Dog carries blue football to grave; boy smiles on fourwheeler; two thought they would employ sexy girls to compete with Metro, but the Metro girl won
Saturday, June 18, 2011 at 12:02PM 
I was pedaling my bike through the graveyard when suddenly I saw the dog, Cloe, standing in front of this grave with a football in her mouth. What a predicament! I knew that the moment I stopped, Cloe would become interested in me and would turn away from the grave but I was already alongside the grave and if I did not stop I would roll right past before I could even lift my camera and then if I turned back the dog would move. I squeezed both brakes hard and then, even before I came to a complete stop, let go of the right while still squeezing the left, lifted my camera and shot as I was almost catapulted over the handle bars.
If I had been, and if I had broken my neck and died on the spot, they wouldn't have had to carry me far. They could have just dug a hole and dropped me in right there.
Except I want to be cremated and to have my ashes scattered here and there, from the Arctic Slope to Hatcher Pass to Arizona to India. So that wouldn't work, after all.
I got the framing and the moment good, but, damnit! When I pedal my bike I try to keep my shutter speed at 1/400 of a second or so, but sometimes the knob rubs against my clothing and changes the shutter speed without me knowing it.
That's what happened here - the shutter speed had slipped down to 1/40th of a second and at that speed, from the seat of a bike that I am bringing to a stop while almost going over the handle bars, there is no way I am not going to get motion blur.
I capture a once-in-a-lifetime moment and it is blurred.
Oh well. From the vantage point of life, death is kind of a blur, anyway. I guess I just have to live with it.
Sure enough, when I came to a complete stop, Cloe dropped the ball and came to me.
A bit further on, I saw these two, the little one looking back at another four-wheeler.
This is Sean, in a photo that I took inside Metro Cafe after pedaling my bike here at breakfast time because Margie had taken the car to Anchorage so she could babysit Kalib and Jobe.
Sean lives just a couple of hundred yards or so up Lucille Street from Metro and he and his buddy Justin had been planning to start a coffee shop of their own and then Carmen and Scott built Metro and beat them to the punch. Still, they thought they might do it. They could still build their stand and hire beautiful, sexy, girls to serve as baristas - baristas in bikinis, no less.
So, for awhile, they stayed away from Metro. They did not want to take a chance that they might come in and then find they actually liked the coffee and the people, because then they might be reluctant to build their shop and compete with them.
But finally, they came in to sample the competition's product. There, they beheld the beautiful-always-modestly-and-tastefully-attired-young-writer barista Shoshana and that was it. Justin fell in love.
So did Shoshana. And one coffee shop staffed by bikini-clad baristas who would be popsicles for eight months of the year fell to the wayside without ever opening.
Now Sean comes often in the mornings, often by himself, to sit, eat, drink coffee, shoot the bull and lament with Carmen. He laments because once, not so long ago, he and Justin were together most all the time, hanging out, being best friends, cooking up schemes.
Now, Justin is always with the beautiful-always-modestly-and-tastefully-attired-young-writer barista Shoshana - who was not working this morning.
That's why I didn't do one of my famous studies on her. Instead, I did the above study:
Inside the Metro Cafe, Study #1976: Sean, who did not get to open a coffee shop staffed by sexy, bikini-clad baristas
Sean is an ex-Mormon, by the way. Now he goes to a different church. He didn't say which one, but apparently, judging from what Carmen said, he takes it pretty seriously.
From my bike, as I pedal down Gail Street, through the rain. Today is sunny. Sunny and warm. An airplane is passing overhead. Jim is walking back and forth across my desk and keyboard, blocking my view of my monitor, meowing impatiently. He wants me to take him outside. I try to take him out for awhile everyday now that summer is here.
But it is never enough for him. He always wants more.
Reader Comments (4)
Has to soak up all that bright sunshine while he can...winter is coming, doncha know?
I have been away, and my mobile phone just won't load your blog page! I almost went through wasillaaskaby300 withdraw symptoms. Your daily blog is like a mini-vacation in the middle of my day. You take me on a trip to Barrow, to visit Kalib and Jobe, or just down to the metro, but it's always fun. I'm enjoying reading all the posts I missed!
Thank you for saying such nice things about me =)
still great pictures , have a good fathers day