Marilyn and I drove north last week to meet Carol for our sisters weekend on Beaver Island. En route to Charlevoix, I saw two things I’d never seen before.
One was car-carrier trucks with just a few cars on the trailer. We did see one fully-loaded car carrier, but another ahd only two cars. My family and I live an hour or so from Detroit, the Motor City. We see fully loaded car carriers heading off into the world all the time. They come in various sizes, big, bigger, bigger still, and so on. Apparently they don’t come in small. When, despite the microchip shortage, automakers manage to complete new vehicles, they hustle them off for delivery. On full-size car carriers. This, to Michiganders, is a disturbing sight.
Marilyn lives in hailing distance of the Kenworth truck manufacturer in Ross County, Ohio. Kenworth, too, has been affected by the microchip shortage. So the plant builds trucks as far as it can, then parks them anywhere they can around town, including at the fairgrounds, while it waits for parts. The Ross County Fair starts in early August and will need the parking spaces currently occupied by incomplete trucks. What will happen is not yet clear.
The other thing I hadn’t seen before was a place advertising used billboard vinyls for sale. The store looked pretty basic, and the sign did, too, but Marilyn assured me that there exists a legitimate trade in used billboard vinyls. She learned about the vinyls in a disaster preparedness class. People use them as large, inexpensive tarps on their roofs after damage from catastrophic weather events. There are lots of other uses for them as well, such as as pond liners. Whether you deploy them ad-side-out or plain-side-out must depend on how you feel about the product being touted.
The high points of our drive were the usual ah moments. One such moment is when you realize that you can no longer see the southbound side of the expressway from the northbound side. The median has given way to land, forested land. Another ah comes when you realize that the trees to either side are all birches and pines. Another when the hills, which have been getting higher, open out onto vistas of distant hills and woods and farmland. These are the moments when you know you’re on the way to Up North, if not already there. For Michiganders, Up North is as much a feeling as a location. The best ah of all was seeing our sister Carol waving to us as arrived in Charlevoix.
The next day, we presented ourselves at the local airport for our flight to Beaver Island, which lies thirty-some miles from the northwestern coast of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, in Lake Michigan. Two airlines fly out of the airport. Both go to Beaver Island. Arriving early for your flight is a fine idea. If all passengers and luggage arrive before the scheduled departure, Island Airways is perfectly happy to take off early. The staff take flying and safety very seriously. Everything else is pretty informal.
All luggage, including computers, goes on a cart to be weighed. And loaded. As staff load all luggage by hand, this isn’t a problem. When it’s time to board the plane, your name is called. Your first name. Staff direct seating—and, for that matter, who goes on what plane—with an eye toward balancing the aircraft and loads for the short hop to Beaver Island.
The air of the island is rich with butterflies. You notice them the moment you step off the plane. Carol is used to them, but they reminded Marilyn and me of how many butterflies there were when we were kids. There are so many on Beaver Island that it’s common to see them puddling—gathering to suck up moisture from sources other than flowers. We saw this around a mud puddle at the airport, and Carol was delighted to inform us that she’s also seen it around horse droppings and carrion. Thanks, Carol. Good to know. In any event, the butterflies were gorgeous ushers into the life of the island.
9 July 2021