Things I saw on the bike ride that took me into springtime Wasilla; I nearly crashed

Monday rapidly ages, and I have yet to complete my post on Saturday's bike ride, so I guess that I had better get to it.

As noted, the day dawned sunny and while the morning was cool, the afternoon turned warm and beautiful. The temperature rose to 48 degrees and the sky went to deep blue. The wind was calm. I climbed onto my bike and headed out to see what I might see.

I see that I overexposed this image. That's because sometimes camera settings change on their own and when you are pedaling a bicycle, you are unlikely to notice. If you do notice, then you have to stop to make the changes.

I got a better exposure on this one. The man walked with a dog and they were close together when I first spotted them from a couple hundred yards back, but, by the time I got close enough to take a picture, the dog had gone off into the trees.

"Good afternoon, sir!" I called out as I pedaled past.

"Good afternoon," he smiled back.

It used to be that you would see these golf-ball domes sitting atop towers spaced at regular intervals all along the Arctic Coast, in the Aleutian Islands and at various places in the interior, such as Clear and Fort Yukon. They were part of the Distant Early Warning Line, operated by the US Air Force to scan the skies for a Soviet nuclear missile or air attack against the United States.

On a clear day, before I got GPS, I could spot them from my airplane from as far as 50 miles away and then I could just relax, place my map aside and fly straight toward them.

Of course, I have also had the experience of thus relaxing, only to see fog sweep in off the ocean and cause the golf ball that I was following to disappear - along with the entire village by which it sat.

This always made the flight a little more interesting.

Some of those golf balls are still out there, but many have disappeared. I first spotted these in Wasilla about the time they began to disappear from the bush, so I assumed that they had been moved here from there, that perhaps I had safely followed one or more of these very balls to my destination, but I've never actually researched the origin of these to find out if that's true or not.

I often see this young gentleman from my car, as I drive by him. Usually, he will smile and wave as I drive by. I return his greetings. On this day, he smiled and said, "hi."

"Hi," I answered back.

Just down the road, I saw this police officer, parked in his car near the park that used to be the Wasilla airport. I used to keep my airplane here.

And in the park, I pedaled past young people flying - not by airplane but by swing.

As I did, my iPhone vibated and chimed in the instant message mode, so I stopped to see what the message was. It was a photo of "my boys" - Jacob, Jobe and Kalib, sent to me by Lavina, who had taken it in Hope. It was good to see, because that told me that, after being so sick, she was feeling well enough to want to travel and see things.

A bit further down, young people shot baskets where airplanes once parked.

Kids flowed by, riding bikes and scooters.

Many had come to the park to enjoy the weather.

At one point, I saw a kid pedaling around a curve toward me, looking at the trail behind him instead of ahead. He was all the way to his left and I soon realized that we were on a collision course. No big deal. All I needed to do was apply a little brake and get out of the way. 

I held my camera in my right hand, so I braked with my left. Remember, now, this was only the second bike ride that I had taken since mid-October and I had forgotten just how sensitive that left-hand brake is. Worse yet, it affects only the front brake. The front wheel came to an instant stop and the back wheel began to rise. I then realized that the bike was going to do a complete flip and I was going down.

Woe be unto me if I were to land on my artificial shoulder!

I don't know how I did it, but somehow, after the bike passed the vertical position, I leaped right over the handle bars and came down on my feet on the bike trail. The bike then crashed to the pavement, upside down, behind me as I ran forward.

The kid went by, wide-eyed, looking at me. "It's okay!" I told him. "No problem."

I can imaging how strange it must have looked to a boy of that age, to have been looking backward from his bike, only to turn around and see what to him could only have appeared to be an old, old, man with a whitening beard leaping over his handle bars as his bike took to the air.

This was not the kid, by the way. The kid wore a helmet. This would have been just a little bit before the kid appeared.

I stopped at the skateboard park just long enough to shoot a few frames from off my bike. There, I saw eight-year old Cole preparing to use this ramp even as his mother was shouting at him, telling him that some older boys were headed towards it and had asked him to clear the space.

The older boy thought that he could miss the younger boy by scooting along the top of the steel railing, but he lost control. His skateboard sailed through the air and very nearly missed giving Cole a good whack on the head.

"That was the worse moment of my life," the older boy, whose name I did not catch, exclaimed afterward. "I have never been so scared in all my life."

As for Cole, he took it calmly in stride. "I love to skateboard," he told me.

"Oh, yes," his mother added. "He does love it."

I used to love it, too. Cole, I'll bet you down know it, but it was me and my peers that pioneered skateboarding for you. We started out by taking steel-wheeled roller skates, separating the front from the back and then nailing them to short wooden planks.

We had a blast on these, coasting down hills, shooting about on broad, school-yard walks. Then, one day, a kid showed up with the first commercial skateboard any of us had ever seen.

