{"id":2494,"date":"2020-05-26T07:17:26","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T14:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/?p=2494"},"modified":"2020-05-26T07:17:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-26T14:17:26","slug":"michigan-men-touch-history-in-high-profile-travel-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/travel\/2494\/michigan-men-touch-history-in-high-profile-travel-experiences","title":{"rendered":"Michigan Men Touch History in High-Profile Travel Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"President<\/a>

Farm Bureau President Carl Bednarski greets U.S. President Trump (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)<\/p><\/div>\n

Before Covid 19 shut down non-essential travel for most of us, two Michigan men got to experience the most exclusive airplane in America\u2019s friendly skies: Air Force One \u2013 the Presidential jumbo jet.<\/p>\n

Michigan Farm Bureau\u2019s president Carl Bednarski greeted the U.S. President upon his arrival in Warren.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat big jet rolls right up. Believe me there are a lot of steps between the door and the ground when he\u2019s getting off that plane. Suddenly you have the President of the United States, who you\u2019ve seen so many times on TV, coming down those steps,\u201d Bednarski said.<\/p>\n

The handshake Bednarski enjoyed with the leader of the free world is likely now a gesture of the days gone by.<\/p>\n

U.S. Congressman Jack Bergman, from Northern Michigan, climbed aboard Air Force One and flew with the President in January. Bergman, who rose to the rank of Marine lieutenant general, was also a naval aviator and commercial pilot. Did he dream of taking the wheel during the flight?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two \u2018Air Force Ones,\u2019\u201d Bergman explained. \u201cThe big 747 version I am not qualified to fly. However, the smaller one is a 757 and I am qualified on that one because I used to fly it for Northwest Airlines. But only in an extreme emergency would I ever be asked to take the controls\u2026but I could.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few weeks after greeting the President in Michigan, Bednarski got invited to the White House to attend a bill signing (he flew commercial to Washington).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite a process to just get into the White House. There are a number of security checks along the way to make sure you\u2019re not carrying anything that would be inappropriate,\u201d Bednarski recalled. \u201cBut once you get in the White House, you\u2019re on your own and you pretty much just walk to where you need to go. There is not a lot of guidance there. Once you\u2019ve cleared security you can make a wrong turn very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking of quickly, given Bergman\u2019s experience as a commercial pilot, I asked him how a British Airways flight was able to set a trans-Atlantic speed record this winter. The airliner flew faster than 800 mph to make it from New York to London in less than five hours\u2026touching down at Heathrow Airport two hours early.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all tail wind. Sometimes in the winter when you\u2019re flying up the polar route to London and other European cities, as I did for a number of years, you get that right jet stream going that way and it\u2019s just incredible how fast you go,\u201d Bergman explained. \u201cYou can\u2019t really feel the speed onboard because when you\u2019re up at 35,000 feet and you\u2019re looking down Greenland looks small and it looks slow no matter how fast you\u2019re going. And when you\u2019re flying east to Europe it\u2019s usually at night, so it\u2019s dark and there\u2019s not much to look at other than the beautiful stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the time Bergman had planned include a trip to Iwo Jima to commemorate the 75th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary of the famous Marine landing, battle, and flag-raising.<\/p>\n

Bednarski commemorated history earlier this year by visiting Havana, Cuba on a trade mission with some Michigan legislators. \u201cIt\u2019s quite an experience to step off a plane and basically go back in time 50 or 60 years. It\u2019s hard to explain but what you see on TV in Cuba in terms of the conditions is exactly what you see on the ground,\u201d he said, referring to the communist country\u2019s antique classic cars, Havana\u2019s crumbling ornate buildings, and political culture.<\/p>\n

What crop could Michigan sell to Cubans?<\/p>\n

\u201cDrinking mojitos, with muddled mint leaves in them, there is quite popular there. We grow quite a bit if mint in the St. John\u2019s area of Michigan, so\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact<\/em>\u00a0Travel Writer Michael Patrick Shiels at\u00a0MShiels@aol.com<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0His radio program may be heard weekdays at MiBigShow.com or in Lansing on WJIM am 1240 from 9-noon. His newest book \u201cI Call Him Mr. President\u201d with George HW Bush is at Amazon.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michigan Farm Bureau\u2019s president Carl Bednarski and U.S. Congressman Jack Bergman commemorate military history in a high travel fashion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":2495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1005361,1023706,1023707,1023708,2834,575],"class_list":["post-2494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel","tag-air-force-one","tag-carl-bednarski","tag-the-white-house","tag-air-travel","tag-michigan","tag-donald-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2020\/05\/President-Bednarski-at-airport-WH-photo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2496,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions\/2496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}