The Pursuit Of… Norte

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Mark

The Pursuit podcast appeared on the guest centric show focusing on people and organizations that advance positive change. Positivity can be anywhere and in a time of vast discord. The pursuit of is finding those who championed its causes loudest. Join us as we sit and learn about the pursuits of local leaders in their communities. Let’s go.

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Ryan

Hello good people and welcome to the pursuit of podcast where it’s truly not us. It’s you. I’m Ryan Buck, Artist Developments Newsletter and Media. With me is The Boss, Mark Wilson, President, New Leonard Media. How’s it going.

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Mark

Today? It’s going great. Ryan, I like your shirt. I heard you got a new gig.

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Ryan

I did get a new get. That’s enough talking about us today. Our guest is Gary Howe, advocacy and communications director with Nortel. How are.

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Gary Howe

You? I’m fine. What’s with the shirt, though? Don’t go that fast.

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Ryan

We talked about ourselves enough about our IT. That was more than enough answer, right? Would you.

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Gary Howe

Agree? Well, it is a very fine shirt and congratulations.

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Mark

You know what? You know, it’s hilarious. I might not edit that out and I might just mention that Ryan explains the bit to every guest before. And this one time we didn’t. Yeah. So just when it comes to the look on Gary’s face was priceless.

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Ryan

Like, Oh, it’s a business.

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Mark

Are you going to do that to me?

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Gary Howe

I understood. I was just bringing it back.

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Ryan

All right. So I’ll start over here. Our guest today is Gary Howe, advocacy and communications director with Norton. Hey, how are you, Sarah? Thank you for being here.

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Gary Howe

Thank you for having me. It’s happy to be here. This is a great little setup you have.

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Ryan

Thank you. Thank you. Hopefully you’re comfortable looking at what you do so the listeners have a framework. What does your role with Norton encompass and was this position there since the beginning or did it kind of form organically?

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Gary Howe

Oh no. Norton has grown gangbusters since 2015, starting with just Ty, the co-founder, and Laura Atwell was there at the beginning as well. And then a slew of volunteers. Now we’re in the seventh year and we’re looking at, I think we have about eight of core staff and then we have literally 70 to 80 coaches, those seasonal employees.

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Gary Howe

So some who check in for a little bit. So anyway, just to emphasize the growth and my role, I was originally hired part time as advocacy director to help just kind of with those relationships with our municipal partners, our school partners, as well as the neighborhood citizens and advocates, as I call them, is to help kind of provide some direction to that, put together tools for folks to use and just to assist wherever we can.

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Gary Howe

Since then, that was in 2019 when I was hired on, I believe, first thing I was hired on to was to teach an advocacy academy, which is a six week course that had been developed prior to me coming out. I came out in the second year of that and that happens in February, and that is a direct to like six week course about, you know, what does it take to engage and represent at your local level and what are some best practices or tools you need.

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Gary Howe

So anyway, that’s what I was kind of came on to. And just last December, in December 2020 was when I came on as full time as AD in the communications role.

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Ryan

Excellent. So what drew you to North?

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Gary Howe

You know, I’ve been a walk and roll advocate for many years, So, you know, I actually, you know, 2009 is when I started to kind of speak up a little bit more and just noted like, hey, there’s investments that need to be made. And if we’re for instance, if we’re going to tear up a street and totally reconstruct it, which was happening in 2010, section of eighth Street by Family Fair was going to be ripped up, closed down for a whole summer and reconstructed.

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Gary Howe

And the original plan was to put it back in the exact way it was. So that raised, you know, my interest because I was like, Well, well, that’s a missed opportunity and that’s you’re creating a liability for the next generation, right? So if we’re going to reconstruct it, let’s redesign it and really make it more accessible for everybody and not just everybody.

