Podcast 384

Final Thoughts From The Road. With a tragedy in South Carolina, and more nonsense coming out of Washington DC, the chattering class will be busy chattering this weekend. They’ll be telling us the country is falling apart, sowing the seeds of discontent, depression, confusion, envy, and anxiety. The thing is, if you travel the country state by state, you don’t see discontent, depression, confusion, envy and anxiety. You see people coping; in fact thriving. In the middle one of the most dense population centers in the world — the US eastern seaboard — you’ll find Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a rural paradise. Then there’s Ocean City Maryland, which actually is hot and sweaty, but everyone seems to be having a good time. Fifty states, with fifty different histories, cultures, many of them thriving. Yes, thriving. How can this be? The America you see and hear about on Fox News and MSNBC, or you hear about on scratchy dying AM Talk Radio stations is burning; falling apart, splitting at the seams. The pounders and the screamers polarize us into right and left, and tell us our country is a place where people hate each other, members of different ‘castes’ seethe, where the rich get super rich and everyone else gets nothing. The only thing is, that’s not what is going on in the real America. If you travel it, you’ll see what I mean. Are there injustices? Is there crime? Poverty? Yes. But, somehow in this place, painted as the seventh level of Dante’s Inferno, people raise families, go to work, do what they can for each other, start businesses and vacation together. I saw people of all colors, cultures and languages working together, eating together, living together. Meanwhile, the truck stops are chock full of trucks, RV’s and travelers twenty four hours a day. The restaurants are busy, as are the Targets and Home Depots and Food Lions, even small town grocery stores. It used to be said that the media in America is a mirror, to show society what it is. Well, I am here to tell you, Houston we have a problem. The media isn’t showing us what we are, or what is going on, because the images just don’t match. The Media and the politicians in Washington are lying to us, and using the outrage machine to their political advantage. I’ve seen about three quarters of this country in the last 4 months, at the most basic level; Interstates, two lanes, and dirt roads. I’ve driven through the big towns, and the small towns, meeting and talking to regular people. I just don’t see the strife and struggle we’re being told ‘we’ are experiencing. There are challenges in every time. Our challenge is turning off these idiots on television, and in Washington DC. America not only has a future, it has a great future and it’s time we had leadership that recognizes and encourages our innovation and energy, rather than scares, and divides us, lies to us and tells us what we have to do. Let’s start making it happen, regardless of what the chattering chatterers have to say this weekend. Sponsored by X Government Cars

Podcast 377

Summer 2015 Road Trip Part 1. A midnight ride to Iowa, with the first leg ending at Walcott Iowa’s ‘Iowa 80 Truck Stop’ where we encountered the first blush of Internet Upload problems. While I usually don’t write these podcast notes in the first person I have to break format to suggest that a real problem with traveling and ‘untethering’ is spotty Wireless Internet Service, particularly at Truck Stops. Iowa 80 gets points for allowing free access to their WIFI, but when you start uploading huge audio files, it becomes impossible to file. Starbucks used to require people to sign in with AT&T Wireless Service (blah blah blah) but figured it out. It’s free, and its fast downloading and uploading. Unfortunately, in the desert that is Central Illinois and Eastern Iowa, there aren’t many Starbucks. So, Kudos to the Sapp Brothers Truck Stop near Peru, Illinois. I was able to get this package uploaded and posted by around noon central Wednesday. Anyway. Lots of energy and enthusiasm for this trip out east, to the Atlantic Coast, with stops in Illinois, via Kentucky, Tennessee, Southwestern Virginia, onto Richmond, and Washington DC. Bored with the Bruce Jenner changeling story, as the moon rose over the fecund fields of Iowa last night, I began to wonder whether ‘The People of Iowa’ really deserve all the attention their getting in the media, because they hold the ‘first in the nation Caucus’, in 2016. What has become a cliche of American politics; The Diner photo op, the chat with the farmer by the barn, the waving fields of amber, is abundant in Iowa. What happens when an honest, real population becomes aware they’re on the Truman Show, as politicians and Media caravan all over this state? Lots of federal largesse evident in Iowa from Wind Farms to Bio Diesel. Is this good? Is Iowa, with its farms and burgeoning small cities, aspirational? 100 years ago most Americans lived in rural, small towns and cities. Does Iowa represent a desire to get back to that kind of bucolic existence or is it just that they have the first major political contest in what is becoming an insane circus called the Presidential Election of 2016? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Podcast 356

Utah and Wyoming. Stranded at a truck stop in Sinclair, Wyoming. A long day (or two?) of travel comes to a screeching halt at a truck stop, where hundreds of trucks and drivers are stranded after the State of Wyoming shut down I-80. The cause? A 70+ car pile up during a spring snow storm. Coming out of the Wasatch mountains in Nevada, into the salt flats of Utah, into Wyoming. Following the path of the Donner-Reed party in reverse. So, in this podcast, on a snowy Friday night in Wyoming, time to break out a few more facts and opinions about the tragic story of the Donner party. In 1846, a series of mistakes by a group of around 100 people heading to California for a better life, led to one of Western History’s most enduring and compelling stories, with the chief character in the tragedy, the unpredictable and fierce western weather. What was the Donner-Reed party’s gift to us? Did they find a happy life once the survivors reached their final places of settlement? Visiting the various waypoints along their trail shows what an almost impossible task it must have been for 87 people, animals, and baggage in tow, to cross to California from Missouri. (Editor’s note: I-80 finally opened, but we were advised to hang around awhile. I did this podcast, and finally decided to head up 80 East, because another storm was brewing. It was a little icy, but I made it to Laramie. There, I decided to take a nap. When I got up about 2 hours later (at about 5 AM) it was snowing like hell, and all the drivers were hightailing out of the truck stop at Laramie. I decided to make a break for it, because I did not want to get stuck at another truck stop. Mountains, steep grades, freezing pavement, blowing snow, snow and ice encrusted windshield wipers, following trucks up the mountain toward Cheyenne at 25 miles and hour. We were our own little Donner Party in reverse, but the Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8 did not falter, slip or slide. Thanks to all you truckers that let me hang close and follow. Whew!) Sponsored by X Government Cars! Don’t forget to Join the Bob Davis Podcasts and Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8 live at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater on April 25th. Details here