Bill's Blog

It is always sad when we need to leave family members behind. Yesterday, my son Oliver and brother Jim drove us to the KI Sawyer International Airport in Marquette, Michigan, to start our journey home. Oliver will be staying in our home in Caspian until his classes start in August at St. Norbert College. I was a bit teary-eyed saying goodbye to him. It is so nice to have all of the family together. We are now down to three, with only our youngest daughter returning to Tashkent with us. She will be graduating in June 2026. The drive from Caspian to the airport took a bit longer than usual because we were stuck behind a combination of drivers going under the speed limit. With such a low population density, roads in the Upper Peninsula are usually only 2 lanes.

The international terminal (#5) at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport is distant from the other terminals. We always need to go either to or from Terminal 5. There are two ways of doing this: take the train from any of the domestic terminals or seek out a bus that leaves every 20 minutes from a gate in Terminal 3. We made it to our departure gate in plenty of time, and I think I may have slept or kind of slept for most of the 13-hour flight from Chicago to Doha. The Hamad International Airport is one of the best airports in the world. It is an architectural marvel, completed in 2014 from reclaimed land. The airport has a good number of shops, restaurants, and plenty of seating areas. We met my uncle Jack at the airport who is staying with us for a couple of weeks as we set up our new house. He got me access to the Qatar Airways Privilege Club lounge. I am only a QA Burgundy, but hopefully will move to a Gold or Platinum Status.

The flight from Doha was only 3 hours, and we touched down between 1:30 AM and 2:00 AM. We arrived at our new house around 3:00 AM. It is now a battle of jet lag this week as I start work for the 2025-2026 academic year. We joke that everytime we visit the Tashkent International Airport that there is a new major construction project. This time didn’t disappoint with a brand new arrivals greeting hall. Officials extended the arrivals hall leading from the baggage claim area. We can now wait for people arriving inside the hall instead of outside. Uncle Jack and Nadia will be setting up the house, and I will be welcoming the incoming staff.

It was a busy final full day in Caspian. I had two interviews in the morning with potential schools for the 2026-2027 school year. Nadia and I also had a bunch of errands and tasks to complete before leaving our home. Nadia and I took two days to tidy the garage. It’s been many years since it was cleaned. In the afternoon, Oliver and I took a 200-lb load from the garage to Waste Management‘s Iron River Station. We also put on the finishing touches on the bathroom, fixed the weed trimmer, paid the water bill, etc.

We had such a good time at Sunset Lake Park on Monday that we went back on Tuesday. It was our final night in Iron County, and we wanted to make it special. Oliver, Ocean, Nadia, and my brother Jimmer accompanied me for a sunset swim to cool off after a day of projects. I love summer and it was such an enjoyable afternoon/evening with my family. We had a BBQ of Wisconsin bratwurst and hamburgers while listening to the Detroit Tigers defeat the Arizona Diamondbacks. Detroit Tiger baseball on the internet radio, BBQ, hot weather, green grass, blue skies, a bit of humidity, and cool drinks made for a delightful evening. I was savoring the atmosphere. We pretty much had the beach to ourselves, and we swam out to the dock. It really cooled me and I slept well last night.

I value the simple pleasures in life more as I get older. It was a hot and humid day yesterday, and we cooled off with a swim at Sunset Lake Park. Sunset Lake is one of 314 lakes in Iron County, and if you include the 900 miles of rivers, that is a lot of water! The lakes were formed between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago during the last Ice Age (Wisconsin Glaciation) period. As the glaciers retreated, they carved depressions that eventually formed lakes. Iron County has a “knob and kettle” topography, which means lots of small hills and depressions. This is the characteristic impact of glaciers.

It is awesome to think that all this time later, residents of Iron County can cool off on a rare hot and humid day in the Upper Peninsula, thanks to geological processes that took place so long ago. The lake is located in Bates Township, and officials have maintained a nice public beach area, campgrounds, and a boat landing. There were only a few people there. Oliver, Ocean, and I swam to the dock and had fun pushing each other off and diving off the dock. I noticed a lot of freshwater clams embedded in the bottom of the lake. This is a sign of a healthy lake where filter feeders can thrive.