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Gary Howe

For me as a resident, for my neighbors, as residents, like when we want to have choices, we want to walk, we want to bike, we want to take the bus, and we we drive. So make it for everything. Yeah. And whenever you reconstruct a road that’s a general and lasting investment. Yeah. If not two generations. Because usually that next reconstruction isn’t a full reconstruction, it’s just a fix ups.

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Ryan

It’s an interesting way of putting it. I don’t think people look at it. They just look at the immediate impact on them right now. Yeah. And the inconvenience. Yep. And don’t see the eyes on the rise for the next.

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Gary Howe

Generation and the key is it’s not about you. Yeah. And that’s really when I look at advocacy, it’s great if you have an issue that is close to you and you want something for yourself. But the public space is seldom a place where you’re going to get quick results. Mark and I have worked together on a few things now, and I get criticized a lot because people will bring me in and they’ll want like, we need to do something.

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Gary Howe

I was like, okay, yeah, it’s going to be 18 months and I’m like, making it up. That’s like, I guess animation sometimes. But in actuality.

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Ryan

Based on experience.

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Gary Howe

Based on experience, like, yeah, it’s going to be 18 months if everything goes well, right? Yeah, it usually takes a little bit longer. And if you’re lucky, it took 14 months, right? Okay, great.

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Mark

Sometimes five years and.

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Gary Howe

Sometimes five years or in case of eighth Street, that was ten years. But because there’s public space is just there’s so many interests. Right. And like a city making investments in hard infrastructure, that’s not like they just think of it next, you know Yeah, one year and the next year they’re doing it. Yeah. There’s six years, ten years out and have a really good engineering and planning department are working together.

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Gary Howe

They might be thinking 15 years out, might not be on paper yet. They might not be talking about it yet. But in the back of their mind they’re like, Oh, if we do this street, oh, then that will lead to this and that lead to that. And then you got to assume there’s going to be so you have some hiccups along the way.

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Gary Howe

And you know, so, you know, you have to take that.

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Mark

Long and you get three months each year to do it.

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Gary Howe

Yeah. And then I’m here. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, but really, it’s just about helping people understand that it’s great. We need more walk and roll folks out there who are advocating for change and recognize it’s like planting a tree. You’re doing it for the next generation and the next generation after that.

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Ryan

When you’re in, you know, polite conversation at a soiree or something and you say, I work with naughty and they don’t know what that is. What’s your elevator pitch? What’s the what do you say to them?

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Gary Howe

Well, for naught say, I mean, we’re youth focused, happy, healthy, strong communities. We want to just encourage everybody to get out there and stay active out there in the public space. And whether that’s, you know, just going for a nightly walk or maybe walking to school or walking to work in the morning, which is very accessible for people.

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Gary Howe

Yeah. Or getting out on a bike. Take that next step or getting out and, you know, putting like we have a youth mountain bike team and we get them out there and get them pushing out from the trails. And some of those develop into really hard core, you know, racer so that the racers aren’t our focus, but we’re happy to get to help them get there as well.

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Ryan

Sure from the website the mission nor to build stronger better connected and more walk bike friendly communities by empowering the young and the young at heart who’s young at heart, and that the anybody.

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Gary Howe

That could be.

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Mark

Anywhere. It’s you, Ryan.

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Gary Howe

It’s you and I. That’s Mark. It’s our grandparents. If they’re still around, it’s like, yeah, it’s you know, when you look at communities, it’s 880. Can we design a community where an eight year old, an 80 year old can feel comfortable and encouraged to get out there and be active? Right? Get out there to know their neighbors and get out there and visit the parks and stay active.

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Gary Howe

Yeah, generally.

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Ryan

And also from the website. And I really like how you spell out what you do best. So is active life for kids happy, healthy, strong community, grassroots advocacy and youth leadership. And I want to first focus on youth leadership. Can you share a little bit about the youth leadership Council?

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Gary Howe

Yeah, well, we call the leader Otto, but the Youth Leadership Council is easier for me to say leaders, right? So we’re building young leaders and that’s a, I want to say, four years in its making. And it our goal is to pull from the region five, six, seven county region and pull these older teenagers into the youth Council and help them guide north.

