;)
I got a bit curious today to see what kind of airplane is parked on Anderson Lake in the spot where I used to keep my, poor, crashed, broken, airplane, the Running Dog, tied down in winter.
I found this Super Cub, with another Cub behind it and a Maule behind that.
If I am ever to do this blog right, the way I envision it, I need another airplane. And its a crazy thing - if you were to look closely at my little business right now, you would see that a big struggle to merely survive looms right in front of me - and yet, I have this unshakeable, optimistic feeling in me that, this year, I am going to rise out of it all, make this blog into what I see it becoming, and once again fly about Alaska in my own, little, airplane.
Maybe it is a foolish, silly, absurd little feeling, based on fantasy, not reality, certainly not practicality, but a new friend of mine in India, Thruptha, who you can find in my 2009 May review, put this message on her Orkut page:
"The most successful people on the planet have failed more than ordinary ones."
So, you see, I, who have failed and failed and failed and failed and may well be about to do so again, am surely on the right track.
One more thing: I dream about airplanes frequently - just about every night. So my need to get another is more than just a utilitarian thing - my soul needs an airplane. I am not whole without one.
I am like a cowboy with no horse, a dog musher with no dogs.
;)
As I photographed the Super Cub, my hat left my head and took off across the ice. It traveled so fast I did not think that I could catch it, but I went running after it.
It kept getting further ahead of me, but then it stalled for several seconds and I snatched it from the wind.
;)
The wind has been howling, like 40, newspaper report said gusting over 55, I heard 80 on the radio. The temperature has finally cooled down a bit, too - not frigid, but cooler than it was and if you were standing in an 80 mph gust you would think it was cold. On my coffee break, depending on where I was, the temperatures ranged from 7 to 13 degrees.
I have not read the forecast, but it feels like we are headed towards cold temperatures again. To the north of here, in the Interior, several places are into the -50's, so I think that air might slip down onto us.
I could be wrong. Another Pineapple Express from Hawaii could be charging up the Pacific, right now, headed straight at us.
It is an El Niño year, after all, and these things are supposed to be more frequent during such years.
;)
That's the box that in which the newspaperman deposits our copy of The Anchorage Daily News every morning. You can see the morning paper itself sitting a littler further back in the snowmachine track. If you look real close at the upper right-hand corner of the photo, just above the entrance to our driveway, you can see the post on which the newspaper box once sat.
It could have been worse - it could have been our roof, or a tree might have dropped on the house or car, or maybe upon my head.
;)
This is actually the first picture that I took today. Yes, I went to Family Restaurant again. I wasn't going to. I was going to cook oatmeal, but I changed my mind.
I think I will fall back to oatmeal for the rest of the week, but you never know.
;)
Just as Melanie advised, I have been feeding multiple small servings of soft food to Royce. I am happy to say that he has not yet thrown up today and the end of the day draws nigh.