The forecast is for heat and humidity today, our last full day of summer holiday before heading back to Tashkent. We might have to visit another of the 314 Iron County lakes.

I said goodbye to my brother Andy, who left yesterday morning to return to his home in Chicago. He was instrumental in our home renovation projects. He takes after my father, and he is quite handy with plumbing, electricity, flooring, etc. I learned a lot from him this summer. We spent our last day together flooring the front porch to convert it into my yoga room. He reminds me so much of my father with his mannerisms, voice, etc. He was not adopted like me and my other brother Jimmer, coming as quite a surprise to my parents after they tried to have children for 8 years. They adopted me in 1967 and my brother Jimmer in 1969. My adopted mother gave birth to Andy in 1972.

We installed laminate flooring in the porch. I cut plywood sheets, and our neighbor, Rocko, drilled them to the asbestos siding that was on the left side of the photo above. We are putting in new windows this fall to give it more light and air. The room is not heated, so we probably wouldn’t use it in the winter if we were here, but during the late spring, summer, and early fall, it will be a nice room to do yoga in. I used to sleep in the room as a kid during the summers because our second floor was too hot. We don’t really get hot weather so often, and many of the homes in the Upper Peninsula, especially the older ones, don’t have central air conditioning.

I took the first shower in our new bathroom yesterday. The water pressure was a bit low. Rocko discovered that the occlusion was behind the faucet, and now it works great. I have never been so enthused to take a shower before, but with all the work we put in, it is satisfying to have it done. I am taking a growth mindset to home renovation, and it is fun to learn how things work in a home, and more importantly, how to repair or improve them.

This morning Nadia and I went for a walk on the Apple Blossom Trail in my hometown of Caspian, Michigan. It follows the Iron River, which flows 30 miles through Iron County. The headwaters are southwest of the town of Iron River and flow through Caspian and Gaastra before connecting with the Paint River. The Paint River connects to the Menominee River, which eventually reaches Lake Michigan’s Green Bay. It was such a gorgeous mid-summer morning in the Upper Peninsula.

I am getting back in touch with the lost art of reading during the summer holidays. I am making a conscious effort to calm and focus my mind to think more deeply about subjects. It is getting increasingly harder to do in this manic-information world of scrolling social media, listening to podcasts, bingewatching television shows, etc. It is so soothing to sink into a good book. Young people, especially young men, should be reading novels and longer works of non-fiction more. I am always surprised when I sit down with my morning coffee and reflect on what I took away from a book. I try to incorporate the ideas into my life while also being entertained. I find reading makes my life richer. That is a message schools should be passing to students. I read two more books and as always, I blog on what I learned.

Callan Wink’s “Beartooth” resonated with me because it is a story of blue-collar guys in a small town barely making ends meet. Lots of guys in the Upper Peninsula are in a similar situation to the brothers Thad and Hazen, who are the main characters in the book. Thad and Hazen are freelance lumberjacks who sell firewood to people who live near Yellowstone National Park in Montana. Thad is the older brother and takes care of his younger brother Hazen, who is a bit of a special needs person. They get mixed up with “The Scot”, a shady character who asks them to poach wildlife in the park to sell bear gall bladders and elk antlers on the black market to East Asian customers who believe in their medicinal value. The story details their misadventures doing illegal poaching in the park, which eventually leads to trouble for Hazen.

The story also struck a chord with me because when I am home in Caspian, the memory of my father is ever present. I miss him. I am beginning to play the role he did with me as an adult. I will probably have a longer time with my children as adults than the 18 or so years you get with them as they grow up. I didn’t appreciate enough the calm, wise approach he took to life as a younger man. In Beartooth, the memory of their father drives the boys to do what is right. I hope I have the same effect on Owen and Oliver.

