Tech Tour: Notes From The Michigan Road

Observations, obfuscations and utterances from a week on Michigan's highways:

* Boy, that's sure a huge casino going up on I-94 between Battle Creek and Marshall. Smart of them to put up the big impressive sign up first.

* During my Day One little jaunt from Kalamazoo to South Haven, to Day Two's longer jaunt from South Haven up to Traverse City, and Day Three's REALLY long jaunt from Traverse City to Marquette, I'm seeing plenty of evidence of Michigan's economic struggles. Namely: STUFF SHUT DOWN. Empty businesses everywhere. Gas stations. Fast food joints! And about half of that outlet mall in Holland. Empty.

* A couple of years ago on the Tech Tour I noticed lots of boats and campers for sale by the roadside. Everybody was selling their toys as times in Michigan were starting to get tough. Less of that now. Toys have been sold, I guess.

* I'd sure like to be in the steel roof business in the UP. Every new building or house I see has one. Of course, when you get 200 inches of snow a year...

* The beaches along the north end of Lake Michigan along US-2 remain some of the prettiest I've ever seen anywhere. Amazed, and grateful, that they never developed into cheek-by-jowl tourist resorts. Just remote enough to stay pristine, I guess, and some of it's federal land, which helps, too.

* The winner as of Sunday in the GLITR Tech Tour Hotel WiFi Speed Sweepstakes? You won't believe it -- the Holiday Inn MARQUETTE at 4.27 megabytes per second download as measured at speedtest.net. Good job, especially since we're practically at the end of the Internet up here. The slowpoke award goes to the Holiday Inn West in Kalamazoo at a measly 500 kb download speed. Beautiful rooms in which to wait forever for that download, though. 

* I know I make my living off terrestrial radio. But when you get up in the UP you're thanking the Lord for satellite radio. The radio station menu through much of the UP is five flavors of country on the FM and an AM band consisting solely of hellfire-and-damnation preachers and Rush Limbaugh. Not much choice. (Of course what I really want is WiMax Internet radio everywhere, so I can stream any radio station I want in my car, including WWJ Newsradio 950, of course. Soon, I hope.)  And here's something I've always wondered -- country music is firmly fixated on the South. Why is that music so popular when I'm about as far north as you can go in America? And why aren't there songs about the country Up North? We've got pines (though not Georgian) and hound dogs and trains and mamas and pickup trucks and faithless spouses up here, too.

*You may be wondering where all the pictures are from this year's Tech Tour. Well, trust me, I have a ton -- I just can't send them to you. I didn't bring a camera with me this time, relying instead on the just-fine-for-the-Web 2-megapixel camera in my BlackBerry. Trouble is, in areas without a 3G cell network, I can't send pictures to WWJ or myself. So far, I've only been able to send out photos while in Traverse City. South Haven, Marquette and Mt. Pleasant, nuh-uh.