Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638

Short road trips are great. Going away for the weekend is fun. My preference is for much longer trips. Storm Chasing in Missouri. Visiting the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma. Don’t forget Arkansas. Meeting up with my son on his own road trip in Kansas. Visiting old friends in Tennessee. Now in Virginia checking in with family in Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638.

Happiness Is A Clean Windshield and A Full Tank Of Gas

There is a sense of peace that only comes from seeing the highway through the windshield. If you happen to be in the mid south, try a couple of the highways I mention in Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638. Backroads are always better and some of them are spectacular through Tennessee and Arkansas.

Seeing The Real America

The media is full of locators. This happened in California. That happened in Florida. Atlanta. Chicago. LA. New York City. York PA. The news gives us a sense of the United States as either exclusively urban or hopelessly rural. Travel on the highways and backroads reminds us how vast and actually empty our country is.

Family Stories

One of the missions of this road trip is to visit the hometown of my grandparents and great grandparents, great uncles and aunts and cousins. Most of my life I’ve been hearing apocalyptic stories of coal mining in southern Ohio. I don’t know about your family get togethers but mine are punctuated by confirmations of some of those stories, and guffaws. “Grandpa made that up!” is a common refrain. Time to at least go back to the old village and at least get a sense of the ground. In Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638.

Where Did That Happen?

Doing a long road trip? You’re mind will wander. Thoughts will come in and go out just as quickly. Months later you’ll be doing something and a thought and experience will come to mind. You will think, “Where was I when I thought that?”. We don’t always have the time to do this, we don’t travel like this enough, and it is good for the soul to do it. In Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638.

Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Family Stories In Virginia-Where To Next-Podcast 638

 

Podcast 583-Summer Storm

Podcast 583-Summer Storm. Nothing better than a summer storm to help you forget the bitter cold. It’s well below zero in Minnesota. While Europe and parts of the South consider mid twenties to thirties ‘bitter’ cold, in the Upper Midwest we’re talking minus twenty, thirty or even forty below. This is the kind of cold you don’t need windchill to exaggerate. If you’re in the deep freeze this podcast is designed to provide a half an hour or so of relief.

Last summer I had a chance to record a huge summer storm that rolled through the area. The storm track on this podcast isn’t edited. It was recorded in real time, complete with bouts of heavy rain and thunder. Interspersed throughout the storm are some thought starters to help subscribers to the Bob Davis Podcasts mentally escape.

Maybe when you were a kid your family did a road trip to Florida. Or while in college you and your friends took a trip through the mountains, or the desert. Many have had one of those summer college jobs for some agricultural company that required rolling around on back roads across Iowa and North Dakota, recording the growth of corn, or whatever those companies require people to write down on clipboards.

For me, sitting in a broken down old ’67 Ford Galaxy in the fields and watching the storms roll in across the prairie in Rural Illinois, will always remind me of deep summer. It’s easy for people to say, “Why don’t you get on a plane and go to LA, or Hawaii”. Yes, it sure would be nice. Thing is, not all of us can do that.

As we head into the deep freeze, keep this podcast handy. Put on your headphones for Podcast 583-Summer Storm and prepare to be transported to my porch during an awesome summer storm. Of course, you’ll have to put up with me talking in your ear about places I’ve been and places to go, but it’s better than looking out the window wishing it wasn’t twenty five below.

It is true we welcome the cold weather, at least the first blush and especially at Christmas Time. Trust me, though. You’re going to want to escape. If you can’t get away as soon as you’d like to or at all this year, Podcast 583-Summer Storm is your ticket to paradise. Summer in the Midwest. Storms. Thunder. Steady Rain. The hum of summer insects. Thoughts of rolling down two lane roads cutting through green fields. Freedom is a clean windshield and a full tank of gas.

Sponsored By Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Hydrus Performance.

Podcast 570-Election 2016 Results

Podcast 570-Election 2016 Results. Comprehensive analysis and minute by minute vote totals for Election 2016. How do podcasters cover presidential elections in real time without being live on the air, and without streaming? Podcast 570-Election 2016 Results shows you how. Follow along as I experience the election in real time on November 8th, 2016. The world seems surprised at news that Donald J. Trump has won the presidential election in The United States. Podcast 570 and Podcast 569 are meant to be listened to as companion podcasts. Since I did not endorse either candidate, I was able to provide objective analysis and experience the race objectively. Podcast 569 broke down the final poll data for the state by state races, avoiding any analysis of the national presidential preference polls. This minimized the surprise for anyone subscribing to the Bob Davis Podcasts, because you already knew no one could comfortably call this race. That did not stop the charlatans in talk radio, cable news and on line from attaching probabilities, or calling the race for one or the other. Not only was this race surprising overall, it was surprising on the state by state level. For the most part though, the state by state polls were either close to the totals in some cases, or within the margin of error. The US election is a state by state election, with the electoral college actually choosing the president on or about the 15th of December. In this hour plus long podcast I’m joined by friends, and family on the phone as well as a late night visit from local Minnesota Politico and web developer Mitch Rossow. At the close of this podcast we’re still waiting for Michigan and Minnesota returns to come in. I’ll have to update those on the next podcast. With Republicans retaining the Senate and the House majorities, and now winning the Presidency, now it is a question of the way forward. We’ll be talking about these issues and more on future podcasts. Pundits like to say the country is divided. What they might say is we can now agree on one thing. The worst election in recent memory is now, mercifully, over. And, tomorrow is another day, after all. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating and X Government Cars.