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Gary Howe

They help them create what they need in their community. So just give them the tools and the experience to do that as well. As, you know, some of them, they get first dibs on jobs with our day in terms of assistant coaches and they help run our bike valet. So, you know, they’re all looking for summer jobs. So that’s a nice Yes.

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Gary Howe

Side function.

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Ryan

To what age ranges do you typically see getting involved in that?

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Gary Howe

Typically it’s not mid teenager, 14, 15, 16, but any teenager up there, 13 to 18. So we actually just this past year graduated our first two from the youth council and they’re going on to college now and it’s incredible.

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Mark

Nice.

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Gary Howe

Nice to see.

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Ryan

So you went to Northern Michigan University where you earned a bachelor’s in international and global Studies. And at that time you’re at school. What was the end game? What did you want to walk out of school doing?

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Gary Howe

That’s a long story. It’s a lot about me, so I don’t know if we want to go down.

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Ryan

That’s okay. This is just as much about you. But like, you know, when you walked out, what did you want to step right into?

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Gary Howe

Yeah, I didn’t. I originally went to Northern Michigan as an English major. Ended up basically after a semester the following year, spent a year in China through Northern Michigan University. So when I came back, that English major actually probably made negative ground towards it. Um, so I worked with a key professor who was my Chinese history professor, and we basically changed my major to international studies with Native American studies minor, which I actually tied into international studies, which was cool.

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Gary Howe

Yeah. And Northern was flexible enough to let me do that. And you know, my goal to get out of Northern was to get a degree. And then I went back to China to continue studying.

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Ryan

You taught in Asia?

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Gary Howe

Zacharek Yeah, taught in Taiwan for two and a half years and incredible. Then went to grad school in China.

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Ryan

So and you are or have been a public servant having served as city commissioner for the City of Traverse City, 2013 to 17. You’re a writer? Yeah. New York Times published photographer. And as we talked about an educator. So how do all these skills kind of combine come together to help you succeed in the role that you’re in right now?

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Gary Howe

I think it’s a lot of it is like why I always thought about why am I interested in urban planning? You know, I don’t have any urban planning degrees. I have a lot of self knowledge and a lot of time spent at conferences and stuff and a lot of book reading. But I think more importantly is when I was living abroad in China, Australia and then some travels, that’s where I honed my photography skills and it’s also where I honed my cultural geography skills, if you may, which is a lot of urban planning and design.

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Gary Howe

How people interact with each other, how people interact in social spaces, and just started to realize how important design is. So I like to say locally, you know, a lot of our problems on the streets and in public spaces, you know, why are we surprised? It’s designed for people to go 50 down your neighborhood street. It’s 36 feet wide.

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Gary Howe

There’s no parking and you can take the curve going 30 miles an hour. So. Right. Yeah, of course, they’re going 55 down your neighborhood street. It’s designed that way. Right. Interesting. So, I mean, that might be a little bit of hyperbole. Yeah, there. But you get my point. But when you travel and when you’re training yourself to see the world differently, you start to notice like how different places do things uniquely to value different things.

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Gary Howe

Right? So if you’re valuing people in that public space of coming together and getting people out active and socializing, you know, we can all close our eyes and see those pictures of plazas in Italy and stuff, right? That was designed that way. And they you know, they’ve lost some of it in the introduction of cars in the 1950s, but they’ve also fought to get it back.

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Gary Howe

So, you know, we also had those types of spots and we just you know, we took them down. And that gets in the whole complication of complicated things.

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Mark

But think of our neighborhood.

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Gary Howe

Yeah.

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Mark

You know, just completed the sidewalk project.

