High Tech in the U.P.

I was reading the Sunday Detroit Free Press this morning. We do get the Free Press the same day here in the far reaches of Michigan, but that was not always the case. There was a time when Michigan’s largest morning daily arrived here the next day, apparently being transferred from one vehicle to anther along the way.

I’ve always pictured a scenario akin to Faberge eggs, where you open the egg and some smaller item is nested inside, with something small nested inside of that, and so on.

In my mind, the UP-bound stacks of newspapers start out at the printing plant, loaded into an 18-wheeler that says “U.P. or Bust” on the side. Stacks of papers are dropped off at locations all along I-75, until the remainder is transferred to a cargo van in Grayling, then to a mini-van in Escanaba. By the time the Free Press is distributed in Marquette, there’s a guy in a rusty 1985 Crown Vic with stacks of newspapers in the back seat on his way to the Copper Country.

This Sunday’s issue had an article about the increasingly sophisticated electronics available in cars. Going beyond the basic GPS direction-finding function, systems now will pinpoint the location of various types of establishments on the maps, such as restaurants, fast food, malls and WalMarts.

A friend of mine in Baltimore has one of these on his gigantor SUV and it is entrancing. In fact, I got to push the buttons during a trip we took together to Eagle Harbor last summer. And that is just about as exciting as you might imagine. Short of the map there was not much to see on the GPS screen. And, really, can you make a wrong turn when you are going to Eagle Harbor? “If you’re in Lake Superior, you’ve gone too far.”

Some advocates say this technology will disperse much faster if it is advertiser driven. Sponsorships may include some sort of preferred treatment when a driver (or, hopefully, not a driver but a passenger) requests information on, say, the nearest home improvement store.

So how, exactly, would such a navigation system work in the U.P.? I’m driving down Montezuma Avenue in Houghton and decide I need to pick up some parts for the gutter system on my house. My GPS search, sponsored by Home Depot, directs me to drive 45 miles south to the US-41-141 junction, drive 45 miles south to the junction with US-2, then drive 20 miles east to the Home Depot – in Iron Mountain. Might it not be easier just to stop at McGann’s on the way home?

I also wonder what will happen when we have all these techno-enabled vehicles driving around the Copper Country, being pointed to McDonald’s for breakfast and Applebees for dinner. Visitors will miss out on home-grown experiences as the Suomi bakery, Slim’s Café in Mohawk and Toni’s pasties in Laurium.

Meanwhile, spring has sprung here in the Keweenaw. The leaves have started to pop out, the grass is green (Jay even mowed the lawn already) and my new front yard has started to come in. New front yard? I guess I’ll have to tell you about that next week.