Thus began the revolution, which you young guys keep perfecting. We came up with many tricks that we thought were pretty spectacular. My father could not believe his eyes when he saw what we did on our skateboards - but I cannot believe my eyes when I see what you young guys do today.

One day this summer, I will take my big DSLR's to the skateboard park and just hang out for awhile, just to show people the amazing things that you kids are doing there. 

Afterward, I pedaled on into and through the graveyard. I saw a few graves that broke my heart, for they were children's graves, decorated with artifacts of children playing and swinging, doing the things the children who lay beneath had been robbed of ever doing. I did take a couple of pictures and at first, I put them in this post, but pulled them out before I published.

As I pedaled on through the trees, I saw children playing across the street from the graveyard.

Play, children. Play hard. Laugh, and love every minute of it, even when you fall and scrape yourselves, even when someone is mean to you and you cry and think you are miserable.

Laugh. Play hard.

I got back onto the bike trail and pedaled towards home. "Hello, fellow bike rider!" the girl in the back shouted at me as we passed.

When I spotted these boys, they were close together, spread out across the trail so that there was no room to pass by. The image took me right back to challenges that I had faced as a child when my path would be blocked intentionally to intimidate me, but, as you can see, these three respectfully cleared a path through which I could pass.

As I passed it, this dog growled and eyed me threateningly. After I passed it, without looking backward myself, I pointed my camera behind me and took this snap.

I should note that, after I flipped the bike, I remembered that it was my broken shoulder and the fact that for several months I was able to shoot pictures only with my left hand that got me into pocket cameras in the first place. I had become adept at shooting with my left hand, so why had I switched back to my right, even while riding a bike?

Hence I took this, and most of the pictures that followed that flip, with my left hand. This way, if I should happen to need to brake again, I could brake with my right hand, and it would be the back wheel that stopped. The bike would not flip.

I also recalled that the reason that my shoulder suffered such a grievous injury in the first place was that because when I realized I was going down and there was nothing I could do to prevent it, I had tucked my camera into my chest and there protected it by taking the brunt of the blow directly on my shoulder.

Hey! That was an expensive camera! Very expensive! The best and most expensive DSLR on the market at that time.

But that expense was cheap compared to the losses that followed if I had only protected myself first and not worried about the camera. In fact, those losses are truly responsible even for the rough spot I temporarily find myself in. This pocket camera is relatively cheap. It occurred to me that if I found myself going down, I could just toss it aside.

It might get damaged, but better it than me.

Comments

[Grandma Nancy]

Take good care, Bill!

[Kasha Knish]

I am not sure if this post will appear, but if so....it is that time of the year for the Blogger Choice Awards and Bill's blog is listed under Best Photography Blog.

At the moment of my writing this, he is in the lead with 58 votes, but 2 other blogs are on his heels.

So, you might want to send Bill a little love by going to: http://bloggerschoiceawards.com/categories/8 or http://bloggerschoiceawards.com-- and voting,,,

[Kasha Knish]

I am doing the Happy Dance!!! I absolutely did not expect my prior post to go through. I gave up trying months ago.

Hopefully, whatever changed on this blog will remain the same. I feel like I am now out of some form of solitary confinement. Yeah!!

[Kasha Knish]

Oopsie! The URL for voting for Bill's Blog is - http://bloggerschoiceawards.com/categories/13

My badddd.... I had been curious as to what site would be considered obnoxious and somehow, didn't change the URL when doing my original post.

I will now crawl back into my cave for a bit. (grin)

[Alicia Greene]

Nice post welcoming Spring! By the way, my dog and I were just "stalked" by that dog in the last photo...he's a real pest, that one, and we've encountered him quite a few times and he's even crossed the road with us. He almost makes me want to carry pepper spray!!

[kalaluka]

SO GLAD you landed safely on your feet!! my momma would completely agree with your realization to toss a camera if need be, to protect your body... no matter whether it's a cheap point & shoot, or a big phat DSLR. Thanks for taking us on a bike ride in Alaska...

[Ruth Z Deming]

take it easy, son, we don't want nothin to happen to ya. ever tell you you're my mentor with the photography? sometimes i'll be walkin w/o my camera and i think, shoulda gotten a picture of that. bill would've!

[Wasilla, Alaska, by 300]

Grandma Nancy - Will do! You too!

Kasha - Glad your post went through and I have no idea why it didn't before. And thanks for the cheerleading. I would really like to win!

Alicia - Yes, I have encountered that dog before. And I have seen it almost get hit by a car.

kalaluka - You are welcome. Someday, you must take me on one in Hawaii. When you do, I will blog about it.

Ruth - I notice you have been using your camera more and more. Keep it up.