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Gary Howe

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Traverse Heights Neighborhood is a great example. I mean, it was one of my final votes is to move forward on bonding for up to $4 million to put sidewalks in Traverse Heights, mainly for driver’s side, some other places, too, because there were just no sidewalks here. There was just an incomplete network of sidewalks. So here we actually in Traverse Heights Elementary School, there’s actually a lot of kids who do walk because that’s what they need to do to get to school.

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Gary Howe

And so it was kind of mind boggling that there wasn’t sidewalks.

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Mark

Yeah. For for an example, these sidewalks weren’t here for my kids when they were learning to ride a bike or when they were going to the elementary school that we lived to cause for them to get a bus. So they’re not they’re not riding the bus. But there wasn’t a sidewalk in wintertime. You know, this is dangerous. You know, any time that’s dangerous.

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Mark

But especially when they’re so.

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Gary Howe

Not they just in the last five years ago started working with the city of Traverse City as well as T caps 1010 schools in Traverse City for federal grant safe routes to school grant, which is another $1.2 million towards completing sidewalks around schools and trails and paths and bike lanes. And that’s happening right now. So, you know, by the end of this year, I think we’ll be up to about nine miles of new sidewalk with another three to come next year.

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Gary Howe

I believe if I have my math right. You ordinary. Yeah. Which is huge. And you know, at the pace we were going, we meaning the city. I do say we a lot as a former city commissioner because you just so used to it but we as a city and it really is proper to say that because it takes a lot of citizen support to come out and make those big investments.

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Gary Howe

However, 12 years ago we were looking at the sidewalk plan and there was a plan to fill the gaps. It was 107 year plan, like at the rate we were doing it. And it was like, that makes no and I you know, I’m going to stop there because I already just said it takes time at the city. But 107 years to complete the sidewalk.

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Gary Howe

That’s not a plan to success. That’s just you not doing it. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s how we got to let’s jump start and kick start the sidewalk gap with bonding and the save for our school grant and whatever else we can do to make sure sidewalks are going in.

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Ryan

Well, what they did to start, I think was tremendous and that they started these bike trains and they just tried to encourage neighborhood.

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Gary Howe

Kids to lead. Yeah, make it safe. Right. If you get that critical mass theory right, if you got enough kids and enough adults with them, they’re going to be safe. They’re going to feel safe. It’s going to be fun. Yeah.

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Ryan

No. And it got a groundswell. I mean, people were on board and obviously parents were supporting this. And so you’ve mentioned the sidewalk projects. You’ve done things like putting portable bike racks, said neighborhood bus stops. Are there any other small projects like that that you’re focused on, aside from the big things like the sidewalks.

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Gary Howe

All the time, we’re open to anything? Yeah, you know, I just actually we just wrote about not quite transportation related, but we wrote wrote about he’s a teacher at Elk Rapids, Lakeland Elementary. His name is Kip Knight, fifth grade teacher. And his idea was he just wanted to get kids more active and he liked what Naughty was doing.

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Gary Howe

So he reached out to us. He’s like, and this is during the pandemic. So it’s like we weren’t going into schools anymore. He’s like, Can I just borrow some bikes? So he borrowed some bikes from us, set up a motor course on this, like empty land around the track area, and the homeroom teachers will book time to go out with the kids during the day, or the kids will use it during the recess, or they’ll just swing by if they live nearby.

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Gary Howe

He also did that same theory with cross-country skiing at the school, so he, like groomed a trail for kids to go out cross-country skiing in the wintertime just to keep them active. Their brains move in that area. And he was telling stories just of like, you know, these kids that go out biking during the school day. Now they want to bike with their families.

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Gary Howe

So they’re talking to their families about it. Right. Families are starting to be like, well, how can we how can we bike more? And so they’re getting involved in programs or just, you know, going out and getting bikes and then.

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Ryan

Going back to happy, healthy, strong communities instead of before. And you have advocates now trying to get kids outside, but you’ve got competition from like every movie on the Internet, phones, video games, and you’re looking at, you know, cutting down on the aggressive car lines, eliminating pollution. When you look at what you’re doing, how do you judge your success?

