go anywhere, you know, just sit it out, take a break. It's, uh, pretty, uh, pretty relaxing actually. So anyway, that's, uh,
my little spiel about why I live in traverse city. Uh, I guess I'll add to this, that if there was a couple, there's a couple other places that I would probably consider moving to if I couldn't live here, uh, I wouldn't mind being in, uh, you know, like out in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky or Tennessee, maybe, uh, you know, in a smaller town, maybe not a tiny town,
but a smaller town in one of those places might be cool. Uh, Tennessee still gets a little hotter in the summer than I would prefer, but, uh, then again, the, the winters are milder for sure.
Uh, I wouldn't mind Idaho, to be honest with you. Uh, I would probably live somewhere on the outskirts of Boise, you know, one of the, the lesser towns, uh, you know, like maybe Meridian or Napa or Calwell, or, you know, some town that's not too far out, but you know, far enough out , that would be okay probably. And I'm sure there's other places around the country that I haven't been been to that I'd probably like, uh, Northern Nevada. It'd be kind of cool.
A little town of Eely. I, I always found that one to be kind of neat. Uh, we used to go there, uh, to go to the casino. it's not too far from, uh, mountain home. Well, you know, I take that back. It, it was probably three or four hour drive,
but out west that's not so bad. Uh, where I lived in Idaho at the time was a 55 mile drive to McDonald's to the nearest McDonald's , which I guess is no big loss, but, you know, nowadays, uh, is McDonald's on every corner, just like a Starbucks, but, uh, yeah, those would probably be a couple of places I might consider living, uh, Texas, like, you know, like I said, I don't have any big hatred for Texas, but a lot of Texas, I wasn't a fan of, I lived in, uh, San Antonio for a while,
and that's just altogether too hot most of the year. Uh, but you know, I could, I could probably see living, you know, somewhere north, Texas, you know, north of Dallas or, or, uh, something like that might not be too bad. Uh, you know, like I said, there's, there's way other there's other places, but, you know, my, my main thing is, is, you know, I, I really like the, the slower pace for the most part that we have up here.
And especially in the winter, you know, we get, uh, at least two good months, sometimes three, uh, good months of, uh, things not moving quite as fast, you know, not as many events going on and not as much, you know, outdoor chores other than, you know, keeping the driveway and, and walkways clear and, uh, digging out the mailbox once in a while. Uh, it's, it's pretty mellow, pretty laid back.
And I like that. So anyway, uh, and, and for those of you thinking about moving to traverse city don't don't, don't, don't everything I said was a lie and stay away, stay away. catch me later.