“He said that no matter what happens between and man and a woman, it’s impossible to regret having children. He said that life can pass you by but having a family is how you make positive the passage of time, how you add resonance to your years.” Thad’s father giving him advice on finding a spouse – “Bear-Tooth” by Callan Wink

• Chinook Winds – These are warm, dry winds that hit the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado. The general wind patterns come from the west and pick up moisture over the Pacific Ocean and drop precipitation on the western slopes. On the way down the eastern slopes, they are dry and pick up heat as they descend. A good Chinook Wind can raise temperatures 10-20C in just a few hours. They are named after the Chinook indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest and mostly occur in winter and early spring.
• Absarokas and Beartooth mountain ranges are found in Yellowstone National Park in Montana and Wyoming.

The home renovations continue and I wanted to post an update on the second floor bathroom. Because we couldn’t find a plumber to do it, we did it ourselves. My brother can do basic plumbing and carpentry so it directed the project and did the more complicated parts. We put in new flooring, patched and painted the walls, added floor trim, a new sink, vanity, mirror, and toilet. All we have left is the shower.

I’ve learned a lot this summer on the building trades. A challenge in the Upper Peninsula is a lack of young people here and going into the these types of jobs. The other obstacle is a lack of homeowners requiring work, especially in the winter and late spring months. It limits the number of contractors and tradesmen that can make a living. Almost all of the people I contacted had full schedules, up to a year in advance full. It will take time for me to become good enough to projects on my own. I struggle with loosing a tight connection on a pipe or what tool to use for a particular task. I now understand basic plumbing however, and it is amazing that in 2025, everyone can get hot showers at anytime in their homes. 200 years ago that was a luxury.

We are staying in my childhood home this summer. I have so many fond memories of growing up here, but the house needs some TLC. We are starting to renovate the house to make it more comfortable and modern. It is a bit of a hall of fame/shrine to the 1980s right now. We did a couple of projects this summer.

Basketball Court Removal: We removed the concrete slab that was once a basketball court between the house and the garage. We played for countless happy hours there, both basketball and wiffle ball. At one time, we had three baskets and lights, including an 8-foot high rim. The basketball rims and lights were taken down years ago, and all that remained was the concrete slab. The slab was in two sections, the first put in by my grandfather, Art Heikkala, and the other section by my dad and his teacher friends. An excavating company quoted us $6,000 to remove the concrete, add topsoil, and seed the grass. We saved money by having my cousin’s husband, Tom, come with his skid steer for the day. He is an experienced skid steer driver and we were able to remove all of the concrete. It was a long day, and I want to thank him for helping us. We then contracted the excavating company to dump and spread topsoil and sow seed with straw. Hopefully, the grass will be in by next summer, and we plan to put a fire pit and portable seating area to enjoy the cool Upper Peninsula evenings. I might even plant another tree.

Bathroom Renovation: The second-floor bathroom was dated and frankly, a bit disgusting. We couldn’t find a plumber or a carpenter to renovate it, so we did it ourselves. My brother Andy takes after my dad and is good at carpentry, electricity, plumbing, etc. I was skeptical that we could do it, but once we got going, it was not as bad as I thought. In May, we removed the plastic tiling and cabinets to start. We next removed the carpeting and the cast-iron tub. A search on YouTube showed the best removal method was to sledgehammer it into pieces and take it out. My brother and I then laid new flooring, took out the vanity and toilet, and replaced them with new models. I learned a lot from him, and thanks, Andy, for your patience and effort in getting the job done. I think I made about 10 trips to the local Ace Hardware store to buy parts and tools. We finished installing the sink and toilet and started using it with the ceremonial “first flush” yesterday. Next week we will install the shower. Doing the labor ourselves saved a lot of money.

There is still a lot to do! The next phases will be to replace the old asbestos siding and install new windows. The four trees I planted last summer (white pine, 2 oaks, sugar maple) survived the first year. Our biggest challenge are the numerous white-tailed deer that roam our neighborhood. The other day I saw 9 of them just a few houses down the street. Especially during the late winter and fall, they forage for all they can. I didn’t think they would eat pine trees, but they do! Oliver, Andy, and I added fencing around the pine tree behind the garage. It is growing back so we think it will survive.

(SPOILER ALERTS in this post – do not read if you want to read this novel!)