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Gary Howe

Yeah, and that’s going forward, to be honest, is what we needed to get better at. Right now, we’re looking at the raw numbers because like in the.

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Ryan

Growth, Right, Right.

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Gary Howe

And we can see that there’s a definite demand and desire for families and kids to get out, stay active, but they need to be invited and they need to feel safe and feel like they can participate as well, You know? So that’s why it’s very important for us to have a community. Slow rolls every Wednesday night during the summer where we’re going slow.

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Gary Howe

You’re in a big group. It’s totally safe. There’s no race happening here. We will go as slow as the slowest denominator, very accessible to that, you know. But if you get more active and you start to be, you know, you want to go a little faster, we have some of those avenues as well. And I think that’s highly critical.

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Gary Howe

I think I lost the strain of your first give me your initial question, but.

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Ryan

Well, just measuring success. Caroline Shorter this year or.

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Gary Howe

Yeah, you know, we’re not measured. We’re not out there counting cars at this point, but we definitely do. Every year we participate in the walk to school day where we ask folks to register with us if they’re walking to school that day, do a little competition with it. But it’s like those numbers. We want to see those go up and we’re measuring that year to year.

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Gary Howe

And we also do a travel tally for kids every year in terms of how are you getting to school, How far away do you live from school? Are you walking, biking, do you park and ride? Because that’s another option to rural areas don’t have to go from 0 to 100 in terms of walking and biking to school every day.

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Gary Howe

Like do it when you can and let’s just work in some activity, physical activity to start the day and the day. You know, I used to take a kid to school and what I would do is just park three blocks away, you know, just walk them, walk them in. That’s just that extra little activity, really not that much more time on my part.

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Gary Howe

And I don’t have to wait in a car line. I can like I can just avoid the whole car line. Yeah. Deal and have an enjoyable walk instead.

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Ryan

Naughty. What I really like is you talk about biking being a sign of independence, and I certainly remember the halcyon days in the summer of I get up, I’d be on my bike and I’d be home before dark for dinner.

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Gary Howe

And is it dark.

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Ryan

Kid? Dark. But it felt like a long time. Yeah. With nobody checking up on me. Are we in a community that fosters that? Like, kids can just be on their bikes all day? Or is it more guarded than the 1980s?

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Gary Howe

I think it’s definitely more guarded, partly just because the maybe the vehicles are larger and faster. I’m not really sure. There’s probably a lot of reasons why it has changed a little bit. There’s is seem does seem to be a little bit less freedom. Some of that might be a good thing. I don’t think our generation, like, you know, the Gen-X generation, we probably.

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Ryan

Weren’t very safe.

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Gary Howe

We we weren’t really known for having what was the term latchkey. Yeah, we were responding to latchkey kids. So there’s a lot of freedom when you’re, you know, left on your own.

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Mark

There’s a lot of goofy things that we did that we’re lucky kids didn’t die.

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Gary Howe

Exactly.

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Mark

Just, you know.

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Gary Howe

You know, So I don’t want to, like, look nostalgic on my childhood or anything in terms of that, although, you know, I’ve written about it and it was it taught me independence wouldn’t have been great if I could be taught that independence, while being in a safe environment and.

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Ryan

Knowing it’s.

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Gary Howe

Safe and knowing it’s safe and knowing my parents, like, aren’t worried. Right. And knowing that they trust that there’s education that’s happening along with that independence.

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Ryan

And I’m sorry, this podcast is not trying to infer that our parents didn’t care about us. But you know.

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Mark

I’m totally saying that.

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Ryan

Looking at naughty, I know your missions. I want to.

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Gary Howe

Love to know our day program, put it that way. Yeah, yeah, that would have been awesome. Saying, Hey, we’re dropping you off at this camp. You’re not biking all day. Okay, that sounds awesome.

