Upper Peninsula of Michigan

I said, "I can't wait to the butcher shop," before I even got to my mother-in-law's house, you know? And he's like, "All right." You know? [laughs] Uh, a- a- and I'm sure he received it, but, um, but at the same time, it's just this sense of like, you know, I'm gonna just do my job.

"Okay, can I help the next person?" Um, so you've got your Brewers hat on, and you, like you said, it's also very interesting to me, like the Upper Peninsula, you know how there's like Lions territory and Packers territory.

Yeah.

It's almost like kind of like the border, Kansas-Missouri border war.

Even the whole idea of how Michigan and Ohio have bad blood, and that's how, uh, Toledo ended up in Ohio and how Michigan got the Upper Peninsula.

Like it's all, all intertwined, and football kinda creates that tribalism.

Um, and baseball does, too, of course, with the Brewers and the Cubs.

... that she says she's honeymooning in, in her home state.

You think she's running for a town council in the Upper Peninsula? [laughs]

I don't know.

She, she almost, uh, won the primary.

I have to say, I love the different areas of our state.

Like if Michigan gets a lot of crap, and, you know, I, I say a lot of, uh, negative things about the weather, but in terms of the West Coast beach towns and the East Coast beach towns and Northern Michigan, where you're from, and the beauty of the Upper Peninsula and, and the great things that are happening in the city of Detroit, and obviously the mecca of the state in Mount Pleasant, there's so much to enjoy [laughs] in the beautiful state of Michigan.

And it was a, a, a tremendous weekend with the family and, um, you know, you just relish in these times.

So yeah, I'm, I'm flying high right now.

And

then eventually how I ended up in Michigan was because the Lord called me to do my internship here for ministry.

And my first exposure, I got thrown in the deep end in Michigan because I landed in the UP January 8, 2015.

So there's a theme.

Yeah.

In fact,

to be honest, I actually crash-landed in the UP because that night that I arrived, I actually crashed my car over into a ditch because it was so icy and snow.

That year, the temperature was minus 40 degrees.

Make it easier.

And while I was up in Rhinelander, home of the hoedag, made the two and a half hour trek up to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I got some really good content and I spoke to a very fascinating guest with an interesting story that we will get to more toward the end of the month.

But today...

I'm joined by my friend, Ariel Zadok, who together we've worked on something called the Distinguished Gentleman's Drive for a number of years, which through Movember raises money for men's mental health, men's prostate health, all things men.

I mean, I think that people are frustrated with the increased cost and what's happening.

I mean, obviously, the Upper Peninsula has been affected disproportionately by...

Some of the cuts in health care.

So that probably rings a little bit different there.

For someone like myself, I was born and raised in the copper country of Michigan.

I'm from Chassel, Michigan, outside of Houghton in the Keweenaw Peninsula in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

We knew a lot there growing up about the 1913 copper strike and all of that.

Today, this is tied into something that recognizes a particular person in it, Frida, and you've had a chance to kind of look into this a little bit.

They are going to secure the Great Lakes by building the Great Lakes Tunnel at a cost of over $500 million.

It'll connect the Upper Peninsula with the Lower Peninsula.

And the Line 5 pipelines, which have been operating just as long as the Mackinac Bridge, built by the same company that built the bridge, will be encased in these tunnels.

It'll be one tunnel 200 feet below in the bedrock and other service elements, and the two pipelines will go through there.