Summer holidays mean more reading time for me, and yesterday, I couldn’t put down Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter (2016). It combines thriller and science fiction story, similar to Michael Crichton’s books. The main character is an award-winning physicist named Dr. Jason Desson who has created a technology that allows a person to enter any personal alternative universe. The idea is that we make hundreds of decisions every day, some very consequential, that define the outcome of our lives. Desson’s machine gives access to the alternate outcomes. The big decision in this story is his choice not to marry his pregnant girlfriend and instead pursue his career in science. The result is that the career-focused Jason (Jason2) violently switches places with family-focused Jason (Jason1), and the action begins there. Eventually, dozens of Jasons converge on Jason1’s universe in a battle to become the husband of his beautiful wife and father to their son.

On a broad, simple level, the story is about the choice between career and family. Dr. Desson in one universe gets married and becomes a professor at a small college. In another universe, he wins the “Pavia” prize for his quantum physics discoveries and becomes a giant in the field of physics. Most of the time, life is not that simple and more nuanced. Crouch touches on this as there are an infinite number of universes because we make so many choices in a typical day, month, year, and life. It made me think about the decisions I made an overall I am quite happy that I was able to balance an engaging career (international education) and marriage and fatherhood.

The book is set in Chicago and near the end of the book, Jason1 escapes with his wife and son to northern Wisconsin. They take refuge from the multiple Jasons chasing him in a seasonal cabin by a lake. It is probably pretty close to my house as he drove around 6-7 hours north from Chicago.

In doing a bit of research of Crouch, he is most famous for his Wayward Pines trilogy that was made into a Netflix television series. I may want to watch it as well as this book, that was developed as a television series on Apple TV. He is a prolific author and if his other books are like this one, they make for a thrilling read.

We spent a delightful Sunday exploring the shore of Lake Superior just north of Marquette, Michigan. Owen showed us a nice spot where he watched the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) when he was at Northern Michigan University. Little Presque Isle is a stretch of the Lake Superior shoreline that has a combination of sandy beaches, old-growth trees, and 2.3 billion-year-old granite outcrops/ledges/cliffs. There is a nice trail that runs along the shore and many trailheads in the area.

The term “Presque” comes from the French, meaning “almost,” which refers to a peninsula that is connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of land. Early explorers and the Ojibwe tribe members used this location as a landing area to access the mainland. It was also an area where lumberjacks could bring logs to float down to Marquette. William Wetmore was a 19th-century businessman who owned slate and iron mining companies and other business interests, including logging. He founded the company town of Arvon, which we visited earlier in our holidays.

Our son noticed that the KP Index which measures geomagnetic activity on a scale from 0-9 was measuring a 5 for that particular Sunday evening. A “5” indicates a moderate level of geomagnetic storms and the Aurora Borealis might be visible in northern US states like Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maine. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center has an informative visual map that I didn’t learn about until after we spent a couple of hours on the beach that evening. It didn’t matter because

I write this post with a heavy heart as Nadia and I drove our son Owen to the Rhinelander-Oneida County Airport. He departed for a two-year mission with the United States Peace Corps in Costa Rica. It is a bittersweet morning for us as we are so proud of the young man Owen has become and heartbroken that we will not be seeing him in person for quite a while. He brings joy and positive energy to our family when he is with us.

The flight left at 6:30 AM to Minneapolis, where he will connect to Miami for two days of orientation and training. My village of Caspian is a 1-hour and 20-minute drive from Rhinelander, so we left early this morning at 4:05 AM. It is a standard small-town regional airport. It was raining this morning, but it cleared up on our way back to Caspian.

We celebrated our final day with Owen by playing tennis, helping him pack, and then we all went to see the new Superman movie in Quinnesec. It was an OK movie, giving us the typical DC movie experience.

I wish the best of luck to Owen and hope you have a formative life experience and do some good in the world! It is funny that both Nadia and I shared a Costa Rican experience and now our son will be having his time in the land of “Pura Vida”. Our family believes in service to others, and we are so proud that Owen will be representing the USA and making a difference in the lives of “Ticos”.