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Ryan

And it’s more social. I remember just being alone on my bike a lot going on the comic book store, but this is creating friendships that could last a lifetime. But naughty. I know you focus on accessibility and safety. Safety is a big thing. You’ve talked about it before and anyone biking and walking in our community has to worry about that.

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Ryan

As a continually growing tourist town with more and more people from the outside maybe not paying the best attention all the time. Are there ways you try to educate that populace as well? Because I’ve seen some fairly ignorant drivers out there with.

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Gary Howe

You know, to be honest, it’s not. I think the education for me, the best education for me happens with just modeling best behavior as well as being out there. I mean, I talk a lot about traffic calming and we talk about how we redesign a street, but really the best traffic calming is people like if you get a street that’s full of people doing things, the car is going to slow down.

00;21;37;11 – 00;21;56;05

Gary Howe

You know, when we drive, we’re going to slow down. Great example of that. I was recently in Bear Lake for the Bear Lake Festival, and I don’t know, Bear Lake. It’s basically what it M22 just runs through it, right? People were like everywhere and a part of the street where you usually just fly through. You’re going 50 miles an hour through Bear Lake.

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Gary Howe

Now they’re going 15. And that wasn’t because of any traffic calming that happened. It was because there was people every where. And, you know, my main point is if visitors are coming here and they’re seeing like, oh, this is the culture of this place, is to be out, to be active on your bike, walking, going to the parks, going downtown park, you know, and like filling the streets with love and vibrancy.

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Gary Howe

I think they will drive slower.

00;22;23;06 – 00;22;34;16

Ryan

And there are concerns about people who are on their phones looking at directions and they’re just not paying attention. And to know ahead of time that this is a very bike and walk focus community, please take some extra care.

00;22;34;27 – 00;22;56;17

Gary Howe

And I think they I mean, nobody’s looking on their phone if they’re engaged with the street, right? Well, they’re not. I mean, you just you you literally can’t. And that’s kind of what we want to create here is the expectation of, hey, you know, you might be driving through, but look how much fans going on on the sidewalks and the crosswalks on the trails and people are out here active.

00;22;56;17 – 00;23;02;22

Gary Howe

That’s what kind of town it is. And that awareness is an education. Sure. That just happens culturally and socially.

00;23;02;26 – 00;23;12;13

Ryan

You mentioned tech apps right now. Who are your most critical strategic partners? And if you had anyone to pick like a big fish to land as a strategic partner, who would it be?

00;23;12;29 – 00;23;35;22

Gary Howe

The thing about having it with school partners, I mean, some are like teacups are so big, you know, we’re always having to reengage with them right? I mean, in my time in our day, I think there’s been three superintendents. So, you know, you kind of you know, you’re kind of always having to reengage, but having them on board and having the individual principals at different schools on board is so key.

00;23;35;28 – 00;24;02;01

Gary Howe

It’s just been a blessing for today to work with. We’re starting to engage in what we have been for the last two or three years with Kalkaska, but we’re trying to, you know, deepen that relationship. And, you know, the schools are great, the village is great, but eventually we have to address the highway that runs through downtown and that you have these great parks and the library and the village center on one side of the street, you got the downtown business on the other.

00;24;02;01 – 00;24;18;03

Gary Howe

And then behind them you have the schools in the neighborhood and they don’t feel safe crossing their downtown street, their front street. And that has to be addressed. And we’d love to have Michigan Department of Transportation in a more empathetic to that need of that community. Yeah.

00;24;18;25 – 00;24;29;23

Ryan

North Hey, which is interesting. I think you also offer consulting services, correct? Yeah. And can you speak to where your strengths lie there and what kind of clients engage you for this sort of thing?

00;24;29;23 – 00;24;55;16

Gary Howe

Yeah, it’s something we started because we just kept getting asked like, Hey, can you help us? And you know, a key there is there’s other communities that look at North Time love the model, like, Wow, that’s great. What are you doing? You’re getting kids out. And now look, you can see the change in the community. So it can be as simple as just a quick one day, one hour, two hour zoom, like, hey, here’s how you set it up.

