Podcast 398 – Sturgis Part 1

Political Escape To Surgis. The first installment of the Sturgis 2015 Road Trip begins. After a 500 mile road trip from Minneapolis-Saint Paul to Rapid City, South Dakota we arrive at the Harley Davidson Dealer in Rapid City. First order of business? Let’s get the political stuff out of the way because in Part 2, we head into Sturgis itself in Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8. Podcast 398 is posted on the day of the first ‘debate’ of the 2016 political cycle. Well, maybe we should call it a cage match, rather than a debate. Not a single vote has been cast, yet the rocket scientists at Fox News have decided to pick the ‘top ten’ candidates based on the political polls. (Editor’s Note: I gave listeners a good primer on the negatives and positives of political polls in Podcast 397.) This is fine and well if your guy is in the top ten, but what if the first guy in the bottom seven or eight got Trumped by Trump, based on a poll? And how do you become number one in a poll? Say a bunch of stuff that gets a lot of news coverage. The decision to cover the Sturgis 2015 event versus the Republican ‘debate’ is detailed in this podcast. Without saying the debate is a disaster for the Republicans (it could be), it feels way to early for such a spectacle. It is dangerous for the Republican party and the American people when a television network decides who the top candidates are, before a vote has been cast. A minimum of a million people are due in Sturgis at some point during this week, in actual physical form. Not on line. Not watching it on Fox News, CNN or MSNBC. People in this country are doing what they do, while a tiny portion of the public is sitting in front of their TV’s hanging on every word. Somehow that feels very close to pathetic when the weather is amazing, and the open road beckons. So Sturgis it is. In this first road trip podcast in the Mobile Podcast Command Unit, recorded about 1 AM, a little slash and burn, some stories, and some comments about the ‘big debate’. Sponsored by X Government Cars. (Editor’s Note: In this podcast I refer to the Sturgis event as the 75th anniversary of Harley Davidson, which is obviously and painfully incorrect. I meant the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally event is 75 years old.)

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Podcast 394

The EAA Air Show Gets Me. Live at Osh Kosh, and despite the plane crash, this is an event that reaches out and grabs you. Acre after acre of all kinds of planes, many with pilot’s tents beneath their wings, four hangers full of aviation equipment, pilots and aircraft enthusiasts all over the place. Warbirds, jets, brand new airliners, seaplanes, experimental planes, workshops, even massage chair demonstrations! It’s all a little overwhelming for a podcaster who doesn’t fly and doesn’t know anything about aviation, except that it’s pretty cool. Then there was the speech and presentation by Bert and Dick Rutan. One comes away with a message that needs to be heard these days. A message of living your dream, maybe taking the road less traveled to try to accomplish something that changes the world, or maybe an industry. EAA began as a community of homebuilders, and aircraft enthusiasts and there are still workshops and demonstrations for people in this tribe, but the event obviously has grown over the years to become one of the country’s premiere attractions, all in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. All the big companies are here; GE, Boeing, Airbus, Honda, Bendix King, and Alpha Systems, to name a few. Medium and small vendors of all shapes and sizes are represented too, selling all kinds of tools for pilots, and all kinds of aircraft. If the original intent of designers and kit builders was to democratize flying — because 50 years ago the only way some people could acquire an airplane was to build their own — then they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Let’s hope it continues in this vein. In the end, it’s the people — the flight community — that makes this event so special. If you fly you already know. If you don’t, EAA is something to see. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. (Editor’s Note: I mentioned Bert Rutan’s best friend and pilot of Spaceship 1, Mike Melville and got his name wrong. Mike was part of the presentation that night at EAA, and has his own list of impressive aviation accomplishments.)

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Podcast 390

Midnight Run To Waukesha. The Bob Davis Podcasts are back on the road, with a trip across Wisconsin to Waukesha, where Governor Scott Walker will make his announcement that he is running for the Republican nomination for President, Monday, July 13th. This is a short trip which starts ’round midnight, in a blinding thunderstorm. It’s time to cover politics by getting in the story, rather than read what others are writing about candidates, and react. So we’ll be covering Walker for a couple of days; The announcement in Waukesha and a rally later in the week in Davenport Iowa. Special attention will be paid to the media gaggle which inevitably follows these candidates. This podcast features some impressions prior to the announcement at Waukesha’s Expo Center. One of the biggest problems with the growing ‘presidential’ race is, all of these candidates aren’t necessarily running for president, which is how their campaigns are portrayed. In fact they’re running in scores of individual primary elections and caucus ‘straw polls’; which is a nice way to say some people sit at a table in a high school gymnasium and write their favorite candidate’s names on scraps of paper, which are then gathered up and ‘counted’. In fact, the score of candidates on the Republican side, and a few on the Democrat side are competing for delegates. What comes after the primaries and caucuses are the political party conventions. On the GOP side, the danger is a bruising floor fight due to the possibility several candidates will win just enough delegates to stay in the race. The mainstream media covers this circus as an national ‘election’. The real question is how many of these candidates have the money and organizations to stay in the race through the conventions. Live from the Wisconsin Dells, in the middle of the night. Sponsored by X Government Cars. 

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