Michigan Tacomas

Be prepared to be surprised how shitty the roads (xway and city) are.

No joke. You will notice it the 1st mile into the state of Michigan.

 

Ha! Well...I guess that's a good reason to not drive a passenger car!

 

Yeah, I'm an R&D nerd now, but still Aviation related. I get to break stuff on purpose and they still pay me! What did you work on?

No worries, we didn't have as much extra time as we thought we would so we only spent about 2 hrs checking out a couple potential camping spots for when it warms up. We will be back in early Feb, might have some time to play with the truck then, we'll see.

 

Let's see...C-141, C-5, C-130, C-9, A-10, F-16, F-15, C-17 were my primary aircraft throughout my career. In Europe, I worked Transient Aircraft, so all kinds of stuff, basically fuel and go though, no real fixing required. I had a good long career, and am quite happy with what I did. When I retired, I wanted OUT of aircraft mx, as it is ALWAYS outside work...and Im too old and too broken now to keep doing that...

and for any of you, if you come north, hit me up and we can plan some trails if you want.

 

Yeah, I hear you on working outside. I worked in central Florida for 15 years. There hangar feels like a toaster from March until November! Now I'm in a lab environment for the most part, with test cell stuff that is usually indoors. It's a pretty cushy gig, I love it.

 

Moved here in August and I can confirm this, however, the roads are pretty nice where the rich people live.

 

Funny how that works....

 

Plowed too..

 

hmmm...guess we have no rich people up north...oh wait! Harbor Springs has nice roads...all 6 miles of them collectively

Yep, I work indoors now too..flying a desk..but Im happy as I can be!

 

To be fair, most of Michigan's shitty roads aren't state roads. The funding is managed by someone else; usually the county, city, or township.

 

Have you ever been on I-94 in southwest Michigan by me? Most of the roads are pretty crappy over here.

 

I-94 and the entire Detroit area is a special kind of... we'll just say "mismanaged." Lots of traffic but, given that it is an "I" route, I'm not sure if that is MDOT's management or if they just maintain it. GR area and 131 north are pretty nice as is US-2, M41, M28, and M94.

 

All I and state routes (MI 28 ext) are maintained by MDot.

"Maintained" is a very strong word for what they actually do lol

 

I think a huge part of it comes down to the volume of traffic. Although the GR area is pretty good as far as MDOT maintained roads. The city on the other hand...

 

I have a buddy who works for MDOT over here so its kinda a joke with us. There is a M road that stopped his plow truck dead in its tracks from a bad road.

 

Can't say I'm surprised. The other issue is: what do you do with the traffic in order to redo those roads considering how much traffic they currently run?

 

Don't leave out I69 south of I96. Every time I've been down that way I've been glad for off-road suspension. LOL.

 

One lane at a time, use super pave, do it at night.

 

Running I-69 south it's rougher than hell until the Indiana line. They're doing work on I69 Down there and they reroute traffic to the opposite side. Seems to work pretty well.