00;24;55;16 – 00;25;03;03

Gary Howe

Here’s some tools you need to get a bike camp, run in. For instance, or Oh, you want to do a slow Rod’s pretty easy. Here, let’s help you up.

00;25;03;03 – 00;25;11;01

Ryan

Can you elaborate on what a slow roll is? And a lot of people, I think because, you know, there is a big one that started in Detroit a while back. So can you kind of explain.

00;25;11;01 – 00;25;31;11

Gary Howe

And we’re all we’re all working off of that, you know, big slow roll in Detroit. So basically is to call folks together who want to ride bikes together but do so slowly, you know, three, five, six, maybe ten miles per hour and just go through town. A slow roll is basically this might be one way to put it.

00;25;31;11 – 00;25;46;29

Gary Howe

I haven’t really heard it put this way, but a non-offensive critical mass and critical mass is where like couriers, bike couriers and real aggressive types in big cities taking over the streets, very hostile.

00;25;47;03 – 00;25;50;04

Mark

Has it’s nearly a parade or.

00;25;50;04 – 00;26;03;11

Gary Howe

Yeah, but a slow roll is just, hey, we’re neighbors. We want to go for a bike ride and, you know, we’re going to do so. And big groups and we’re going to go slow. We’re going to go not that far and we’re going to have drinks afterwards, get some ice cream afterwards.

00;26;03;11 – 00;26;08;16

Mark

And, you know, not on all the main streets plugging up. Yeah, we’re not traffic in our, you know.

00;26;09;08 – 00;26;14;20

Gary Howe

Streets. And, you know, Detroit. I love their slow roll because having bikes around.

00;26;14;20 – 00;26;15;09

Mark

I got a two hour.

00;26;15;10 – 00;26;28;23

Gary Howe

Strike by bike. There’s just so much open space. Yeah, Yeah. This guy Chris comes to our slow roads, got big old horns on his bike. We don’t have anyone riding low riders or anything like that. See, in Detroit, there’s great bikes down there, but.

00;26;28;29 – 00;26;31;09

Ryan

But it’s a community. It’s people who.

00;26;31;22 – 00;26;33;26

Gary Howe

Come express yourself. And that’s I mean, that’s really what it gets.

00;26;33;26 – 00;26;49;27

Ryan

Down to is, I think, an accurate way of putting it. It is expression you’re talking about. This is what our town is for, This is why we enjoy it. And I really love that. I love the fact that we have one. Is there anything else that you’d want to share with our listeners about what you have coming up?

00;26;50;11 – 00;26;53;07

Ryan

What’s going on in general? Anything that we haven’t covered with?

00;26;53;07 – 00;27;09;25

Gary Howe

Not sure. I would like to say about the slow rolls though, in these community rides. I mean, we’ve we do them in Traverse City and also Elk Rapids has one and both communities have fully embraced them. You know, and when we have really large ones that we know about, you know, like, hey, it looks like we’re going to have a couple of hundred people.

00;27;10;08 – 00;27;14;07

Gary Howe

Traverse City Police Department has been more than generous to help us out.

00;27;14;07 – 00;27;18;17

Ryan

So those are the kind of challenges you can encounter with that. It’s maybe too big and it gets.

00;27;18;24 – 00;27;34;19

Gary Howe

Yeah, it just becomes a comfort level and you want to reach out and you want to be good part of the community, right? So it’s like, Hey, Chief O’Brien, it looks like we’re going to have more than usual on Wednesday night. Yeah, if you want to block certain intersections for us, that’d be great.

00;27;34;19 – 00;27;36;14

Mark

Well, then you just register like a parade or.

00;27;36;15 – 00;27;44;00

Gary Howe

Well, you don’t even have to have been great in terms of register, because it’s not a parade. It’s just a large group of people who’ve organically come to.

00;27;44;00 – 00;27;50;22

Mark

Arrive, you know, in that. And we’re fortunate to have a police chief who’s big on community policing. And this is part of.

00;27;51;01 – 00;27;52;13

Gary Howe

Recognizing that we want to have that.

00;27;52;13 – 00;27;53;27

Mark

Community. Yeah.

00;27;53;27 – 00;27;57;15

Gary Howe

So northeast great, you know, in our days. Proud to be a part of that.

00;27;57;15 – 00;27;59;08

Ryan

That’s excellent. Anything else that’s coming up.

00;27;59;25 – 00;28;23;00

Gary Howe

We also have Afterschool Bike club. It’s called Adventure Bike Club. There’s 15 schools that we work with and we basically meet the kids after school at the schools and go for rides from the schools. And so, you know, from Westwood’s out in Long Lake to downtown school. Right, Right. Even Pathfinders in on that one, they’re a little more challenging because of the I’m m22, but we make it work.

00;28;23;00 – 00;29;00;29

Gary Howe

And then we also have mountain bike season and that’s northern Michigan regional youth mountain bike team. And we have teams on Palmer Woods which is only on our county Benzie trying to a new one opening up in Crystal Mountain all the way up to Knobs Knob. Wow. And then Kalkaska and Elk Rapids and of course Traverse City. So that’s a huge reach in terms of Yeah, well we like to say the largest youth mountain bike team in Michigan and, and partly because we it’s we’re not as competitive so it’s like first graders to 12th graders let’s meet we’ll meet them where they are right and get them riding and that’s the key them riding.

00;29;00;29 – 00;29;10;21

Ryan

And you do have a program where the kids can get a bike in. Once they grow out of it, they can trade that in for a bike that fits them when they need it.

00;29;10;21 – 00;29;33;13

Gary Howe

Yep. And the regional kids library and that’s for bikes that they can take home and ride with their family and things of that nature. We also have program bikes, which is key as part of that library. So if a child is in one of our programs, whether it be mountain biking or adventure bike club or some bike camp, and they don’t have a, you know, performance bike, a bike with gears and something they can be comfortable on going a little bit longer, Miles.

00;29;33;19 – 00;29;50;06

Gary Howe

They can check those out for the length of the program. Yeah. And thanks for a lot of donations for that actually to come to be. It’s we’ve bought a few of those bikes, but most of them have been donated. McClain’s cycle and fitness has been one of our largest donors of used bikes but also other bike shops.

00;29;50;15 – 00;29;53;13

Ryan

And on that note, how can listeners support naught? Say, how can they donate?

00;29;53;24 – 00;30;11;22

Gary Howe

Well, donating is pretty easy. Just go to our website, our group on our day dot org. I’m sure maybe this podcast has a link on it, but also, you know, if you have a used bike and you want to donate it, but we’re pretty easy to find. If you can just Google naughty drivers or get your pop up or, you know, youth bike programs.

00;30;11;22 – 00;30;30;18

Ryan

Well, thank you so much for being here. This is really, really amazing. It was so much fun learning more about what you do. And I can’t thank you enough for your pursuits and for all those who push through along with you, sharing a safe and thriving biking and walking community, empowering our youth to get outside and to be strong leaders and to our listeners.

00;30;30;21 – 00;30;36;03

Ryan

Thank you all for listening and for pursuing the positive.

00;30;38;04 – 00;31;22;06

Mark

Hey, thanks again for joining us on the Pursuit of podcast The Pursuit of Naughty. I want to thank Gary Howe for coming in to get involved with Naughty Dog. You can Google Norte, elgruponorte.orm Also want to give a shout out to our supporters the tin lid hat company tin lid co dot com use promo code the pursuit of four 40% off to our listeners and for general podcasting audio visual production inquiries look us up at New Leonard Dot com.